BBC "Not In Bed With Bill Gates"

whoever57 writes "The BBC's head of technology denied rumors that a secret deal with Microsoft was behind the XP-only launch of the BBC's iPlayer. According to Ashley Highfield, the reason that the player only supports Windows XP is that only a small number of Linux visitors have come to the BBC's website. Why he would expect a large number of Linux-based visitors to the site when the media downloads are Windows XP only is not clear. He also thinks that 'Launching a software service to every platform simultaneously would have been launch suicide,' despite the example of many major sites that support Linux (even if this is through the closed-source flash player)."

Re:Lame reason.

[homey of my owney]

Never mind. The title creates an image that I'm not going to be able to get out of my head anytime soon.

Re:Definitely a screwup somewhere

[JamesD_UK]

I read all my BBC stories on Slashdot you insensitive clod. Since I never RTFA, I never visit bbc.co.uk. QED

In other news

[morgan_greywolf]

In other news, FOX News Channel has announced that it's not in bed with the Republican Party, George W. Bush announced that he's not in bed with big oil, and every member of the U.S. Congress has announced that they aren't in bed with any lobbyists or special interest groups of any kind.

Finally, Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton announced that she's never been in bed with anybody but herself. (That one's almost believable!)

What's with the iName, anyway?

[Fear the Clam]

I like how the BBC was obviously trying to draft on the recognition of Apple's iNames but without the, shall we say, fucking courtesy to actually run on the Mac out of the box. Nice one, tools.

Re:Definitely a screwup somewhere

[goddidit]

An incovenient truth: There really is only about thousand linux users.
However they are a very vocal minority and because it's somewhat cool to be a linux guy
some people claim that they run linux when infact they don't.
I personally run Windows Vista Home Basic but I pretend to be a linux expert on various internet forums.
Linux's "popularity" is really just a scam to fool newbies into thinking that people actually run linux.
Then the newbies try actually installing linux and fail miserably,
you must really be a kernel hacker to install it.
Frustrated newbies then ask questions on the various forums and on irc and everybody answers to them in complete gibberish. We all get a good laugh that way (expect the noobs, they try the bogus solutions and fail once again).

Re:Lame reason.

[Heddahenrik]

0.86% of the Elftown users, use Linux, so 0.41% seems plausible.

But we can all go to http://www.bbc.co.uk/ [bbc.co.uk] and bump that number to 50% ;)

Re:Lame reason.

[Anonymous Coward]

You can never make linux users happy. There's no reason for the BBC to waste money trying.