[ubuntu-uk] BBC won't support Linux

[Rowan Berkeley]

I have an awful lot of short music videos (non-interactive), I mean
scores and scores of them, which I downloaded from YouTube in flash
format and converted to .mp4 format. I felt that this would be a more
versatile format for video jukebox type use on unknown machines in the
future (like my eleven thousand plus .mp3 music files, I keep them on an
external hard drive) -- but I could have been completely wrong.

On Mon, 2009-03-16 at 18:40 +0000, Alan Pope wrote:
> 2009/3/15 Matthew Macdonald-Wallace <matthew at truthisfreedom.org.uk>:
> > http://www.theregister.co.uk/2008/11/10/highfield_quits_kangaroo/
> >
> > Ashley Highfield (Ex-BBC Iplayer boss) now works for MS.  I seem to
> > recall that the latest appointee of the BBC's media division is an ex
> > MS UK employee.
> >
> 
> I wonder how many potential recruits to that role, at that level, with
> the necessary experience would also fall into the group "have once
> worked at Microsoft".
> 
> > If you use Flash (or AIR which seems to run perfectly on Ubuntu for
> > iPlayer and Google Analytics) then cross-platform gaming should be easy.
> >
> 
> As a parent I can testify that the _vast_ majority of kids content on
> the BBC website is indeed already in various versions of flash. Some
> older video is real format but that's gone out of fashion of late.
> 
> Of course neither of those platforms are open, but then if you're
> downloading a closed source game from bbc.co.uk, all bets are off in
> terms of 'I only want free software on my computers'. Fail at multiple
> levels there.
> 
> What the BBC _should_ be doing of course is commissioning new Free
> software projects. Rather than having great swathes of code on their
> site that nobody can improve upon, and will eventually die off and
> become unusable when the various versions of flash, air, real (and so
> on) are no longer supported by the vendors.
> 
> Even if the games were developed as closed source but cross platform
> that would be a step in the right direction, although not far enough.
> Games such as "World of Goo", "Darwinia", "DEFCON: Everybody Dies" and
> simpler games such as "Neverball" show that it is possible to create
> compelling cross platform games which don't require the budget of
> EA/Warner/Sony etc to do it.
> 
> Cheers,
> Al.
>