http://entertainment.timesonline.co....cle6991064.ece

Phil
--
Guildford, Surrey

www.layton.me.uk/meteo.htm

"Phil Layton" wrote in message
...
http://entertainment.timesonline.co....cle6991064.ece

Phil
--
Guildford, Surrey

www.layton.me.uk/meteo.htm
---------------------
Why not - I mean privatisation of the Railways, Oil Companies, hospital
cleaning etc. has worked well for us so far.
Dave

"Dave Cornwell" wrote in message
...

"Phil Layton" wrote in message
...
http://entertainment.timesonline.co....cle6991064.ece

Phil
--
Guildford, Surrey

www.layton.me.uk/meteo.htm
---------------------
Why not - I mean privatisation of the Railways, Oil Companies, hospital
cleaning etc. has worked well for us so far.
Dave


Yes perfectly.

On Jan 17, 12:11*am, "Dave Cornwell"
wrote:
"Phil Layton" wrote in message

...http://entertainment.timesonline.co....ertainment/tv_...

Phil
--
Guildford, Surrey

www.layton.me.uk/meteo.htm

---------------------
Why not - I mean privatisation of the Railways, *Oil Companies, hospital
cleaning etc. has worked well for us so far.

Not to mention the banks!

Cheers, Alastair.

On Sat, 16 Jan 2010 16:59:31 -0800 (PST), Alastair
wrote:

On Jan 17, 12:11*am, "Dave Cornwell"
wrote:
"Phil Layton" wrote in message

...http://entertainment.timesonline.co....ertainment/tv_...

Phil
--
Guildford, Surrey

www.layton.me.uk/meteo.htm

---------------------
Why not - I mean privatisation of the Railways, *Oil Companies, hospital
cleaning etc. has worked well for us so far.

Not to mention the banks!

It's just a bit of self promotion by the NZ company, they know as well
as the rest of us that the BBC wouldn't dare to dump the Met Office.
But the beeb no doubt must be seen to put out "competitive tenders".

God help us if we ever get into accepting the lowest tender - we'd
probably end up with someone like Weather Action doing it all.

The article even implies that the Met Office only use their own model
data, which is obviously untrue.... whereas others use everyone's
data...

In my opinion, it's a non-story, the switch won't happen.

--
Dave

"Phil Layton" wrote in message ...
http://entertainment.timesonline.co....cle6991064.ece
Oh no - they're the bunch of muppets who came up with the derisible
Weatherscape XT, the 1998-era graphics engine that powers the BBC's "turd
brown" forecasts. Words cannot express how much I loathe that graphics
package, which compared to the old "Weather 2000" symbol maps is a world
away. Just looking at the low-res, ill-defined mush after 36 hours makes the
whole thing a mockery.

The BBC forked out large amounts of money for that waste-of-space graphics
system and thus (having been a soft target) I'm not surprised the owners of
that system are pushing for even more of the Beeb's money.

"Darren Prescott" wrote in message
...
"Phil Layton" wrote in message ...
http://entertainment.timesonline.co....cle6991064.ece
Oh no - they're the bunch of muppets who came up with the derisible
Weatherscape XT, the 1998-era graphics engine that powers the BBC's "turd
brown" forecasts. Words cannot express how much I loathe that graphics
package, which compared to the old "Weather 2000" symbol maps is a world
away. Just looking at the low-res, ill-defined mush after 36 hours makes
the whole thing a mockery.

The BBC forked out large amounts of money for that waste-of-space graphics
system and thus (having been a soft target) I'm not surprised the owners
of that system are pushing for even more of the Beeb's money.

Why does the BBC have to sub everything out? Are there no engineers in-house
that can't produce something with the best of the previous system?
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sDK1V...eature=related

I particularly miss the extensive use of temperature profiles and wind
fields. Too much like a science lesson for today's audience?

"Darren Prescott" wrote in message
...
"Phil Layton" wrote in message ...
http://entertainment.timesonline.co....cle6991064.ece
Oh no - they're the bunch of muppets who came up with the derisible
Weatherscape XT, the 1998-era graphics engine that powers the BBC's "turd
brown" forecasts. Words cannot express how much I loathe that graphics
package, which compared to the old "Weather 2000" symbol maps is a world
away. Just looking at the low-res, ill-defined mush after 36 hours makes
the whole thing a mockery.

The BBC forked out large amounts of money for that waste-of-space graphics
system and thus (having been a soft target) I'm not surprised the owners
of that system are pushing for even more of the Beeb's money.

Sometimes the new graphics are useful on the local regional forecasts. The
other week I happened to see a forecast (as I don't normally watch) and it
was a max. temperature chart and it was showing something like 6 in Exeter
and 7 in Plymouth and something else in Barnstaple (I think it was 5 or 6)
which was not representative of Dartmoor, but the shaded colours that went
with the map were pale blue/green over Dartmoor and it was indeed circa +2
in Haytor. So they can be useful at a regional level.

Will
--

In article ,
Phil Layton writes:
http://entertainment.timesonline.co....tainment/tv_an
d_radio/article6991064.ece

Phil

The Telegraph gets its forecasts from Accuweather. They seem to be
generally inferior to the Met Office forecasts, and every so often are
wildly wrong.
--
John Hall
"Acting is merely the art of keeping a large group of people
from coughing."
Sir Ralph Richardson (1902-83)

On Sunday 17 Jan 2010 09:27, David Haggas scribbled:


"Darren Prescott" wrote in message
...

Why does the BBC have to sub everything out? Are there no engineers
in-house that can't produce something with the best of the previous
system? http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sDK1V...eature=related

I particularly miss the extensive use of temperature profiles and wind
fields. Too much like a science lesson for today's audience?

Originally, the temperature and wind field graphics were produced by Met
Office programmers and tarted up by BBC engineers. In the 80s, they were
produced by programs originally written using software for producing 35mm
film (Calcomp). The vector-graphics output from these programs was condensed
into a small file - again using Met Office-designed software - in order to
save on bandwidth. It was sent to the BBC who then processed these files to
add colour and shading. Another part of the Met Office software design was
the closure of all contours so that "bleeding" did not occur when shading
was added.

The wind-arrow display was originally written for the first colour-graphics
displays in CFO, IBM 5080s, and had differently-coloured arrows dependent on
temperature. The display was colloquially known by CFO staff as "the
tropical fish tank".

The contour and wind displays shown on the video are a later development by
the Met Office where the graphics output from the programs was created using
GKS instead of the Calcomp package.


--
Graham P Davis, Bracknell, Berks., UK. E-mail: newsman not newsboy
"I wear the cheese. It does not wear me."