Much ado ! The iplayer is in TRIAL !!!!

You've got to walk before you can run. The iplayer is in trial! I'd love to join the trial but I'm running Vista on my desktop and laptop and the iplayer is for XP only which makes it a very obvious trial. Surely if Microsoft were "running programming at the BBC" they'd be making us all upgrade to Vista.

When the iplayer is launched and if it is a success then by all means demand that it is put on other viable platforms (Vista, Firefox, etc.) but lets not hold up progress because some small percentage of geeky conspiracy theorists expect a team of programmers to know Linux.

I'm happy enough to beat Microsoft with a stick when they deserve it (which they often do) and I don't like the way Labour licks up to them so much but there's no need to barrel scrape with this one.

I once worked as a tester for Microsoft. If I ever get a job at the BBC will I too be accused of corrupting it? Maybe I'm pre-programmed to do Bill Gates bidding at some point! Lets just have an injection of common sense please. Who wants more license fee money spent rewriting iplayer to work on their Spectrum?