Slashdot Mirror
BBC "Not In Bed With Bill Gates"
whoever57 writes "The BBC's head of technology denied rumors that a secret deal with Microsoft was behind the XP-only launch of the BBC's iPlayer. According to Ashley Highfield, the reason that the player only supports Windows XP is that only a small number of Linux visitors have come to the BBC's website. Why he would expect a large number of Linux-based visitors to the site when the media downloads are Windows XP only is not clear. He also thinks that 'Launching a software service to every platform simultaneously would have been launch suicide,' despite the example of many major sites that support Linux (even if this is through the closed-source flash player)."
Why is 'a small number of linux users' a reason for going with this? What is wrong with using a format that is available everywhere (including portable players!) as a matter of course?
The interesting bit here is the Beeb isn't really a commercial organization. They're a public entity which is strictly required to keep itself free of commercial and political influence.
Slashdot Burying Stories About Slashdot Media Owned
"You don't decide how big to build the bridge by counting the number of people swimming the river."
Cuz once the bridge is up, hundreds more who couldn't swim the distance will want to cross.
Pavlov wouldn't be so famous if he'd used a can opener instead of a bell.
It should be clarified that he was talking about the root bbc.co.uk site NOT the iPlayer site, so it is clearer why the would expect Linux users to visit the site.
Because if they had, it would have been perfectly clear that by "the BBC website" he meant bbc.co.uk, as that's actually part of the referenced quote. Given that the site is one of the most popular in the UK, and is used by people from all walks of life, I'd say that their OS usage stats stand fair chance of being representative of reality...
It's official. Most of you are morons.
iPlayer is based on Kontiki (owned by Verisign). Windows only, unless you're prepared to jump through virtual hoops, AFAIK. Reading through the user agreement: it's targeting UK-based computer users. Hmmm. Shall we build a Windows, Mac or Linux player? No-brainer, really, when the P2P distribution layer is Windows only.
The Beeb did it because it was the cheapest, easiest, but not best, option.
That said, it was a really stupid move and managed to get everybody from the smallest Linux hacker to the UK government commenting in public about the policy.
Creating an open "player" for all platforms would have taken more resources at first, but from that point on all future platforms would be supported by the people who use the platform.
Sadly, the Beeb needs closed source to implement the no-save and timed delete features forced on them by others.
When will people stop whining about iPlayer being XP only? There's no secret Microsoft alliance, and no great conspiracy.
The main reason why iPlayer uses Windows DRM is because the companies who produce content for the BBC didn't want their shows streamed without some kind of rights management, because, god forbid, it should end up on bit torrent. The cause of this is most likely ignorance on their part, because, as we all know, DRM stops piracy, saves lives, cures cancar and ends world famine.
The core code behind iPlayer is completely cross-browser, having worked on some of it, I know that it conforms to BBC New Media guidelines, which specifically state that all HTML, JavaScript, etc must be compatible with all major browsers (we even tested major elements of it in Firefox, and quite a few of the developers worked on Mac/Linux boxes)
There has always been a plan for a Mac/Linux version of iPlayer, but the current DRM requirements being imposed on the iPlayer Core team make it somewhat difficult for them to actually get working on it
The guy who leads the iPlayer project was responsible for WMP while he was working at Microsoft Europe.
It takes a man to suffer ignorance and smile
Be yourself no matter what they say
If MS and the BBC were in cahoots, don't you think there would be a Vista version? Microsoft doesn't want you buying XP any more.
An incovenient truth: There really is only about thousand linux users.
However they are a very vocal minority and because it's somewhat cool to be a linux guy
some people claim that they run linux when infact they don't.
I personally run Windows Vista Home Basic but I pretend to be a linux expert on various internet forums.
Linux's "popularity" is really just a scam to fool newbies into thinking that people actually run linux.
Then the newbies try actually installing linux and fail miserably,
you must really be a kernel hacker to install it.
Frustrated newbies then ask questions on the various forums and on irc and everybody answers to them in complete gibberish. We all get a good laugh that way (expect the noobs, they try the bogus solutions and fail once again).
This
This man is clearly a small-minded idiot who the BBC should be ashamed to have on their staff. Frankly, I don't care a jot about support for Linux or Mac. That's not where I'm coming at this from. I'm coming at this from the simple tenets of the BBC's constitution, that "Nation shall speak peace unto nation". This is on the plaque outside Broadcasting House, the BBC main HQ. It's why the BBC has offices in eastern countries you've never heard of. It's why the BBC broadcasts programs for minorities. It doesn't say "Nation shall speak peace unto nation provided they're running a compatible operating system". That's like it saying, "National shall speak peace unto nations provided they have white skin", or "Nation shall speak peace unto nation provided they support the British government's war on terror". There are no bars here, for any reason, trivial or otherwise. It really is disgraceful that this man is in a position of power in the BBC. It shows how far standards have slipped in the BBC. The iPlayer project will very probably be cancelled anyway because another fuckwitt is running the BBC and has massively overstretched the organisation, so that it's now cutting back by billions of pounds. Generation X has all growed-up and they're simply not up to the job.
Read this if you think iPlayer is a good idea - http://www.groklaw.net/article.php?story=20071021231933899
Mark Taylor of the UK Open Source Consortium makes the point that the BBC has spent 100 million pounds on the iPlayer project. They're also going broke and will have to sell their flagship London headquarters building for - guess how much?
So, this project has already beggared the BBC. Am I too paranoid in seeing this as the first step in yet another Microsoft 'embrace and extend' play? They've had ambitions to own broadcast TV for ages. If they can prove their DRM works for a major broadcaster over the net, next step will be to DRM the broadcast TV. After that, if your TV doesn't have Windows Inside, you'll be shit out of luck.
--- Yx3 = Delilah ---