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Cheltenham_Steve

Listed below are comments made by Cheltenham_Steve between Thursday, 28th May 2009 and Monday, 26th October 2009.

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24 hours with Ubuntu 10:33am on 26 Oct 2009 I have to say that the overall tone of this blog entry just depressed me. A technical journalist is given a new computer with a new operating system on it and basically spends 24 hours using it, and the end conclusion seems to be "Meh, its too much like hard work but it boots faster than Windows"

You spent a week with Windows 7, would you have only given that a day, or only given Snow Leopard a day? Did you give up trying to find features on W7 because it was "too much bother" or did you dig around and find where Microsoft had moved things to compared to where they were in Vista or XP.

I think that it was that sort of uninterested, can't care less, attitude which grated with me the most. Every single of us who has had to "learn" a new GUI, be that GEM, Apple, TOS, Windows 3.1, CDE, Windows 98, OSX, Windows XP, Windows Vista or Windows 7 always finds it frustrating when what we used to do no longer works, or the app isn't where we'd expect to find it, or it looks different. That is just part of the whole experience of learning a new desktop environment. If we all said its too much like hard work we'd probably all still be sitting staring at various different command lines.

I do hope that we can look forward to a much more in depth blog where you spend more than 24 hours playing with Ubuntu, and that you find out just how easy it is to add software from the Ubuntu repositories, software that is maintained and updated by Canonical so you know it will just work. Of course you may still not like it, but please do give it a bit of time to grow on you.
Will you pay for a Digital Britain? 9:01pm on 23 Sep 2009 I already pay for it. I have a fixed land line on which I pay VAT, I have an internet connection on which I pay VAT. I have an Android G1 and pay more for an internet tariff, on which I pay VAT.

But now the government wants me to pay MORE tax to subsidise private companies installation of better networks.

My parents, both in their 80s, have a fixed land line on which they pay VAT. They have no desire to have an internet connection, and yet they too will be expect to find another 50p a month, to pay for what exactly?

Frankly we all know that any money the government gets will just get swallowed up by the government and end up paying for more consultancy and spin doctors and so on.
Who is batting for file-sharing proposals? 10:56am on 28 Aug 2009 From a news article published today on your website:

"Big Champagne says Top Gear has been among the most pirated television programmes internationally.

The series appears on BBC America some time after it is shown in the UK, and it appears that some American fans are eager to download it before it is available legally. "

Isn't this what so many people have been saying. A lot of "piracy" is done because content distribution by the media companies just doesn't understand the modern world. Why is there a delay of maybe more than a day or two in TG being shown on BBC America?

Content providers, be they the BBC, or Universal Studios, or Sony, need to realise that if they release a product in Country A and then don't release it in Country B for several weeks (or months) then it WILL get pirated. A few years ago I was in the states visiting my girlfriend and we bought Galaxy Quest on VHS and I bought it one day BEFORE the film even opened in the UK. There is no excuse for this sort of delay, the only reason for it is that the film companies try to maximise profit by keeping the number of prints down and so the UK gets prints that have already been dragged round the US, which explains why so often you go to see a "new" film and the print seems to be worn.
Has Twitter's popularity peaked? 4:29pm on 13 Aug 2009 A Study by pearnanalytics ( http://www.pearanalytics.com/2009/twitter-study-reveals-interesting-results-about-usage/ ) shows that

"Pointless Babble won with 40.55% of the total tweets captured; however, Conversational was a very close second at 37.55%, and Pass-Along Value was third (albeit a distant third) at 8.7% of the tweets captured."

So not this wonderful news feed and media sensation that Maggie seems to keep claiming it is. It's as about as radical and new as sitting in the pub nattering over a few pints of beer.
Twitter's front page makeover 6:44pm on 06 Aug 2009 I see that on the National BBC news tonight when they were talking about internet use the BBC used a "browser" page to put up some stats about social networking site usage. It featured the Twitter logo and the twitter url in clear view.

Just WHAT is going on at the BBC?
Microsoft: There's a buzz about Bing 1:59pm on 01 Aug 2009 Microsoft always seem to have this thing about numbers, being able to say "we have X million messenger users" seems to be very important to them, when really its meaningless.

For example LiveJournal have now created a new chat system which if you want to use it you have to sign up for a Microsoft Messenger account - which means a lot of new signups because they've basically been given no choice.

So that's a lot more messenger users - but does this mean MS Messenger is better than AIM or Yahoo Chat?

The shift of Yahoo Search to using Bing is just another number boosting exercise for Microsoft and one that, given the reaction in the tech press, is doomed to failure.

I tried Bing, I didn't like it, I just didn't like the results I got back from its searches.
Twitter's front page makeover 11:10am on 29 Jul 2009 If this should be anywhere it should be in a news article. Not a blog.

What is this obsession the BBC has with Twitter?

Frankly I'm getting to the point of not bothering to come and read the BBC Tech blogs any more because they just seem to be puffer articles for Twitter. I don't pay my licence fee to pay journalists to simply act as glorified salemen and women for other companies.

Lets see some proper journalism in the blogs, rather than just regurgitated press releases.
Green shoots in the music industry? 10:41am on 16 Jul 2009 "The conclusion drawn by the researchers is that habits amongst those digitally aware consumers who don't buy CDs are changing - they're moving from downloading illegally to streaming legally."

Or one of them is downloading and then passing CDs and DVDs full of MP3s round to their friends, or even passing the original CD (or a copy of it) to their friends.

People have always swapped music and nothing the music industry can do will ever stop that, and of course we all remember "Home taping is killing music" which turned out to be just a rather bad lie: 25+ years on and music is still going.
Can Digital Britain top the league? 08:50am on 17 Jun 2009 I see they are really going to push DAB...again. Why are we spending money pushing basic DAB which is obsolete technology? We've already subsidised DAB with huge amounts of money and its just not worked. If you look at how much has been spent on advertising DAB compared to the number of DAB units sold it is a silly figure.

The BBC have said that to provide universal coverage of DAB costs 4 times as much as similar FM coverage. Many commercial broadcasters have pulled out of DAB because they just can't afford to run DAB stations, and other countries like Germany are considering closing down their DAB "experiments". But despite this they are pushing ahead with the closure of all FM stations.

Also, the audio quality on DAB is pretty poor, it's over compressed and if you can't get a strong signal then instead of getting a slightly noisy station like you would with FM or AM you just get nothing. DAB+ gives much better quality but is not compatible with DAB so a switch to DAB+ would make all the existing DAB kit that has been sold totally obsolete.

The only reason the government want us all on DAB is so they can sell off the existing analogue spectrum, hoping to repeat the mobile phone spectrum sell off fiasco.
Microsoft's bada Bing 7:13pm on 28 May 2009 Ignoring the technical capabilities of the "new" search, and this rather dubious idea of businesses/content providers deciding what is deemed "relevant", I do have to wonder who came up with the new name?

People talk about "googling" for data. I can't see people ever saying "Lets Bing it".

OK I know that the name is not that important and that if the data that returns is accurate and useful then the name becomes less important. But Bing? Sorry, it just doesn't do it for me.

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