[Klug-general] Re: Mark Shuttleworth interview

[Alan at COMM-TECH]

Publishing media in a proprietary format is a bit like restricting sales 
thereof to the first-class cabin, only those who can afford to be there, 
have blagged a ticket, or bribed a steward, can only get access to it.

The fact that its is hackable to get xine working on wmv is not relevant 
here. We have sold dozens of computers running Linux this year, and I 
can be sure that only a few of those users are at this point confident 
enough to take a screwdriver to their mozilla setup..

All you KLuggers can *afford* to use Windows, right?  ;)  ...And did you 
pay 99 quid at the Online XPee shoppe, or did you perhaps buy your copy 
legit and shrinkwrapped from PCWorld? Did it come bundled with your 699 
quid PC? My point is that many many folk around the world are being 
criminalised by the inability to afford Windows software. Publishers 
with a public service remit like channel should not participate in that.

I dont think that its occurred to the programmers at channel 4 to 
publish media in any other format than what is handed to them (they are 
not the BBC remember). They need to be encouraged to put pressure on 
their own organisation to do so and theres a "Have Your Say" bit where 
we might be able to contribute your comments about open standards, 
software being affordable to all etc. Who knows, maybe if enough of us 
voice the problem someone there will try to address the issue

Alan
======================================
Colin_The_Technician wrote:
> Oh my god, I can't believe you guys can't see the good in this story
> and focus on bashing CH4 because they don't cater for the small
> percentage of Linux users.  Face facts guys over 90% of the world uses
> Windows so it isn't surprising that CH4 has a Windows centric media
> delivery method, like most of the internet.
>
> I would have hoped people would have focused on the fact that Linux
> and Ubuntu were mentioned on mainstream media. Ok more4 probably ain't
> mainstream, but it is good it is getting mentioned. And just hopefully
> one of those Windows users watching online will think about using
> Linux and Ubuntu and maybe even look for a local lug.
>
> Lets hope they aren't put off by the radical Linux users and comments.
> I am not having a go at you guys but the Linux community on the
> whole.
>
> I like and use Windows, I also like Linux too.
>
> On 8/10/06, Alan Pope <alan at popey.com> wrote:
>> On Thu, Aug 10, 2006 at 08:52:21AM +0100, Peter Childs wrote:
>> > On 09/08/06, Colin_The_Technician <binarysignal at gmail.com> wrote:
>> > >A very short but interesting news item More4 news did on Mark
>> > >Shuttleworth and Ubuntu.
>> > >http://www.channel4.com/more4/news/news-opinion-feature.jsp?id=350
>> > >
>> > >Thought KLUG members would find this interesting if they haven't
>> > >already seen it.
>> > >
>> >
>> > Oh dear seams we need windows to watch that... Groan
>> >
>>
>> yeah, it won't even play nice in firefox or ie under wine :(
>>
>> Channel 4 can be such dumbasses sometimes. When The IT Crowd first aired
>> they made it available for download in a nice easy to view video, 
>> then as
>> soon as it became popular they made sure it was only viewable on crappy
>> proprietary operating systems.
>>
>> Short sighted fools.
>>
>> Cheers,
>> Al.
>>
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>
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