Mark Kent <mark.kent@xxxxxxxxxxx> espoused:
> [H]omer <spam@xxxxxxx> espoused:
>> Verily I say unto thee, that Tappit Hen spake thusly:
>>
>>> As you quoted the article I thought you would have read it. How does
>>> £5.7 million become £131 million? The £131 million covers bandwidth
>>> costs for providing the service, data storage, rights costs, ... over
>>> a 5 year period (26.2 million / year). These costs would apply no
>>> matter what client the BBC chose.
>>
>> iPlayer is not just software, it is a service, therefore saying that
>> "iPlayer cost 131 Million" *is* correct according to their own figures.
>> To claim otherwise is just nit-picking. As to your assumption that it
>> would have cost the same regardless of which route the BBC chose, well
>> you are assuming that the BBC's figures are accurate and truthful, which
>> IMHO they are not. The BBC has already lied to parliament over iPlayer's
>> capabilities and costs, what makes you think that any other claims they
>> make are any more truthful?
>>
>> For one thing, where is the /specific/ breakdown of precisely how much
>> the BBC has paid Microsoft?
>>
>> I have never seriously claimed, nor do I pretend to know, what
>> proportion of that 131 Million was actually paid to Microsoft. That
>> specific detail is irrelevant, although it would be very interesting to
>> know for a fact, should the BBC ever decide to comply with their charter
>> of full accountability.
>>
>>> I'm as opposed to the MSBBC iplayer as both you and Mark are but
>>> lying isn't the way to win your argument.
>>
>> I'm not lying, and there is no argument. The BBC wasted 131 Million
>> pounds of taxpayers money (license fee) on a solution that depended on
>> Microsoft's encumbered technology, and further shackled users of that
>> service to Microsoft's products. Fact.
>>
>> It wasn't until protests spurred a public enquiry that the BBC finally
>> capitulated and provided a Flash based streaming service ... a service
>> that is now more popular than Microsoft's non-interoperable solution by
>> a factor of 8:1. Fact.
>>
>> It is also interesting to note, that these streams are not encrypted
>> (and can be ripped), which raises the question of the BBC's claim, that
>> their "content providers" insistence that all content must be
>> "protected" with DRM was intractable. Obviously *that* was a lie too.
>>
>> The Microsoft/BBC iPlayer has been in development for *years*,
>> presumably accounting for a significant proportion of that 131 Million,
>> and yet the streaming service (which is more popular) only took a few
>> weeks to implement, again ... presumably at a much lower cost.
>>
>> The BBC have wasted taxpayers money, they've lied repeatedly, they've
>> become completely overrun by ex-Microsoft personnel, and they have
>> forged extremely unhealthy relationship with Microsoft that is
>> anti-competitive, non-transparent, and in violation of their own
>> charter, since they are no longer acting in the best interests of
>> license fee payers, but rather in the interests of their new found
>> "business partner".
>>
>> Why you would be less concerned with that corruption, and more concerned
>> with the specifics of how much the MSBBC has conned out of the British
>> taxpayers, I have no idea.
>>
>> Yes, there are plenty of lies being expounded in this fiasco, but
>> they're not coming from /me/.
>>
>
> Absolutely. These figures have been published by the Telegraph, and the
> BBC DG said to MPs "more than £20 million" but were not able to say how
> much... The Telegraph, a model of reliable, right-wing journalism, the
> kind which is strongly in favour of the BBC outsourcing everything, and
> is the UK's most pro-US newspaper, reports £120-£130 million.
>
> Rights usage costs do not apply to the Dirac codec on Linux, so it
> is a lie to say that they do. The whole point of its development was
> to avoid the wastage of millions of £s of taxpayer's money with eg.,
> Microsoft or some other foreign or domestic company. Therefore, the
> argument that such costs will always apply is quite simply totally
> untrue.
>
> The only "unchangeable" here would be for material bought-in from external
> producers, as per the drive by the government. If the cost of reshowing
> this, mostly foreign, material is more than a tiny proportion of these
> costs, then the answer is simple, don't show it.
>
Oh yeah, I forgot to mention that they are *way* above the EU limit for
going to open tender with respect to any such service, which I think is
something like Euros 100,000, therefore, it seems quite likely that the
law was broken during this whole process, too. I wonder who will be
held to account for this appalling waste of *my* money!
--
| Mark Kent -- mark at ellandroad dot demon dot co dot uk |
| Cola faq: http://www.faqs.org/faqs/linux/advocacy/faq-and-primer/ |
| Cola trolls: http://colatrolls.blogspot.com/ |
| My (new) blog: http://www.thereisnomagic.org |
|
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