On March 20, 2007 Sony released a compatibility list; 1,782 of the 2,451 PS2 games (72%) released in Europe had noticeable issues, minor issues or no known issues, with the remainder being incompatible with the console.
As I understand it, the European PS3's only had software emulation. So, by Sony's own admission, backwards compatibility is at 72 percent, and may actually be even lower than that.
If I had any Sony stock I would have sold it a long time ago. These guys are finding new lows of stupidity every other day.
Again, it's not me missing the point here. If you have a TV and it's not actively receiving a signal from a source such as an aerial, a Sky box or a cable TV connection then you do not need a TV licence.
Once more, I will suggest that you ask the TV licensing people themselves if you don't believe me. Their own website spells it out pretty clearly, and others have linked to it and quoted the relevant sections, but if you still doubt me, those others, and the TV licensing website then I suggest you do what I've said at least twice before: ring them up and ask them.
Here, as I understand it, is the situation. Hopefully, if I get anything wrong someone will correct me...
Backwards compatibility goes down with the newer 80GB US models.
As others have pointed out, the newer systems lack an in-built Emotion Engine chip, so they rely on software emulation rather than hardware emulation.
The emulation is decent, but it's far from perfect. Sony themselves quote a figure of 88 percent compatibility with the software emulation rather than 100 percent with the hardware emulation.
And, even amongst those 88 percent of titles that work there are some glitches: it's not the case that 88 percent of titles work perfectly while 12 percent have some problems or won't run, rather it's the case that 12 percent won't run at all and 88 percent will run to some degree.
You can read that many ways, but to me it seems to suggest that 88 percent is a marketing person's figure more than anything else: if a game won't get past a fixed point, it has audio or visual glitches all over the place, or if it falls over all the time then you're stretching things if you consider that game in your 88 percent.
Of course, Sony isn't exactly advertising the fact that the newer 80GB models aren't as backwardly compatible as their predecessors. Granted, it won't matter to everyone, but it will matter to some, and those people won't thank Sony for their penny-pinching and shortsightedness.
I don't know what the hell is going on with Sony. When it came to the original PlayStation they ran a flawless campaign and sucked millions of new users into the console market. With the PS2 they didn't put a foot wrong and cleaned up again. But with the PS3 it seems like they've decided to see how much they can piss away the goodwill generated by their previous two generations and opted for one boneheaded move after another.
If they're not careful they're going to end up as yet another sorry story on fuckedcompany.com.
...and local government in the state of Indiana isn't one of them.
This is ridiculous. A $3.8 billion expansion and they can't afford to clean up the mess that they're creating?
At which point will the Indiana legislators start realising that their duty is to all the people of Indiana, not just the few that work for BP?
I bet if you asked people if they would want their laws bent or even waived to allow a polluter to pollute their water even more that 99 percent of them would say no. So how the hell does the Indiana Department of Environmental Management have the balls to try to justify and defend their decision?
What's next? Indiana cops giving drug dealers the green light to push crack in schools?
1. Buy TV. 2. Do not connect the TV to an aerial or any other tuning device. 3. Use TV to watch DVDs, play console games, etc. 4. If they ask about your TV licence, tell TV licencing that you're not receiving a TV signal.
Do you work for Sky or something? It would at least explain why you're spouting total rubbish.
A typical hour of BBC programming might have one or two 30 second trailers for upcoming programmes in it, and these trailers will be shown in the intervals between programmes: they certainly won't ever interrupt them.
There is no way that you can ever claim that there is a 24 minute programme followed by 6 minutes of ads, followed by another 24 minute programme and then another 6 minutes of ads.
Your claim that "[the BBC's] 'TV' hour is still 48 minutes" is complete and utter rubbish.
Either you're lying through your teeth or your completely clueless. Either way, I wish you'd stop making such ridiculous comments because they add nothing to the debate.
Look, it's simple. If you receive TV broadcasts over the airwaves, whether by terrestrial signal, satellite or cable, then you'll need a TV licence.
But if you have a TV and don't receive any such signal - for example, if you have a TV and only have it hooked up to your DVD player and use it just to watch DVDs - then you don't need a TV licence.
Don't want to take my word for it? Phone them up yourself, ask them and they'll tell you.
You cannot take money from people then bar them from the purpose of that licence - this is definitely MS driven with the BBC in cahoots with them (remember, the BBC is a very similar monopoly like MS and allowed to be by the Politicians 'in hand').
Where to start...
Firstly, the BBC has a charter that it must abide by. While I, like you, would like to see the BBC develop its online content across as many platforms as possible (including MacOS and Linux) I think it's important to realise that making content available to everybody on every platform is not in the charter.
If the BBC were to roll out content that required a certain platform or (even platforms) then it wouldn't be in breach of its charter: if I wanted to access the content on BeOS, or OS/2, I don't have the "right" to demand that the BBC makes it happen.
While I have no doubt that it will eventually make content available on the big three (Windows, MacOS, Linux) there's nothing to stop the BBC making its first steps on one of the platforms only.
You'll notice that the BBC has several DAB-only radio stations. Well, just because I don't have a DAB radio, I'm not entitled to demand that those radio stations are made available to me via the analogue airwaves, am I?
Secondly, the BBC is not a monopoly. There are dozens of other TV broadcasters in the UK, dozens of other radio broadcasters and hundreds of news websites. The BBC may be the only one of them to benefit from the TV licence but it's not a monopoly.
Re:of course, sue now
on
Facebook In Court
·
· Score: 4, Interesting
Interesting question.
If I look over your garden fence and see that you're building a giant widget and then you notice and offer me a tour of your giant widget do you have any legal recourse if I decide that I like the idea of having my own giant widget and then make one for myself?
My gut instinct in that scenario is that you're screwed, unless you got any form of agreement from me before you showed me it. No agreement, no case.
Is my copying your idea without at least getting your permission ethical? I'd say no but others would disagree. Is it legal? Well, if you didn't get me to sign anything then, unfortunately for you, the answer is probably yes.
OK, I realise that people aren't being paid to submit their stories but surely the editors are being paid to edit them?
Shouldn't they at least be reading the submissions (titles and story) and then any linked articles as well to make sure that they've been accurately summarised (not to mention relevant)?
It seems the Firehose is catching most dupes (we get the occasional one but not 2-4 a day as we did a couple of years back) but typos, innacurate headlines, poorly worded summaries and even innacurate stories (such as this one) still abound.
Just looking at the current frontpage, I can see several stories that either have titles or summaries that need editing:
Facebook in Court: the summary, which fails to tell us that the legal fight has been going on for years, and implies that it's only been started now because of greed.
Gadgets Have Taken Over For Our Brains: the summary, which references Trinity College, but not which Trinity College. Is it the one in London, Cambridge, Washington DC, Toronto, Carmarthen, Florida, Melbourne...? No, it's the one in Dublin? So tell us.
One Laptop Per Child and Intel Join Forces: Another ambiguous title, which seems to imply a joint venture. As Intel has joined the OLPC project it would have been more accurate for the title to simply say "Intel joins OLPC Project".
Call me a pedant if you want to but there are editors for a reason, so they should edit. Their job isn't that hard, and now they even have people looking at the Firehose helping them out, so why are we still getting so many poor or poorly-presented stories?
I get the feeling that I'm seriously being trolled now. Previously (in other conversations) you seemed to reserve your concern about the BBC's reliance on a single platform and you seemed to recognise the need for some sort of practical rights management, yet now your stance seems to have changed from one of concern solely about OS lock-in to one of encryption and rights management.
However, I'm prepared to give you the benefit of the doubt and assume that your previous posts didn't explicitly state your position and that your apparent shift is because you are now providing clarity, rather than arguing for the sake of arguing alone.
(I have to admit though, that I do find it strange that you hammer on about this point when almost every interested party, including the OSC themselves, concede that some sort of DRM mechanism is an avoidable price that has to be paid for the online release of the BBC archive.)
As I've said on more than one occasion, and you yourself have freely admitted, restriction by IP address alone is not a restriction at all. So, please, what practical solution do you have of stopping the content being proxied to the whole world?
And before you suggest it, a blacklist of proxy addresses isn't a practical solution: you know as well as I do that as soon as you block one proxy another would spring up in its place.
Maybe because they recognise, as you fail to do, that their commercial partners wouldn't take DRM-free downloads lying down, and that such an option would be commercial suicide?
Adding any sort of encryption to DVB broadcasts would be impossible: that genie is already out of the bottle and to put it back would be incredibly prohibitive both financially and logistically. Surely you recognise that?
One aspect that should be clarified here: we're not just talking about streamed content of current programming, we're talking about the entire BBC archive. Unless you know different, that's not currently available on demand via DVB.
Can you not appreciate why the BBC would want to restrict that content to licence payers only and why it might choose an approach that gives it as much certainty as possible that that content doesn't become openly available to everybody everywhere?
Look, I'm all for DRM-free content, but I'm also for a practical, real-world solutions that won't bring the BBC to its knees. Do you have a DRM-free solution that will avoid the BBC potentially being dragged into and pummelled in court by dozens if not hundreds of content creators? If so, I'd like to hear them.
I'm sorry but clearly either there is some aspect of the operation of a proxy server, and the consequences that one would have on an IP-only based restriction method, that either I've failed to clearly spell out or that you don't understand.
As I'm not a mind reader and as I don't want to be rude I'll assume that it's the former. My apologies. Perhaps you could ask one of your colleagues at Opendium for a clearer picture than the one that I've attempted to paint?
Perhaps they could also join the dots for you and explain how P2P, or more precisely, the fear of it, figures into the whole equation. Here's a small hint: without it, do you really think that content creators would worry about DRM?
The problem is simply that if you want to restrict your audience to the UK only then IP addresses alone aren't an answer. Proxies alone make using an IP-based restriction ineffective, hence the need to look for another solution.
There's no single, make-everybody-happy option. I wish there was, but there isn't.
I think I recall reading that the BBC is committed to making its entire archive available online without any time limitations. Clearly, if that's the case then the affect on DVD sales (at least in the UK) isn't a consideration.
From what I can see, the key consideration seems to be to make the archive available to it's customers (UK TV licence payers) and nobody else. Hence the need for some sort of rights management.
It's not an ideal world solution but it is a pragmatic one.
Come on, you know the answers to these questions...
The BBC's DVB streams are broadcast to the UK only, not to the world, and hence there's no need for any form of encryption. The limited overspill that there is is accepted as being beyond the BBC's control. Indeed, the BBC has actually done everything possible to limit it, and this has been well documented.
As I seem to have said at least twice before, the BBC doesn't act in isolation. In making the decision to make its archive available online I'm sure it has consulted its business partners and attempted to address the (natural) concerns that they might have about having this content made available online. Whether you consider it unnecessary or not, I'm sure that these partners would consider it necessary to stop the archive from disrupting their own interests.
Whereas you and others might not see a great distinction between 1) making DRM-free content over IP to the UK only that is then accessed from anywhere else in the world by proxy servers; and 2) a recording made via DVB and then being posted on P2P networks by UK uploaders; there is indeed a difference.
In the first case, the BBC leaves itself vulnerable to the charge that it's carelessly given away back door access to the content to anybody, anywhere. At the very least this would damage its business relationships with overseas broadcasters and content creators, and it it's not a stretch to imagine that it might even lead to legal action being taken. In the second case, however, the BBC can at least claim that it's been just as much a victim of P2P distribution as any other broadcaster.
Don't get me wrong. I'm a BBC licence fee payer and I want to access the BBC's content regardless of my choice of OS. And, ideally, I want those files to be playable on any media player. However, I recognise the BBC's need to make sure that it doesn't step on any toes as it treads into new territory and that, ultimately, getting something is better than getting nothing.
Idealism is a great thing. But a healthy dose of pragmatism isn't exactly a bad thing either.
I'm also very aware that we live in a world where the BBC cannot make the decision to release online downloadable content of this nature without considering the impact that it would have on others and how those others might react to it. This seems to be where most of the crowd and I differ.
There's trying to give people more and then there's trying to commit commercial suicide. Surely you can see the BBC's dilemma?
Slashdot Mirror
More info, from Wikipedia's PS3 page:
On March 20, 2007 Sony released a compatibility list; 1,782 of the 2,451 PS2 games (72%) released in Europe had noticeable issues, minor issues or no known issues, with the remainder being incompatible with the console.
As I understand it, the European PS3's only had software emulation. So, by Sony's own admission, backwards compatibility is at 72 percent, and may actually be even lower than that.
If I had any Sony stock I would have sold it a long time ago. These guys are finding new lows of stupidity every other day.
Again, it's not me missing the point here. If you have a TV and it's not actively receiving a signal from a source such as an aerial, a Sky box or a cable TV connection then you do not need a TV licence.
Once more, I will suggest that you ask the TV licensing people themselves if you don't believe me. Their own website spells it out pretty clearly, and others have linked to it and quoted the relevant sections, but if you still doubt me, those others, and the TV licensing website then I suggest you do what I've said at least twice before: ring them up and ask them.
I won't hold my breath waiting for the apology.
Here, as I understand it, is the situation. Hopefully, if I get anything wrong someone will correct me...
Backwards compatibility goes down with the newer 80GB US models.
As others have pointed out, the newer systems lack an in-built Emotion Engine chip, so they rely on software emulation rather than hardware emulation.
The emulation is decent, but it's far from perfect. Sony themselves quote a figure of 88 percent compatibility with the software emulation rather than 100 percent with the hardware emulation.
And, even amongst those 88 percent of titles that work there are some glitches: it's not the case that 88 percent of titles work perfectly while 12 percent have some problems or won't run, rather it's the case that 12 percent won't run at all and 88 percent will run to some degree.
You can read that many ways, but to me it seems to suggest that 88 percent is a marketing person's figure more than anything else: if a game won't get past a fixed point, it has audio or visual glitches all over the place, or if it falls over all the time then you're stretching things if you consider that game in your 88 percent.
Of course, Sony isn't exactly advertising the fact that the newer 80GB models aren't as backwardly compatible as their predecessors. Granted, it won't matter to everyone, but it will matter to some, and those people won't thank Sony for their penny-pinching and shortsightedness.
I don't know what the hell is going on with Sony. When it came to the original PlayStation they ran a flawless campaign and sucked millions of new users into the console market. With the PS2 they didn't put a foot wrong and cleaned up again. But with the PS3 it seems like they've decided to see how much they can piss away the goodwill generated by their previous two generations and opted for one boneheaded move after another.
If they're not careful they're going to end up as yet another sorry story on fuckedcompany.com.
...and local government in the state of Indiana isn't one of them.
This is ridiculous. A $3.8 billion expansion and they can't afford to clean up the mess that they're creating?
At which point will the Indiana legislators start realising that their duty is to all the people of Indiana, not just the few that work for BP?
I bet if you asked people if they would want their laws bent or even waived to allow a polluter to pollute their water even more that 99 percent of them would say no. So how the hell does the Indiana Department of Environmental Management have the balls to try to justify and defend their decision?
What's next? Indiana cops giving drug dealers the green light to push crack in schools?
Are you really this stupid?
1. Buy TV.
2. Do not connect the TV to an aerial or any other tuning device.
3. Use TV to watch DVDs, play console games, etc.
4. If they ask about your TV licence, tell TV licencing that you're not receiving a TV signal.
Is this really that hard for you to comprehend?
Not that it's relevant to your inability to tell the truth but, no, I do not agree with the idea of OS lock-in, and, yes, I do have a TV licence.
Now, do you still want to carry on claiming that the BBC shows 12 minutes of ads per hour?
Do you work for Sky or something? It would at least explain why you're spouting total rubbish.
A typical hour of BBC programming might have one or two 30 second trailers for upcoming programmes in it, and these trailers will be shown in the intervals between programmes: they certainly won't ever interrupt them.
There is no way that you can ever claim that there is a 24 minute programme followed by 6 minutes of ads, followed by another 24 minute programme and then another 6 minutes of ads.
Your claim that "[the BBC's] 'TV' hour is still 48 minutes" is complete and utter rubbish.
Either you're lying through your teeth or your completely clueless. Either way, I wish you'd stop making such ridiculous comments because they add nothing to the debate.
Look, it's simple. If you receive TV broadcasts over the airwaves, whether by terrestrial signal, satellite or cable, then you'll need a TV licence.
But if you have a TV and don't receive any such signal - for example, if you have a TV and only have it hooked up to your DVD player and use it just to watch DVDs - then you don't need a TV licence.
Don't want to take my word for it? Phone them up yourself, ask them and they'll tell you.
Wrong. If you inform the TV licence personnel that you're not receiving a TV signal then they'll tell you that you don't need a licence.
I can point to two friends who've both done so as evidence.
If you don't believe me, ring up the licensing people yourself and ask them.
Wrong.
If you have a TV that isn't receiving either an analogue or digital TV signal then you don't need a TV licence.
For example, if you have a TV and it's only connected to your DVD player or your games console then you don't need a TV licence.
You cannot take money from people then bar them from the purpose of that licence - this is definitely MS driven with the BBC in cahoots with them (remember, the BBC is a very similar monopoly like MS and allowed to be by the Politicians 'in hand').
Where to start...
Firstly, the BBC has a charter that it must abide by. While I, like you, would like to see the BBC develop its online content across as many platforms as possible (including MacOS and Linux) I think it's important to realise that making content available to everybody on every platform is not in the charter.
If the BBC were to roll out content that required a certain platform or (even platforms) then it wouldn't be in breach of its charter: if I wanted to access the content on BeOS, or OS/2, I don't have the "right" to demand that the BBC makes it happen.
While I have no doubt that it will eventually make content available on the big three (Windows, MacOS, Linux) there's nothing to stop the BBC making its first steps on one of the platforms only.
You'll notice that the BBC has several DAB-only radio stations. Well, just because I don't have a DAB radio, I'm not entitled to demand that those radio stations are made available to me via the analogue airwaves, am I?
Secondly, the BBC is not a monopoly. There are dozens of other TV broadcasters in the UK, dozens of other radio broadcasters and hundreds of news websites. The BBC may be the only one of them to benefit from the TV licence but it's not a monopoly.
Interesting question.
If I look over your garden fence and see that you're building a giant widget and then you notice and offer me a tour of your giant widget do you have any legal recourse if I decide that I like the idea of having my own giant widget and then make one for myself?
My gut instinct in that scenario is that you're screwed, unless you got any form of agreement from me before you showed me it. No agreement, no case.
Is my copying your idea without at least getting your permission ethical? I'd say no but others would disagree. Is it legal? Well, if you didn't get me to sign anything then, unfortunately for you, the answer is probably yes.
OK, I realise that people aren't being paid to submit their stories but surely the editors are being paid to edit them?
Shouldn't they at least be reading the submissions (titles and story) and then any linked articles as well to make sure that they've been accurately summarised (not to mention relevant)?
It seems the Firehose is catching most dupes (we get the occasional one but not 2-4 a day as we did a couple of years back) but typos, innacurate headlines, poorly worded summaries and even innacurate stories (such as this one) still abound.
Just looking at the current frontpage, I can see several stories that either have titles or summaries that need editing:
Facebook in Court : the summary, which fails to tell us that the legal fight has been going on for years, and implies that it's only been started now because of greed.
Gadgets Have Taken Over For Our Brains : the summary, which references Trinity College, but not which Trinity College. Is it the one in London, Cambridge, Washington DC, Toronto, Carmarthen, Florida, Melbourne...? No, it's the one in Dublin? So tell us.
Linux Creator Calls GPLv3 Authors 'Hypocrites' : Ridiculous story that takes quotes out of context to sensationalise the issue.
Gigabyte N680SLI-DQ6 - A Mother Of A Motherboard : At last! A motherboard with three full-length PCI Express x16 slots! Except it only has two.
CEO Questionably Used Pseudonym to Post Online : An ambiguous if not misleading headline. Read the comments for more, but one thing that's not in question is that he used a pseudonym.
One Laptop Per Child and Intel Join Forces : Another ambiguous title, which seems to imply a joint venture. As Intel has joined the OLPC project it would have been more accurate for the title to simply say "Intel joins OLPC Project".
Call me a pedant if you want to but there are editors for a reason, so they should edit. Their job isn't that hard, and now they even have people looking at the Firehose helping them out, so why are we still getting so many poor or poorly-presented stories?
I expect one of three things to happen:
1. The second generation of OLPC units will ship with Intel inside.
2. Intel will suck as much information as it can out of the OLPC project before going its own way again.
3. Intel will stay onboard at OLPC but do its best to bog the project down while pushing its competing solutions to the developing world.
None of those scenarios particularly appeal to me, but if I had to choose between them I'd go for the first one.
I get the feeling that I'm seriously being trolled now. Previously (in other conversations) you seemed to reserve your concern about the BBC's reliance on a single platform and you seemed to recognise the need for some sort of practical rights management, yet now your stance seems to have changed from one of concern solely about OS lock-in to one of encryption and rights management.
However, I'm prepared to give you the benefit of the doubt and assume that your previous posts didn't explicitly state your position and that your apparent shift is because you are now providing clarity, rather than arguing for the sake of arguing alone.
(I have to admit though, that I do find it strange that you hammer on about this point when almost every interested party, including the OSC themselves, concede that some sort of DRM mechanism is an avoidable price that has to be paid for the online release of the BBC archive.)
As I've said on more than one occasion, and you yourself have freely admitted, restriction by IP address alone is not a restriction at all. So, please, what practical solution do you have of stopping the content being proxied to the whole world?
And before you suggest it, a blacklist of proxy addresses isn't a practical solution: you know as well as I do that as soon as you block one proxy another would spring up in its place.
So, solution, please?
Maybe because they recognise, as you fail to do, that their commercial partners wouldn't take DRM-free downloads lying down, and that such an option would be commercial suicide?
Adding any sort of encryption to DVB broadcasts would be impossible: that genie is already out of the bottle and to put it back would be incredibly prohibitive both financially and logistically. Surely you recognise that?
One aspect that should be clarified here: we're not just talking about streamed content of current programming, we're talking about the entire BBC archive. Unless you know different, that's not currently available on demand via DVB.
Can you not appreciate why the BBC would want to restrict that content to licence payers only and why it might choose an approach that gives it as much certainty as possible that that content doesn't become openly available to everybody everywhere?
Look, I'm all for DRM-free content, but I'm also for a practical, real-world solutions that won't bring the BBC to its knees. Do you have a DRM-free solution that will avoid the BBC potentially being dragged into and pummelled in court by dozens if not hundreds of content creators? If so, I'd like to hear them.
I'm sorry but clearly either there is some aspect of the operation of a proxy server, and the consequences that one would have on an IP-only based restriction method, that either I've failed to clearly spell out or that you don't understand.
As I'm not a mind reader and as I don't want to be rude I'll assume that it's the former. My apologies. Perhaps you could ask one of your colleagues at Opendium for a clearer picture than the one that I've attempted to paint?
Perhaps they could also join the dots for you and explain how P2P, or more precisely, the fear of it, figures into the whole equation. Here's a small hint: without it, do you really think that content creators would worry about DRM?
The problem is simply that if you want to restrict your audience to the UK only then IP addresses alone aren't an answer. Proxies alone make using an IP-based restriction ineffective, hence the need to look for another solution.
There's no single, make-everybody-happy option. I wish there was, but there isn't.
We all know from past news stories that, according to RIAA/MPAA, having 4 32-speed CD burners actually equates to having 128 CD burners, so...
1. Population of the USA: 295,734,134 (July 2005 est. (CIA World Factbook)).
2. Population of Canada: 32,805,041 (July 2005 est. (CIA World Factbook)).
3. Ratio of Canadians to Americans: 1:9.015.
Therefore, according to standard RIAA/MPAA accounting practices, every act of Canadian piracy equates to over 9 acts of American piracy.
Now you know why they're so damned worried about Canadian file sharing...
one of these days they are going to run out of feet.. and have to start on the knee caps
I think we're past that point. There are more than a few companies out there that seem to have shot themselves in the crotch.
(C.f Enron, Worldcom, Arthur Andersen for recent examples.)
I think I recall reading that the BBC is committed to making its entire archive available online without any time limitations. Clearly, if that's the case then the affect on DVD sales (at least in the UK) isn't a consideration.
From what I can see, the key consideration seems to be to make the archive available to it's customers (UK TV licence payers) and nobody else. Hence the need for some sort of rights management.
It's not an ideal world solution but it is a pragmatic one.
Come on, you know the answers to these questions...
The BBC's DVB streams are broadcast to the UK only, not to the world, and hence there's no need for any form of encryption. The limited overspill that there is is accepted as being beyond the BBC's control. Indeed, the BBC has actually done everything possible to limit it, and this has been well documented.
As I seem to have said at least twice before, the BBC doesn't act in isolation. In making the decision to make its archive available online I'm sure it has consulted its business partners and attempted to address the (natural) concerns that they might have about having this content made available online. Whether you consider it unnecessary or not, I'm sure that these partners would consider it necessary to stop the archive from disrupting their own interests.
Whereas you and others might not see a great distinction between 1) making DRM-free content over IP to the UK only that is then accessed from anywhere else in the world by proxy servers; and 2) a recording made via DVB and then being posted on P2P networks by UK uploaders; there is indeed a difference.
In the first case, the BBC leaves itself vulnerable to the charge that it's carelessly given away back door access to the content to anybody, anywhere. At the very least this would damage its business relationships with overseas broadcasters and content creators, and it it's not a stretch to imagine that it might even lead to legal action being taken. In the second case, however, the BBC can at least claim that it's been just as much a victim of P2P distribution as any other broadcaster.
Don't get me wrong. I'm a BBC licence fee payer and I want to access the BBC's content regardless of my choice of OS. And, ideally, I want those files to be playable on any media player. However, I recognise the BBC's need to make sure that it doesn't step on any toes as it treads into new territory and that, ultimately, getting something is better than getting nothing.
Idealism is a great thing. But a healthy dose of pragmatism isn't exactly a bad thing either.
Yes, I'm very aware of it, thanks for asking.
I'm also very aware that we live in a world where the BBC cannot make the decision to release online downloadable content of this nature without considering the impact that it would have on others and how those others might react to it. This seems to be where most of the crowd and I differ.
There's trying to give people more and then there's trying to commit commercial suicide. Surely you can see the BBC's dilemma?
Your proposal is to go to trial against every other broadcaster with which the BBC is currently in partnership and then hope for the best?
Really?
VMWare has always been targeting the Linux and Windows server markets. Abandoning AMD would be a shotgun to the foot.
If history has taught us one thing it's that you should never underestimate the ability of companies to shoot themselves in the foot.