June 2009
40 posts
3 tags
Thoughts on broadcast metadata XML
I’ve been looking at various schemata for delivering metadata about broadcasters, channels and productions in some form that’s both easy for software to consume and relatively easy to translate into a human-readable form.
There are two major sets of specifications: TV-Anytime, and the BBC’s Programmes Ontology.
TV-Anytime is—or rather, was—relatively comprehensive, but hasn’t...
1 tag
#protip - Documents
PDF is not a data interchange format. It’s a document publishing format.
HTML is only a data interchange format if done properly. This happens occasionally; the rest of the time, it’s little better than PDF.
Word and Excel documents are neither data interchange formats nor document publishing formats by preference.
Specifications should, by definition, be as accessible as possible....
1 tag
Video
This is incredibly cool. Be sure to read the blurb, too.
3 tags
Consumer Credit and Mobile Phone Contracts...
I’ve had further clarification from the Office of Fair Trading. Essentially, the position is:—
If a contract (or parts of it) are regulated credit governed by the act, then the conditions imposed by the act are non-negotiable. Failure to comply with the act “renders the agreement unenforceable without an order of the court”. Specifically, the “pre-contract information” (as I’ve...
5 tags
Digital Britain Report: Chapter 4
Chapter 4: Creative Industries in the Digital World
AMBITION: TO MAKE THE UK ONE OF THE WORLD’S MAIN CREATIVE CAPITALS
The UK is well-situated, geographically, legally, and socially, for playing host to a vibrant creative industry.
Creative industries are growing faster than other sectors.
New technologies bring about (and require) new models and strategies.
There were a number of policy...
5 tags
That 70% figure
(Ahead of continuing coverage on the report)
If you believe the headlines, you’ll think that the Digital Britain report requires ISPs to cut down filesharing by 70%, based on the content industry’s estimates of how much it goes on.
Except it doesn’t.
It states that, essentially, a programme of sending out notifications to those individuals identified must have a 70% success rate....
4 tags
H.264 and Theora
Interesting write-up from Maik Merten on H.264 versus Theora, when encoding cost is taken into account (that is, when you have a lot of video to encode).
I would have thought that hardware encoders would be utilised in any large-scale setup, rendering this a little moot, but perhaps I’m wrong.
3 tags
More on TV show piracy
From Jens Ayton via Twitter, regarding Stephen Garrett’s claims:
Swedish TV stations’ programme buyers claim the opposite, but their lawyers don’t agree.
Mind you, in the long term the advert break revenue model seems pretty doomed. Hello, even more product placement.
BTW, the argument I’ve seen from Swedish show buyers is that the fewish who download stuff that hasn’t aired yet...
4 tags
A response to Digital Britain from Feargal Sharkey
Our members cannot continue to innovate and invest in the shadow of an illegal peer-to-peer ecosystem. We need the cooperation of all ISPs.
Honestly, good luck with that.
You see, piracy, as defined by the music industry, has existed for decades. Just as technology has made it easier for the industry to operate, it’s also made it easier for individuals to share things without...
5 tags
Stephen Garrett, Kudos
Taking a break from Digital Britain.
Stephen Garrett talks about why piracy will put him out of business
What’s not clear from the headline, or from the rhetoric surrounding the meat of it all is that what his problem is actually with is downloading in favour of buying DVDs (and there is an awful lot of rhetoric).
Which isn’t really the same as downloading because you missed it...
4 tags
Digital Britain Report: Chapter 3b
Chapter 3b: Radio: Going Digital
AMBITION: TO SECURE AND DELIVER A DIGITAL RADIO PLATFORM FOR THE
BENEFIT OF BROADCASTERS AND LISTENERS.
Radio remains important, even in the world of ubiquitous television and Internet.
Operating a digital radio is—compared to television, fixed– or mobile-telecoms—comparatively cheap.
The radio industry is worth about £1.1bn per year to the British...
3 tags
Digital Britain Report: Chapter 3a
Chapter 3a: A Competitive Digital Communications Infrastructure
AMBITION: TO STRENGTHEN AND MODERNISE THE COUNTRY’S
COMMUNICATIONS INFRASTRUCTURE, EQUIPPING THE UK TO COMPETE AND LEAD IN THE GLOBAL DIGITAL ECONOMY.
This is a lofty aim, especially when you consider how other countries (both within and outside of Europe) have managed the evolution of their communications infrastructure...
2 tags
Digital Britain Report: Chapter 2
Chapter 2: Being Digital
By “Being Digital”, the report means “interacting in some way with digital technologies”. It lists some of the benefits people see in not being complete technophobes and the use of technology in various sectors.
There’s a summary of the results of a survey which was conducted which found that people who have broadband have come to rely on it; that the consensus...
4 tags
Digital Britain: The Final Report
Today marked the publication of the Digital Britain Report, the final version of the interim report published a few months ago.
As you might expect, my aim here is to go through the report section-by-section, with a summary of the “action points” and a little commentary.
Frankly, reading the report is like pulling teeth, especially if you’re savvy in one of the areas covered by the report, but...
4 tags
Nottingham Police
This video (YouTube link) shows several officers from Nottingham Police in action.
It shows multiple uses of a Taser, while the arrestee was lying on the ground.
It also shows an officer punching the man, still, while he was lying on the ground.
Finally, it shows the officer who held the Taser roughly shoving a bystander who looked to be enquiring as to the wellbeing of the suspect but who...
3 tags
FTFiT
iTunes is the new QuickTime. It’s well beyond the point of redemption. Needs a full rewrite.
——Steve Streza on Twitter
Couldn’t agree more with this.
In the olden days, devices synchronised via iSync. You downloaded stuff with a web browser. iTunes was just about… tunes. Things worked better then.
Apple is rapidly heading towards the point where it needs to throw out iTunes...
3 tags
A perspective of DRM on TV broadcasts
Tip ’o the hat to Ars Technica:
Although it looks like the content owners have largely shifted to grudging acceptance, the EFF was happy to compare their current silence with the threats they made when pushing for the adoption of the broadcast flag. One MPAA representative suggested that premium content would be withheld from television, while a Viacom executive said that his company would...
4 tags
Fundamental laws of DRM
DRM makes it difficult for consumers—who lack time and patience—to do useful things with their content except in manner explicitly defined by somebody else.
In order to be able to consume DRM-protected content, you must have both the content itself and the digital keys to unlock it—you just need to know how to either put the two together.
DRM rarely presents a barrier for somebody with time and...
4 tags
Digital Britain continued
Paul Mison makes a good point in response to my post yesterday:
The report won’t mention upload speed either, which I expect will probably end up being, at most, 256kbps, although it may be as little as 128. That’s not enough to run a home MP3 stream from, say, and it makes uploading photos slow and video tedious. So much for the internet as a two-way medium.
Quite.
5 tags
Virgin Media’s MP3 subscription service
Executive summary here, from Rory Cellan-Jones at the BBC; deeper overview over at PaidContent.
Bullet points:—
It’s real MP3s, though no details of bitrate, or whether AAC will be available (apparently there are still people who have devices who can’t play MPEG 4 audio—weird but true).
The “top package” will cost “less than the price of two albums”. £15pcm?
Universal Music is...
3 tags
Thoughts on TV
What if:—
Access to iPlayer was contingent on holding a TV License (I’ve outlined how such a thing could work).
TV Licenses could be purchased by anyone, anywhere in the world, via the web.
Would there be a funding gap?
4 tags
Digital Britain
The final version of Lord Carter’s Digital Britain will be published on Tuesday. You would be forgiven for not knowing this.
Despite the Government’s talk of “engaging” “stakeholders”, the number of people who work in Internet-related businesses in the UK who know what the draft report says—let alone what the final version is likely to say—is tiny. Far from “Digital Britain” heralding a brave...
5 tags
The National Broadband Crisis
As a follow-up to my How fast is your Internet? piece the other day, let’s have a look at the reasons behind why our consumer-grade connectivity is in the state that it’s in.
First of all, contention.
Let’s peg 8 megabit ADSL as our benchmark: I know a lot of people have less than this, but as it’s the most commonly-advertised variant of ADSL, it makes for a good illustration.
If...
3 tags
The “Service Pack” white elephant
One criticism levelled at Apple over Snow Leopard is that it’s merely a service pack for Leopard.
While Apple is guilty of touting minor improvements as “features” when it advertises the total number of them on release day, it’s by no means alone in this, and Apple has been quite clear that a large proportion of Snow Leopard’s changes are very definitely just refinements. As such, Snow...
3 tags
Project Canvas, take 2
Last week the BBC Trust announced that it kicking Project Canvas back to the executive for a while.
As I’ve written previously in fairly glowing terms about Canvas—that it can’t happen soon enough—it might surprise you that I think this is a good thing.
The reason is simple: my opinion on Canvas was formed after a certain amount of blank-filling. In order to figure out what the...
3 tags
Read this. Read this now.
Ben Goldacre on drugs
Then write to your MP, your MSP, your MEP, and your UN unelected representative. Whoever.
This is not a new issue (and anybody who knows me in person will have been subjected to my rants on it), but—as ever—Ben Goldacre has put fingers to keyboard far more effectively than I could have hoped to.
You may also enjoy, from The Register:
Jacqui Smith ecstatically ignores...
4 tags
Mobile Phone Companies vs the CCA: The Saga...
The Office of Fair Trading has asked me not to reproduce their response to my original query, because what they’ve told me has never been tested in court, is a response to my specific query, and cannot be seen to constitute legal advice.
Personally, I think that’s a bit daft, but I’m not going to defy a specific request not to make private correspondence public, even if it is...
6 tags
Something for the weekend
I’m going to do something a little different now. Here follows a list of the headlines on The Guardian’s Technology section, with my comments on each. Short, and to the point. Ish.
Lord Carter to leave job in the summer
Well, this one isn’t strictly news, more confirmation. But, in today’s stormy political climate, who knows what could happen? I will say this, though: if I got...
1 tag
Setanta
Setanta hasn’t died yet, which could be good, or bad, news for some sports fans, depending on which you look at it.
On the one hand, Sky could do with some competition.
On the other, the debacle over the highlights was farcical, splitting matches half-and-half with ITV is bizarre, and broadcasting a subscription channel which is noticeably over-compressed and yet completely unencrypted...
1 tag
A solution to BT vs BBC
Aside, before I begin: note, shall ye, that BT is a partner in the BBC’s Project Canvas, which is currently moving a little slower through the wheels of bureaucracy than some would like, thanks to the failure on the part of the executive to actually explain it.
The solution is simple.
Block access to the BBC altogether.
None of this “half measures” throttling stuff. Switch it off.
If the...
1 tag
Open Government
This the blogging equivalent of assorted notes jotted onto a piece of paper. You are forewarned.
There should be an RSS feed of new items placed in the House of Commons Library. None of this surreptitious “quietly slipped the written answer in while nobody was paying attention” lark.
TV content from the Commons, the Lords and the various Select Committees should be produced by Parliament...
2 tags
The Commons, but not that Commons
Picture this:
A TV channel, streamed using the latest and greatest (open) technologies, over the Internet.
Interactive services allow viewers to vote on both programmes and adverts. The really good (and the really bad) are showcased, or named-and-shamed as appropriate, regularly.
A certain proportion of the ad revenues covers the operating costs, but the rest is handed to the content owners.
...
4 tags
BBC Parliament
Musing on what is probably the least-loved BBC channel:
Are the Westminster broadcasts on BBC Parliament Crown Copyright, or BBC Copyright? (I suspect I know the answer to this)
As it was once an independent company which was later bought by the BBC, there must have been a contract involved. Is it possible for somebody to compete for the live streams from Westminster (not necessarily compete...
5 tags
How fast is your Internet?
“Speed”, when it comes to network connections, is measured by two different things: latency and bandwidth.
Latency is the measure of how quickly a little bit of information can get from one end of a connection to the other (and usually, back again). The “ping” program, which you may have used, is one tool which measures latency. Latency is generally expressed in milliseconds (e.g., “30ms...
7 tags
BT vs. iPlayer
After much rumbling in the background over the past few months, BT finally fired a shot across the BBC’s bows. It accused content creators in general, and the BBC specifically, of “getting a free ride”, because it wasn’t paying BT to carry iPlayer traffic to its customers.
Confused? You will be.
The Internet, broadly speaking, works like this: you pay for transit—that is, a...
4 tags
Mobile phone contracts and the Consumer Credit Act
Most, but not all, consumer mobile phone contracts entered into in the UK include some portion of subsidy covering the cost of the handset, amongst other things.
Dean Bubley, a telecoms analyst, mused some time ago as to whether handset subsidies were actually loans, and the implications of that. For example: are they regulated under the Consumer Credit Act? Do operators really want to be in the...
1 tag
BNP voters
The majority of every other party’s voters agreed with the statement that “Non-white British citizens who were born in this country are just as ‘British’ as white citizens born in this country”, only 35% of BNP voters did, with 44% disagreeing.
From a huge YouGov poll commissioned by Channel 4.
Frankly, I can’t comprehend how somebody can think like that. But then, I went to school...
1 tag
Why iPhone users are annoyed at O2
Exhibit A:
Exhibit B:
Exhibit C:
Of course, “Unlimited data” comes with a “Fair use” policy, but that’s to be expected. As Neil Inglis wrote on Twitter:
If I use tethering and go over the ‘fair use’ limit then fine, talk to me then. If I just want to grab mail it uses no more data than iPhone
And that’s without getting into the “first-generation iPhone...
2 tags
Our Prime Minister
Over the past week, the Labour party has been dealt a resounding thrashing. Every single local authority in England which it—prior to Thursday—controlled, it’s lost. The European Parliamentary Election results suggest that Labour, although not doing quite as badly, has suffered some crushing blows.
As such, I’m forced to wonder: when our unelected Prime Minister hosts press conferences, as...
1 tag
Baby steps in the Mac OS X UI
Some conceptually simple changes to “fix” the Mac OS X document-handling UI paradigms:
Remove the code in Finder which currently deals with “Stationery Pad” files.
Update Finder such that, when dragging a Stationery Pad item between folders, the default action is Copy rather than Move, in much the same manner as dragging an item from a locked folder. Holding down the Option key would override...