Friday, July 27, 2007

BBC puts shows online. With restrictions.

CNet:

The BBC launched a new on-demand service called iPlayer on Friday that lets people download from the Internet shows like “EastEnders” and “Planet Earth” that they may have missed on the telly that week. The shows represent as much as 70 percent of the BBC programming, about 400 hours of programs, according to Reuters.

Sounds great, huh?

Unfortunately, the free service is only available to people in Britain and on computers running Microsoft XP. [...]

Once viewed, the downloaded shows are automatically deleted after 30 days and technology prevents people from making copies of them.

Who to blame? PeterB of DefectiveByDesign used to work for BBC Network Radio. Says he:

Let’s start from the top. Queen Elizabeth was directed to bestow Bill Gates with an honorary knighthood in 2002, for “services to global enterprise”. This knighthood came after Microsoft had been convicted of monopolistic practices in the US. And just before the European Commission investigated Microsoft’s bundling of Windows Media Player into Windows ending with €497 million ($666 million) for its breaches of EU competition law.

Bill was nominated for this honor by the then Chancellor of the Exchequer Gordon Brown, who, on June 27, 2007, became the the new Prime Minister of Britain. You may not know this, but Gordon is tight with Bill, and the Labour Party is tight with Microsoft. And after 10 years of one party rule, the UK is a politically tied up Microsoft shop. Everything else that follows in relation to the iPlayer can be connected to this corrupting political association.

Peter’s packing his bags and heading back to the UK to be there on Tuesday, August 14 when DefectiveByDesign will be heading to the BBC Television Studios in London to protest “the incompetent management that has allowed this to happen.”

He wants us to be sure to ask anyone we know in the UK to join the protest. You can sign up to help plan the campaign here. 

On David Petraeus

More from the NYTimes Book Review coming this weekend. In a major look at George Bush’s war on terror, the Kennedy School of Government at Harvard’s Samantha Power says, “The book to begin with in looking for a revised 21st-century strategy is, unexpectedly, the landmark U.S. Army/Marine Corps Counterinsurgency Field Manual.”

The leading architect of the manual was David Petraeus, then a lieutenant general, who commanded the 101st Airborne Division in the initial invasion of Iraq in 2003 and took responsibility for governing Mosul, Iraq’s second-largest city, immediately thereafter. He is now the overall American commander in Iraq. Petraeus emphasized economic and political development and is said to have asked his soldiers, “What have you done for the people of Iraq today?” He worked with another military man who also saw that his job would have to be more than strictly military - Lt. Gen. James Mattis, who commanded the First Marine Division during the initial invasion and then in 2004 returned to help stabilize Anbar Province. His division motto was “No Better Friend, No Worse Enemy - First Do No Harm.” In February 2006, while the new counterinsurgency doctrine was still being drafted, and while international criticism of American military excesses mounted, Petraeus invited journalists, human rights lawyers, academics and practitioners of counterinsurgency to Fort Levenworth to vet a draft, initiating what participants characterized as one of the most open and productive exchanges of ideas they had ever witnessed.

Our Polyface Visit

Joel Salatin says farms should be aesthetically and aromatically pleasing and invites anyone to come, look around, and see for themselves.

We did; his is.

On our way from Georgia to PA, we got off I-81 in Staunton, VA and made our winding way out to the farm. We arrived just as they were cleaning up from the slaughter of about 100 chickens.

I was reminded of Michael Pollan’s call for glass walls and Joel’s prideful transparency - “No trade secrets, no locked doors, every corner is camera-accessible.” The young apprentices greeted us warmly, gave enough general direction for us to find our way around, and sent us on our way.

Crocs were obviously not the best shoe choice for tromping through a landscape nutritionally healed by poultry that is genuinely free range, so after briefly checking out the incubator and the eggmobile we made our way to the dirt road and wondered off to find the pigs.

Thinking we had made a wrong turn and about ready to give up, we came upon the feeder, an oddly shaped aluminum contraption. We stood ogling it for a moment when, to our surprise, a pig approached, flipped up the flap with his snout and began to chow down. Soon a few more approached.

Impressed at the simple truth of it - “Plants and animals should be provided a habitat that allows them to express their physiological distinctiveness.  Respecting and honoring the pigness of the pig is a foundation for societal health.” - we made our way back to the house and bought a chicken as a gift for our Harrisburg hosts.

Share the aspiration:

Polyface, Inc. is a family owned, multi-generational, pasture-based, beyond organic, local-market farm and informational outreach in Virginia’s Shenandoah Valley. [...]

We are in the redemption business: healing the land, healing the food, healing the economy, and healing the culture.

Polyface pigs

Compare and contrast: Joel Salatin’s hog heaven; Smithfield Foods pigs in shit.