BBC HD critised in The Independent

In article ,
charles wrote:
some 30 years ago, I had to go and see the head of Ceefax about his
reception. His BBC2 pictures were so noisy, I couldn't bear to watxch
them. "That's not a very good picture" I remarked. "I wouldn't know,
I'm only a journalist" he replied. He obviously never noticed the
pictures in the studios where he worked. (and he had been "science
correspondent" in his previous job - I assume because he could pronounce
long words correctly ;-)

And probably in charge of 'standards' these days.

--
*Marathon runners with bad footwear suffer the agony of defeat*

Dave Plowman London SW
To e-mail, change noise into sound.

In article , David
scribeth thus
A lot of what is said here is above my head.
Now what is simple to me is we all agree was BBC HD was ok now it not.

What I can't understand is the BBC thinking the opposite. They seem to be
telling me the Emperor has got a new suit of clothes on, when he hasn't!
They truly believe this HD transmission is very good.

Regards
David


Thats why there're now known as the British Bull**** Corporation!..

Never been the same since the post of Director of Engineering was
abolished..
--
Tony Sayer

"tony sayer" wrote in message
...
In article , David
scribeth thus
A lot of what is said here is above my head.
Now what is simple to me is we all agree was BBC HD was ok now it not.

What I can't understand is the BBC thinking the opposite. They seem to
be
telling me the Emperor has got a new suit of clothes on, when he hasn't!
They truly believe this HD transmission is very good.

Regards
David


Thats why there're now known as the British Bull**** Corporation!..

Never been the same since the post of Director of Engineering was
abolished..
--


In my view the BBC has been an absolute disaster ever since John Reith left
to run Imperial Airways, it's now sunk to the lowest possible depths of
showing crooners and dreadful music hall comedians, who make unspeakable
jokes and innuendoes about such things as having their passage blocked etc..

"Kay Robinson" wrote in message
...
On Sat, 12 Dec 2009 11:32:35 +0000 (GMT), "Dave Plowman (News)"
sharpened a new quill and scratched:

In article ,
Kay Robinson wrote:
snip
Remeber the 'millenium bug'? A good example of the lack of
basic common sense in those that rule that they could be conned into
spending billions of public money on something that, had they an ounce
of common sense, they should know wasn't going to happen, but hey,
they do know how to get their cut.
Kay


Do you mean the Y2K problem?
The reason it didn't become a problem was the thousands of
unappreciated man hours spent rewriting miles of Unix code

Steve Terry
--
Get a free Three 3pay Sim with £2 bonus after £10 top up
http://freeagent.three.co.uk/stand/view/id/5276

On 2009-12-13, Steve Terry wrote:
"Kay Robinson" wrote in message
...
On Sat, 12 Dec 2009 11:32:35 +0000 (GMT), "Dave Plowman (News)"
sharpened a new quill and scratched:

In article ,
Kay Robinson wrote:
snip
Remeber the 'millenium bug'? A good example of the lack of
basic common sense in those that rule that they could be conned into
spending billions of public money on something that, had they an ounce
of common sense, they should know wasn't going to happen, but hey,
they do know how to get their cut.
Kay


Do you mean the Y2K problem?
The reason it didn't become a problem was the thousands of
unappreciated man hours spent rewriting miles of Unix code

Unix code?

Unix generally didn't have a y2k problem - it has its own
year 2038 problem.

--
David Taylor

On Sun, 13 Dec 2009 11:52:02 +0000, Kay Robinson
wrote:

Remeber the 'millenium bug'? A good example of the lack of
basic common sense in those that rule that they could be conned into
spending billions of public money on something that, had they an ounce
of common sense, they should know wasn't going to happen, but hey,
they do know how to get their cut.

There may have been some people with the snouts in the trough, but the
Y2K problems in computer software and hardware were real. They had to be
fixed to prevent computer chaos after midnight 1999/2000. Many computer
people worked long and hard on the Y2K project. The result was that
almost all the problems were found and fixed in advance. It was the most
successful computer software modification project ever.

I first became involved in about 1997. I realised at the time that the
degree of publicity necessary to get things moving would result in a
backlash if the problems were successfully cured, with people scoffing
and saying that there never were any problems.

--
Peter Duncanson
(in uk.tech.digital-tv)

"David Taylor" wrote in message
...
On 2009-12-13, Steve Terry wrote:
"Kay Robinson" wrote in message
...
On Sat, 12 Dec 2009 11:32:35 +0000 (GMT), "Dave Plowman (News)"
sharpened a new quill and scratched:

In article ,
Kay Robinson wrote:
snip
Remeber the 'millenium bug'? A good example of the lack of
basic common sense in those that rule that they could be conned into
spending billions of public money on something that, had they an ounce
of common sense, they should know wasn't going to happen, but hey,
they do know how to get their cut.
Kay

Do you mean the Y2K problem?
The reason it didn't become a problem was the thousands of
unappreciated man hours spent rewriting miles of Unix code

Unix code?

Unix generally didn't have a y2k problem - it has its own
year 2038 problem.
David Taylor


OK mostly Cobol then, but also the old UNIX source code control system.
as you say Y2K38 has yet to come

Steve Terry
--
Get a free Three 3pay Sim with £2 bonus after £10 top up
http://freeagent.three.co.uk/stand/view/id/5276

On 13/12/2009 12:03 PM, Steve Terry wrote:
"Kay wrote in message
...
On Sat, 12 Dec 2009 11:32:35 +0000 (GMT), "Dave Plowman (News)"
sharpened a new quill and scratched:

In ,
Kay wrote:
snip
Remeber the 'millenium bug'? A good example of the lack of
basic common sense in those that rule that they could be conned into
spending billions of public money on something that, had they an ounce
of common sense, they should know wasn't going to happen, but hey,
they do know how to get their cut.
Kay


Do you mean the Y2K problem?

2048?

--
JohnT

pete wrote:

It is still widespread today. A lot of high-end suppliers provide CoD (capacity
on demand) services. This entails a server having many more processors
built in than are used / licensed by the client. If you want more, you just
get the supplier in (or even do it over the 'net) to enable more and your
account gets billed the requisite amount. The box doesn't change, just the
amount of it you're permitted to use. Likewise some top-end software is licensed
on a per-CPU basis. So the same binary and the same level of support will cost
more, or less, depending on the power of the server it runs on.

....sounds familiar: Sky+ box with/without subscription?

--
George from Cartland

The message
from "Steve Terry" contains these words:

"Kay Robinson" wrote in message
...
On Sat, 12 Dec 2009 11:32:35 +0000 (GMT), "Dave Plowman (News)"
sharpened a new quill and scratched:

In article ,
Kay Robinson wrote:
snip
Remeber the 'millenium bug'? A good example of the lack of
basic common sense in those that rule that they could be conned into
spending billions of public money on something that, had they an ounce
of common sense, they should know wasn't going to happen, but hey,
they do know how to get their cut.
Kay


Do you mean the Y2K problem?
The reason it didn't become a problem was the thousands of
unappreciated man hours spent rewriting miles of Unix code

Steve Terry

I do remember a comment made by one wag in the trade press at the time
making a very valid point with regard to the _mere_ billions being spent
on Y2K remedial work.

His point being that such sums of money were a mere trifle compared to
the trillions of dollars worth of lost productivity in offices worldwide
due to the need for users to endlessly reboot windows 95 (and 98) boxes
several times a day to overcome a file caching induced memory leak
(easily remedied by a simple edit of the system.ini file using nothing
more than notepad - and, in less time than it takes for _one_ reboot).

His point being, "Relax everyone! Forget the Y2K bug fixing costs, they
are as nothing compared to the other costs of MS windows 'ownership". I
rather agreed with his perspective on the problem. The press had become
rather fixated over the billion dollar figure costs of the 'Y2k Bug'
remedial work and it needed such a comment to lend the whole issue a
much needed context.

Effectively, he was suggesting that the 'Bean Counters' should concern
themselves with an even more 'worthy cause' than hamper the essential
Y2k project. There was an even bigger pile of beans that needed to be
counted elsewhere in the system.

Although it was true that the problem had been dealt with in PC MoBo
BIOSes and the upstart 'Johnny cum Lately' OSes that they were running
several years before the event (as much as a decade before in some
cases), this was certainly not the case with mainframes and their legacy
based OSes and software. There should be no doubts as to the dire need
to remedy the Y2k timebomb in these core systems. Only a "Joe Public"
with his PC centric view of 'computing' could suggest it was otherwise.

You didn't have to be a systems programmer to realise the importance of
the Y2k work, merely having learnt how to program in BASIC was
sufficient once the basic problem was explained.

It's quite obvious that Kay Robinson is merely a 'user' with no
programming skills whatsoever. He (or She?) would be amongst those
complaining at the cost in human life due to a "Project Orion" style
launching of an asteroid intercept mission to save all of humanity when
said asteroid actually fails to impact the Earth.

In this scenario, I'm sure the project leaders would regard such
complaints as 'sufficient thanks for a task well done'. Whilst the
consequences of ignoring the Y2k issue aren't quite so extreme, I'd
imagine the best response to such complaints is to regard them as a
'back handed' form of 'Thanks' ;-)

--
Regards, John.

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