splee.blog

This post started out as a comment on a post about some of the BBC’s offerings being made available on iTunes. Unfortunately the blog’s commenting system kept giving me errors when I was trying to comment, I suspect because my comment was rather lengthy, so I decided to post it here.

I noticed the “BBC Worldwide - programmes just added” link in the iTunes store just yesterday and immediately started buying episodes of Spooks as I had missed the series when it was on TV. Combined the episodes of season 4 of Lost available the day after they’ve aired on Sky One on a Sunday, this is the first time I’ve actually felt like buying any TV content via the iTunes store since the selection of shows available to us in the UK is, quite frankly, dismal. This has also stayed my hand when considering buying myself an Apple TV unit. There’s just not enough viable content available on our poor, neglected island to make me bite at that hook.

Rory Cellan-Jones says:

It is the first time the BBC has asked UK viewers to pay to download content, and it will be interesting to see how they react. Millions have been happy to pay for DVDs of series like Little Britain - but will they react differently when they are asked to shell out for something they can’t stick on a shelf?

I think the entertainment industry really underestimates their consumers and their willingness to pass over their hard earned cash for entertainment, even when it’s not packaged in a way that lets you hold it in your hands. A DVD is simply a means of transporting the data contained therein, with today’s online society why would you need a DVD when the internet is beginning to be a perfectly good transportation medium? The reason people are still buying DVD’s and CD’s more than buying media online is because buying online is difficult due to the myriad of DRM issues in the industry. Only when there is no DRM do things improve. At the moment, the majority of media without DRM is pirated though.

Yes, you can see all these BBC offerings on TV. Yes, you could hear your favourite music on the radio. The problem is, you’re not able to watch them when or where you want to. You’re bound by the broadcaster’s schedule that may or may not mesh with your own, and you’re forced to use a specific piece of equipment to do so.

I would (and frequently do) pay a reasonable price for my entertainment if it means I can enjoy it as often as I want, on whichever platform I want, without any restrictions. And that, right there, seems to be the painful bit for the entertainment industry: Without Restrictions

If I’m paying for my entertainment directly, I don’t want to be told that it won’t work on platform_01 or player_03 because “we, the publishers, don’t want it to”. Real, documented technical reasons are fine, if not slightly annoying, but they’re excusable.

DRM is, in my opinion, driving piracy as people simply do not want to have artificial restrictions placed on their media. The problem is that the industry is seeing the issue in reverse. They see the fact that media can be copied and distributed at a fantastic rate as a downside. They see people transferring pirated copies and think “these guys are cutting into our margins”! This is entirely the wrong way of looking at it, and the industry needs to catch up. Using current technology you can distribute your media at a small price to an unreasonably large audience across the world with sinfully minimal overheads in the grand scheme of things. Small price - smaller overhead + large audience = large profits.

Obviously I’m putting a lot of faith in humanity here, but there will always be people who will just share their media and allow people who want to spend time looking for it to download it. To treat every single one of your consumers as if they are potential thieves does not make consumers. Perhaps, instead of warnings about piracy, notes of thanks for supporting artists should be displayed.

Maybe I’m being far too optimistic here, dreaming of a utopian society where the majority are honest and don’t want their entertainment to stop, paying fair dues for a good product; I don’t think that the world is that bad though. I still believe there’s a legitimate profit to be made from the honest individuals without resorting to excluding them based on the platform they choose to consume their media.

Current technology allows people to pirate material easier than ever before but the majority of the population would, I think, rather pay to get their media directly from the source to get their entertainment fix. Anyone I know who has downloaded media has done it because they couldn’t get hold of it from the publishing source, the publishing source penalised them for not being on a particular platform or the price of the media was far too high to make them get out their wallet.

The quicker the big media companies realise this, and I think they are starting to with a new generation of high level management starting to filter through the rank and file, the better.

The Christmas season for me this year has, so far, been a complete non-event. I’m struggling to find that “Christmas Spirit” stuff that I’ve had in abundance in previous years (I’m guessing Whiskey doesn’t quite count).

I’ve been trying to decide what it is that’s changed between this year and last. This time last year I had regressed to a little kid and was excited to be going out and getting presents for the family, helping with the food shopping ready for the day itself and generally being “Christmas-y”.

This year, the scenario is utterly different. Every time I hear a carol or one of the accursed tunes that they play to death every year I want to throttle someone and I’m overwhelmed by a complete lack of interest in Christmas Day.

Personally, I think it’s the crass commercialism that has tainted me this year. It’s been present for many years, but this year it’s really sunk in. Oh well, maybe I won’t be such a cynic next year.

I seem to go through these bouts of sleeplessness about once every 2 months, and I’m starting to get tired (yuk yuk) of it. I cannot seem to pinpoint the reason for it either which just exacerbates the problem. Being able to pin a reason on something is 90% of the battle in getting it fixed, at least for me.

Unfortunately, when these little episodes of insomnia come around again, it means that I’m late for work, irritable, and have difficulty concentrating. Oh, and a combination of tiredness and looking at a screen makes my eyes hurt.

All in all, not being able to sleep is rubbish so I decided today that I wasn’t going to take this lying down (dearie me, they’re flowing thick and fast today!) and that I’d be proactive and… stuff.

Whilst being all proactive and preppy in my dream-like state this morning I found 30 simple tips to help you get to sleep. Most of these tips are common sense, such as avoid naps and keep regular bedtime hours.

Some however are a little odd like the suggestgion to Sleep with your head facing North, or just plain strange like “Quiet Ears“.

I will, however, be trying each and every one of these techniques over the next few days in varing combinations. Who knows, all this plotting and scheming to try and sleep may make me tired enough to go out like a light once I actually get in bed!

Oh my word, I’m so glad we had air-con installed at the office over the winter period. The building I work in was, I’m sure, designed in such a way as to bake it’s occupants and provide the architect with an evil chuckle every time he drove by.

Of course, since the inauguration of the new system, the building temperature hasn’t been an issue but the temperature outside didn’t make you think about air-con at all. It just sat, quietly humming in the background while taking the lions share of the moisture and heat out of the air.

Now the weather has turned itself up a notch or two you can really tell just how well it’s regulating the temperature. When I walked out of the office to go and get my lunch I was confronted by a wall of heat.

It reminded me very much of when I was a little tike and the family went to Orlando, Florida for our summer hols. Walking out of the airport was like walking into a massive oven. I remember literally gasping for breath at the sudden temperature change as my lungs screamed “ow, ow it’s hot”!

On the downside, I have noticed that my skin is drier, and I’ve heard that air-con can do this. However, slightly dry skin is a) a girlie thing to be worried about and b) not in the slightest a reason to sit in the swealtering heat getting hot, bothered and sweaty for the entire day.

If it means Nivea for Men get more money out of me I’ll gladly pay the price.

Microsoft, in their usual “must-have-fingers-in-far-too-many-pies” fashion, are re-inventing Bit-Torrent. Guess why?

No, go on, guess.

That’s right, DRM (Digital Rights Management). While this is not a bad thing per se, I see it as a bad thing when MS are in charge of it. Instantly I can foresee sky-high fees and rediculously complicated licencing schemes to milk the largest possible amount of money from publishers and, as a knock on effect, us users. I would have absolutely no objection if it were almost any other company, but MS have a habit of being greedy.

In my opinion, if MS were less greedy with ALL of their products they would be seen in a better light. There would be less piracy if Windows XP cost half of what it does currently. Lets face it, it’s not like throughput is an issue.

Another thing I can’t understand is Microsoft’s utterly irriversable stance to Open Source. With a userbase like Microsoft’s, Open Source becomes an amazingly viable business model. They could Open Source the next version of windows and charge for support and for corporate licencing, as many businesses want accountability. Businesses will happily pay for support by the software vendor so when a bug occurs it can be delt with by Microsoft themselves quickly and the fix is then available to the masses.

You would also have thousands, if not hundreds of thousands, of skilled programmers with their beady eyes on the code to help fix and improve the code as they need with the bonus that these changes can go back to the main codebase and benefit everyone.

The problem would be in Microsoft changing their programming practices and entire company structure. Of course a shift such as this could not happen over night. It would take years of change to get to the point where anything coming out of Redmond could be considered open source, but it can happen. Sun have done it; Solaris is now open source and, from what I can gather, is flourishing. MySQL, RedHat and SuSe (amongst others) are all evidence that companies can do well from Open Source products and end up with better products because of it.

Here’s to hoping that Microsoft see the light. I’m not holding my breath.

As many of you know, in addition to being a programmer, I’m responsible for the technical support for the company I work at so I have to deal with people’s problems on a day by day basis. Due to my background in support and a good knowledge of linux and all the flavours of Windows, I tend to get involved in helping people in whatever communities I’m a part of, be that my web host’s forums or the WordPress IRC channel.

As a result I tend to get frustrated at people who scream for help as if they’re owed it, as if they are the most important person on the boards and have the most pressing problem. You can spot these people a mile away, especially on forums. They post a title with ALL CAPS, excessive punctuation(!!!?!!?!?!) and general nonsense.

The post that goes with that title is not normally helpful either. Comments such as “I CANT MAKE DATABASE WORK IN MYSQL PLEASE HELP NO USER SET UP HOW TO DO IT?!!!!?/?1!!” are commonplace. I’ve decided that these posters must have one of the rare (or not so rare it seems) keyboards which have only exclamation marks and question marks for punctuation along with a sticky shift key because it can’t really be that hard to type a proper sentence .

Presentation and grammar aside, the content is lamentable too. The person above simply wishes to be spoonfed their information. If they had half a brain they would seek out the documentation first. I happen to know that the MySQL documentation is frighteningly easy to search and the examples for creating a user are clear and concise. Failing that, simply googleing (or [insert search engine here]ing) for the same information yeilds hundreds of results, almost all of which contain examples of creating a user in MySQL.

Another prime example of people just being plain ignorant is prevailent on the forums for my web host. My web host offers a Virtual Server running a choice of linux distros. You have root access and you can install whatever you want. The FAQ clearly states that you should have some techinical understanding of server administration. You can even get a free 7 day trial to see exactly what you are dealing with. On the forums there are literally dozens of posts with people posting comments like the following:

I have searched the forums and cant find any info on setting up postfix. Im in a rush to set this thing up as my current ISP have gone bankrupt - so frustrating as I just want the thing to work and not have to spend all week pissing around with command lines.

Well, sorry pal, you’re using the wrong service. It’s like buying a bus and then complaining to the manufacturer that you don’t know how to drive it and you only needed a small car, and they should fix it now. Either ditch the bus and buy a car or damn well learn to drive the bus.

What I’m saying is this: If you’re going to ask a question about a service, piece of software or piece of hardware, follow a few fundamental rules:

1. Have a look for the solution(s) yourself first. You’ll not learn anything if you just demand the solutions from someone else.
2. Type legible sentences with helpful information, i.e. what you’re trying to achive, how you know it’s not working and any errors or relevant information
3. Be patient. You are not the center of the universe. You may just have to wait for an answer.

For me, that’s all you really need to do. I’d be happy if people did those three simple things.

This post was inspired by the Lycos VDS Forums and Ryan.

Further Reading: OMG!!11one!! I need teh help! - Flash with sound. Mute if you’re at work ;) How To Ask Questions The Smart Way