** Tony Whitmore <tony@???> [2007-11-02 10:44]:
> That's the claim from the BBC's head of technology in a recent interview:
>
> http://linkpot.net/diatribe/
>
> "We have 17.1 million users of bbc.co.uk in the UK and, as far as our server
> logs can make out, 5 per cent of those [use Macs] and around 400 to 600 are
> Linux users."
I'd be interested to know how those statistics are gathered. Do they
take into account new feeds used on other sites that provide the BBC
news, or does it just cover the bbc.co.uk home page? At one point I had
a script in place on a server to fix a broken BBC news feed (in the days
pre RSS feeds). It grabbed the feed, fixed it and then provided it
locally. If that was still in place it would skew the statistics
(although not majorly since it's not a big site!). The BBC repeatedly
ignored my requests to fix the feed. When they finally took notice (I
assume) they simply removed the feed instead of providing a 5 minute fix
- literally since I provided details of how to fix the feed to bring it
in line with the other working feeds!
> If you'd like to help prove this statement wrong, please consider signing this
> petition:
>
> http://www.ipetitions.com/petition/linuxbbc/
Much as I would like to I'm not entirely sure that this is the best site
to use. To require a fee to sign a petition is going to reduce the
number of people likely to sign it! There are other sites better suited
I would suggest.
> And/or joining this Facebook group:
>
> http://www.facebook.com/group.php?gid=21236595408&ref=nf
>
> Both already have 200+ members/signatures - apparently 1/3 of all
> BBC-News-reading Linux users in the UK. :)
As an aside, am I the only person that considers the Facebook site one
of the worst designed sites on the internet? Actually, no I know I'm
not, my wife agrees - in fact she raised the point independently of my
own view. I'm not a big user of social networking sites, but when I do
use Facebook I generally find myself either wondering how to get to
somewhere, or wondering how I got there so I could get there again. When
I explore I'm generally thinking 'OK, what can I do from here?', or 'how
does this work?'. Searching the site is also badly implemented, far too
many results and no means of reducing that with a more sophisticated
search - and this is the view from me (technical) and my wife
(non-technical). ** end quote [Tony Whitmore]
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