London Wires Up For 2012 Olympic Games

alphadogg writes "While London's massive Olympic park is still very much a frenetic construction site, IT engineers are fine-tuning the equipment that will be used to transmit scores, let athletes send e-mail, and broadcast high-definition video of the Games. The Olympic Games are set to kick off on July 27 next year and will be followed by the Paralympic Games. Test athletic events are already under way, which are being used to evaluate the resiliency of high-speed data networks costing millions of pounds. Acer has a large role in the 2012 Olympics and will provide much of the IT hardware, including 11,500 desktops running Windows 7; 1,100 laptops; 900 servers, and other parts including SAN storage systems, touchscreen monitors and standard monitors."

Comments

Re:Union Jack Robbing the World.

[NSN A392-99-964-5927]

We robbed the world many centuries ago fellow centurian!

The TOC's location is a soft secret

[caluml]

The TOC's location is a soft secret, and organizers did not want its exact location to be published for security reasons.

Wow. I contracted in Canary Wharf for 3 months this year, and I'm fairly sure I could guess where it is. That's got to be the softest secret ever.

Re:The TOC's location is a soft secret

[Anonymous Coward]

Whoa whoa whoa careful there! You're not supposed to know, notice, or comment. Head down, mouth shut, there's a good little citizen. Or else.

Re:The TOC's location is a soft secret

[Anonymous Coward]

That might be the case.(primary DC in Docklands). The LCOG offices are in Canary Wharf. There are literally dozens of DC's within a mile of Canary Wharf. Some are well known but others are totally invisible to even people who work in the same building.
sure there is a lot of Venue IT Kit provisioning going on from CW. That work is a long way from providing the DC to ALL the Olympic Venues.

Please tell us where you think the backup DC is then?

Re:The TOC's location is a soft secret

[caluml]

What are you talking about datacentres for?

In a skyscraper in London's Canary Wharf financial district, Olympic organizers opened a Technology Operations Center (TOC) last month and that act as mission control for monitoring the health of Olympic IT systems. The TOC's location is a soft secret, and organizers did not want its exact location to be published for security reasons.

Re:The TOC's location is a soft secret

[Anonymous Coward]

Next to Torchwood!

Acer?

[dutchwhizzman]

I wonder how much of the equipment will be broken and out of support before the opening ceremony.

Re:Acer?

[Anonymous Coward]

All of it - This is Britain it wont work until a year after the games if ever.

Re:Acer?

[AmiMoJo]

Luckily all electronics sold in the EU come with a minimum 2 year warranty.

Re:Acer?

[Karljohan]

You're confused - that's consumer rights. Olympics is not a consumer and therefore has no such rights.

Re:Acer?

[AmiMoJo]

They apply to business as well, and the government set up companies to manage the Olympic procurement.

Re:Acer?

[Builder]

I wish people would stop propagating this myth. If the product breaks after 6 months, it is up to the consumer to prove that the fault was a manufacturing fault. You have to pay an engineer to verify that the fault existed or potentially existed at time of purchase. Once you have that report, you can hope that the company will rectify the situation or you can pursue them through the courts (small claims if under £5000)

Re:Acer?

[AmiMoJo]

That is completely wrong.

You have a statutory warranty of two years. If a product beaks within that period it is up the shop to prove that you mistreated it, otherwise they must honour the warranty and replace or repair it. Even failure due to normal wear and tear is covered as the product must be designed to last two years of normal use.

After the two year warranty period the Sale of Goods Act gives you additional protection. It states that goods must last a "reasonable length of time". For example a laptop is usually expected to last five or six years of normal use. If it fails during that time because of a manufacturing defect, bad design or poor workmanship you are entitled to a partial refund or replacement. The refund will normally be based on the amount of time you have been able to use it for, so if your laptop died after 3 years you would be entitled to 2/5ths or 3/6ths of the purchase price.

Retailers are not keen for this stuff to become common knowledge, and some even try to slyly abuse it. John Lewis is a good example, they proudly proclaim that everything has a two year warranty as if it were some kind of special benefit they offer, when in fact it is the legal minimum.

Re:Acer?

[Builder]

It's not wrong at all. I spent 6 weeks fighting Robert Dyas over an appliance I'd bought there 14 months before. The small claims court ruled in my favour and I was able to claim the cost of the item, the cost of the engineering report and my filing fees. However, the judge explained to me that the retailer acted within their rights, and as such I could not claim for time or any punitive damages.

See http://www.thisismoney.co.uk/money/bills/article-1677034/Two-year-warranty-EU-law.html for clarification, specifically the bit that says

"After six months, the burden of proof switches to the buyer and it is they who must then show a fault is due to some inherent problem, something that can be almost impossible in all but the most straightforward cases.
Read more: http://www.thisismoney.co.uk/money/bills/article-1677034/Two-year-warranty-EU-law.html#ixzz1f09afLsq"

Re:Acer?

[Xest]

Can you point to this in legislation? I believe the GP is right, everything I've seen in the Sale of Goods Act and Consumer Protection Act seems to suggest 6 months statutory burden on the seller to prove user fault, and after 6 months on the buyer. Most companies if you push it wont ask you to prove you weren't at fault though because they know full well that you weren't and that in pushing it to that point could escalate their costs as they may then face small claims court costs, costs for time and money spent trying to get them to accept fault etc. too.

John Lewis isn't just accepting a legal minimum with their 2 years at all, they're just saying that they'll accept fault assuming there is no obvious evidence of user damage no questions asked and deal with the problem up to 2 years. It just gives you piece of mind that they wont try and shirk their obligations by trying to shift burden of proof of cause of fault onto you, which is something you don't have with the likes of Dixons group stores.

I had a look for the 2 year period you mention but can find absolutely no evidence of it in the acts themselves:

http://www.legislation.gov.uk/ukpga/1979/54

http://www.legislation.gov.uk/ukpga/1987/43

Further, all of the consumer advice organisation seem to be agreeing with the 6 months, and again no mention of 2 years so I'm not sure where you dug up the 2 years figure from:

http://www.moneysavingexpert.com/shopping/consumer-rights-refunds-exchange

http://www.adviceguide.org.uk/index/your_world/consumer_affairs/buying_goods_your_rights.htm

http://www.which.co.uk/consumer-rights/sale-of-goods/understanding-the-sale-of-goods-act/your-rights/

Six months doesn't sound great, but in practice it works well, I've had a leather office chair replaced outright by Staples after 2.5 years because the pump went on it because they knew it should last longer than that, and similarly my Dell laptop was replaced at 3 years and 1 month with a newer model because it was high end and should've lasted longer and they knew they couldn't just shirk it off as "out of warranty now". The maximum period for a claim is 6 years.

Re:Acer?

[AmiMoJo]

http://www.moneysavingexpert.com/shopping/consumer-rights-refunds-exchange#goods

Read the bit about the Limitations Act etc.

Re:Acer?

[Xest]

I can't see anything in the act about that:

http://www.legislation.gov.uk/ukpga/1980/58

It seems to just reiterate the 6 year maximum period for a claim against a product. Other than that the act just seems to be about setting limits for civil procedings relating to things like mortgages and such.

Searching for myself I managed to find this, which does mention 2 years:

http://eur-lex.europa.eu/smartapi/cgi/sga_doc?smartapi!celexapi!prod!CELEXnumdoc&lg=en&numdoc=31999L0044&model=guichett

But however this is interpreted for a UK consumer still relies on it's implementation under UK law, and as there's no mention of the 2 year limit in any UK legislation then it's of no benefit to UK consumers.

I did find this however, which potentially clears up the confusion:

http://www.whitegoodshelp.co.uk/wordpress/eu-2-year-guarantee-sales-of-goods-act-gives-us-6-years-to-claim-for-faulty-appliances/

Effectively it seems to be the case that as the UK's 6 year period exceeds the 2 year period then our law is actually superior and so we have no need to change existing legislation. The downside is the EU law doesn't seem to outlaw putting the burden onto the consumer after 6 months to prove it was faulty from the outset, and so that has remained part of UK law.

Still, if you can find anything to demonstrate otherwise I'd like to see it, I've no doubt it'll come in useful one day, but as it stands it seems to be business as usual with the 6 month rule.

Re:Acer?

[nobodie]

I'm so glad to see that British law is so transparent;)>

Re:Acer?

[Xest]

Hey I can't complain though it works both ways, just as some firms rely on customers to not understand wtf the law actually is to shirk their obligations those of us who are willing to put a bit of effort into seeing what the law actually says can similarly run circles round companies who also don't understand wtf their obligations actually are ;)

I've received quite a few discounts over the years, we got £200 off my girlfriends car for example because the young guy at the garage accidently told us the wrong price when I was at the chip and pin terminal and I asked him to confirm that was definitely the right price and he mindlessly said yes, then when they tried to charge the extra I threw the book at them and they let me off, and as I say, Dell replaced my laptop at about 2 years 9 months old or so with a brand new model!

Re:Acer?

[AmiMoJo]

Okay, I forgot to mention the way it actually works in practice. If you buy a TV and use it normally without mistreating it in any way, then one year after purchase it suddenly stops working you can claim on the warranty. Although on paper it says that the user has to show there was a manufacturing defect in practice if there is no evidence of mistreatment the law assumes the fault was in design or production.

If it were otherwise warranties would be impossible to claim on because the buyer would have to pay considerable sums of money for professional independent diagnosis of the fault. For example around 2000 there was the infamous capacitor plague where millions of caps died an early death due to errors in the chemical formula used to manufacture them. It would be unreasonable to expect the consumer to do a chemical analysis and have it checked by an industrial chemist to prove that the formulation was at fault, as you suggest they would.

Re:Acer?

[Xest]

Well that's what I said, it works differently in practice because companies know that if someone really wants to push them and they know the product is fault they'll lose in a more expensive manner anyway. Also most companies like John Lewis that you mentioned offer 2 year warranty anyway, and by offering that they're giving you extra than the law says they minimally have to.

But I was simply pointing out that in actual law, the original person you were responding to was actually correct with his mention of the 6 months period. There is no statutory 2 year no quibble automatic warranty in the UK.

uh oh

[Anonymous Coward]

I hope Acer's gear is up to the task. God help us its better than the 3rd rate gear they sell on the domestic market.

Acer...

[Anonymous Coward]

We bought Acer laptops for the teachers in our college to replace their old Dells. By the end of the 1st month the failure rate was over 50%...

The keyboards are very nice to type on tho'.

Is is just me or is the olympics getting worse and

[anss123]

worse every year?

I'm probably just getting old, but today's Olympics seem less personal than what went before. It's always getting bigger, the athletes are less and less like the everyday folk, and even the big ones are pretty much forgotten after 2-3 years.

But I'm just a geek so I'm probably just not getting it.

And none of it will support IPv6!

[Anonymous Coward]

The organisers of the London Olympics have announced that they will not offer IPv6 connectivity to or for the games.

Windows 7? Why not Ubuntu?

[MichaelCrawford]

I'm curious about how they won the contract. Surely a vendor bidding to use open source software would have made a lower bid.

Did the request for bids even allow for open source?

Watch Yes Minister...

[syousef]

I'm curious about how they won the contract. Surely a vendor bidding to use open source software would have made a lower bid.

Did the request for bids even allow for open source?

I could explain it to you buy I suggest you watch "Yes Minister" and "Yes Prime Minister" instead. It would be quicker and more entertaining. Only downside is it's slightly out of date. Politicians and bureaucrats have had 30 years to improve on their incompetence, and use technology to aid it.

Re:Windows 7? Why not Ubuntu?

[wadeal]

Why would it have anything to do with Open Source?? Oh look I'm on Slashdot, Microsoft are evil, Open Source bitch bitch bitch.

A bunch of accountants sat around and said "We need a bunch of computers", they then rang computer vendors who gave them prices, and they chose the cheapest and most reputable (I know it's Acer and that sounds dumb).

The accountants don't know the difference between Windows and Linux, if they were asked what Operating System to use I'm certain they'd of answered the one everybody already knows how to use. Not "Oh well fuck Open Source, so we'll go Microsoft cos we're evil".

Re:Windows 7? Why not Ubuntu?

[Anonymous Coward]

Simply because athletes cannot be arsed to understand anything new. Their blood and oxygen are too busy keeping their muscles twitching at high rates of speed.

Re:Windows 7? Why not Ubuntu?

[dominux]

no, open source software won't do a lower bid because it doesn't come with a sponsorship deal in excess of the cost of it. This is the most commercially motivated games ever, with really really strict sponsorship deals for everything. You will be eating at McDonalds, the official food partner, if you want chocolate it will come from Cadbury the official snack partner, if you want to buy something to wear it will be Adidas, the official clothing partner, if you want to drive a car it will be a BMW, the official transport partner. If you want to pay for anything you won't be using anything but a Visa card because all the shops will be "proud to only accept Visa". Oh, and if you want to make a call on your mobile, I hope you are on O2 because the other networks are not allowed to put up towers to get enough signal to the venue.

Ahrm

[Anonymous Coward]

"let athletes send e-mail and transmit high-definition video of the Games"
Aren't the Olympics pretty anal about who they let transmit from the games. Usually you can't even show a glimpse without paying a ton of money. Let athletes transmit hd video. Have they gone soft?

Re:Ahrm

[Anonymous Coward]

You are misreading this. The sentence lists three things the setup allows them to do, one is "let athletes send e-mail", while "transmit high-definition video" is another which is not to be linked to the athletes mentioned before.

Waste of money

[Wowsers]

Will probably be seen as a troll for these comments, but this is what it feels like to those that actually pay the taxes in the UK (not the freeloaders who back the "games").

When you add in all the costs of all the bits that are counted as someone else's budget for building for the Olympics, £20bn will have been wasted on a two week event. The 2012 legacy will be massive debt for the taxpayers to pay off, while "sponsors" laugh all the way to the bank.

Who does the "games" benefit? The politicians who love to grandstand with someone else's money, the construction industry who are big donors to the political parties, and the athletes who love bumming off others taxes and sponsorship instead of getting a job.

The TV companies have already promised saturation garbage coverage in the UK of the "games".

The taxpayers are sick of it.

Re:Waste of money

[Anonymous Coward]

-1 depressing :(

Re:Waste of money

[hipp5]

and the athletes who love bumming off others taxes and sponsorship instead of getting a job.

Most athletes, at least here in Canada, do have a job. Being an Olympic athlete does not pay. Well, the government does pay you a tiny bit. But if you want to live above the poverty line and be able to afford your training you need to have a job here. Or you become really lucky and land a sponsorship, but I don't see how that's "not having a job" -- someone is paying you money, and you give them a service (advertising recognition) in return.

Re:Waste of money

[Anonymous Coward]

If the advertisers, retailers, networks, etc etc who are supposed to make great profits and contribute to the "massive local tax revenue" that's supposed to benefit the local economy would actually pay the billions in investment rather than sticking it to the taxpayers with the help of the Olympic committee and the acquiescence of the local government, then I'm sure the taxpayers might be a bit happier with the situation. As it stands, almost every initiative of business and government is ultimately billed to the taxpayers in some form and the money used primarily to line the pockets of the rich.

Re:Waste of money

[AmiMoJo]

If you do it right the Olympics can be a net gain. Tourism, free advertising worldwide, infrastructure that provides jobs and long term benefits...

In fact a major part of our bid was getting the cost down and benefits up after China's almost unlimited budget. Maybe we are getting it wrong but people could at least try to get past the Daily Mail hatefest and blame games, and try to make the most of it.

Re:Waste of money

[Anonymous Coward]

Athletes will get sponsorship deals out of it. I don't know how the summer games work, but every winter Olympian gets some sort of sponsorship deal, especially the skiers and snowboarders (or snowboarders and skiers, if going in order of sponsorships). They can also turn pro in many events.

The Olympics are basically an audition for them.

Re:Waste of money

[Anonymous Coward]

I'm involved in the tourism industry outside of London.

Unfortunately, tourism here won't benefit much from the games. Most of the games venues are already tourist traps (e.g. London), and thus would have been booked to near capacity anyway. If you've ever tried to get a late hotel or restaurant reservation in London in August, you will know it's already pretty busy. You could argue that games-goers will spend more per night than other tourists, but I haven't seen any evidence for that. If London etc are busier than normal, then businesses will struggle with overcapacity. A restaurant can only service so many covers per hour; having a queue of people waiting to be seated doesn't count for much, and taking on extra staff / overtime will hurt quality, reputation and margins.

Additionally, because of the perception that the whole country is going to be crammed, advance bookings are way down in the rest of the UK, as people are worried that airports and accommodation are going to be crowded. If only.

London already has the best public transport infrastructure in the UK, and is one of the most well known cities in the world, and now we're spending tens of billions of pounds on the one city that really doesn't need it. It's actually far from the best place to hold an event for people in the UK - it's not centrally located, and is relatively hard to get to by car. Public transport is very good, but the money they have spent improving it just for the games could have built a brand new metro system in any other city. There is a strong perception that London was chosen because that's where the people making the decision are, rather than the national interest.

I've been involved in the planning for (obviously much smaller scale) events in the past, and the general modus operandi for working out "leveraged value" (the amount of money spent by attendees not counting at the event) is to claim two bed nights (before and after) for every day a person is at an event, plus three restaurant meals (evening, lunch, evening). A bit of statistical tomfoolery, and you come up with a figure for something like £1000 per person per day ticket as the additional economic benefit. Working out the actual value is strongly discouraged by the organisers, who have probably claimed match funding based on their own over-generous assessment of the leverage.

Re:Waste of money

[nogginthenog]

To be fair there has been a massive regenation of one of the most run-down areas of London.

Re:Waste of money

[Anonymous Coward]

Except that infrastructure that gets built before a pre-Olympics boom is (by definition) overkill with respect to the normal operation of the city, and therefore it largely goes to waste after the Olympics have ended and the tourist rush has cleared out.

That's why you end up with useless trash like Montreal's Olympic Stadium.

Re:Waste of money

[TheRaven64]

The UK government seems to be really bad at this kind of project (see also the Millennium Dome). When I was in Salt Lake City, I stayed in what used to be the Olympic Village from when they hosted the Winter Olympics. The houses that were built then are all now student accommodation and the hotel that they built for press is now used for people visiting the university (e.g. for conferences). I don't know how much the olympics cost them, but at least they got something lasting out of it. I doubt the lasting monument to the London Olympics will be anything other than a big chunk of debt.

Re:Waste of money

[Angostura]

Well, as a UK tax payer, I'm bloody glad we got it, I'm glad that a huge chunk of the spending was raised by private industry and I'm I'm glad I got some tickets.

Oh, and I'm quite looking forward to the legacy too - mind you, I live in East London so you might call me biased. Who does the game benefit? Well the people who live in Stratford now have a massive shiny shopping centre, which to be honest most of them seem to love. There are parents at my kids' school who don't have a car and think it's ace. Considering the fact that you still have to elbow your way around the place, they're not the only ones.

Television Coverage

[FSWKU]

Instead of the hassle of bringing in TV cameras, they could just route all those CCTV's to the broadcast trucks. I'm sure there's plenty of existing network infrastructure in place for that system anyway!

Re:Television Coverage

[digitig]

Not where they are building the Olympic Village. Before work started on the village, the only thing that CCTV would have seen there would have been a bunch of kids coming in on dirt bikes and vandalising the cameras. Of course, it would then miss the kids leaving the area as deserted as it had been before.

I assume you know that most of the figures cited for the number of CCTV cameras in use in the UK are bogus, by the way. A newspaper counted the number of cameras in two fairly seedy London shopping streets, and extrapolated the number based on the total miles of road in England (including rural lanes), then Citogenesis took over and even the government started citing the inflated figure. Yes, there are about 1.85 million cameras, but the majority are "inside premises, rather than facing the street". Most of the time we are not being watched on the street -- but we are if we go into retail or other business premises.

Re:Television Coverage

[mjwx]

I assume you know that most of the figures cited for the number of CCTV cameras in use in the UK are bogus, by the way. A newspaper counted the number of cameras in two fairly seedy London shopping streets, and extrapolated the number based on the total miles of road in England (including rural lanes), then Citogenesis took over and even the government started citing the inflated figure. Yes, there are about 1.85 million cameras, but the majority are "inside premises, rather than facing the street". Most of the time we are not being watched on the street -- but we are if we go into retail or other business premises.

This

Basically, if someone went and took a count of how many security cameras were in one LA shopping mall, then multiplied that number by how many malls could fit in the footprint of LA, that's how many cameras are in LA. But of course we know that number would be bullshit.

Basically, the quoted number of cameras in London does not differentiate between private property and crown land and few would argue that private property owners dont have the right to monitor their own premises.

Re:Windows 7? Why not Ubuntu?

[rbarreira]

I though you were joking at first but then I searched around and I found this:

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/10394970

Who cares?

[Anonymous Coward]

The London Olympics are an epic farce and communications infrastructure is the least of organisers worries.

What is with the 10,000 additional security staff they hope private industry is going to provide and pay for amid pressure and warnings from the US? The fact is that I don't trust our security services and have serious concerns about what they're really attempting to organise here. Surely if public safety were the main concern, organisers would find the money for additional police officers or call off the event?

Re:Windows 7? Why not Ubuntu?

[Anonymous Coward]

The London Olympics used a lot of what could be described as "brown envelopes" for all sorts of things, from "winning" to host the games (bribes to the IoC still going strong), to all sorts of contracts to build.

One thing is or sure, the 2012 Olympics are the MOST bent Olympics ever to be held.

Yawn

[Anonymous Coward]

The Olympics - pinnacle of corruption

And if you want to bring your own food & drink

[petes_PoV]

You will be eating at McDonalds,

... then you'll be limited to airport style security checks and limitations on type and quantity of what you can take in to the stadia, so they have every option fully closed off. Anyone know who's sponsoring the toilets?

Re:Is is just me or is the olympics getting worse

[TheRaven64]

If you remember when the olympics wasn't an overhyped commercial extravaganza and was actually about amateur athletes from around the world competing, then you definitely are old.

in the usa will be able to get bbc feeds over NBC

[Joe_Dragon]

People don't want the story filled time delayed NBC crap they want live feeds but will you need to get a uk proxy or will NBC put up the same feeds on there web site.

Re:Is is just me or is the olympics getting worse

[timeOday]

Isn't that just modern life in general? Everything is an increasingly narrow specialized niche, and nothing is personal, "just business." Even Christmas is a reduced to a rabid frenzy of competitive shopping. We've debunked the old myths, but haven't found anything meaningful to replace them with.

Re:Is is just me or is the olympics getting worse

[Anonymous Coward]

You have an Olympics every year? That might be why, you're being duped.

Re:Is is just me or is the olympics getting worse

[NonUniqueNickname]

Not *that* old... I remember the Olympics of 1980 in Moscow and 1984 in Los Angeles. Those weren't "overhyped commercial extravaganza" at all. They were overhyped political extravaganzas.

Re:Is is just me or is the olympics getting worse

[DerekLyons]

It's just you. This has been going since at least the earliest Olympics I can recall. (The '72 summer Olympics, my dad bought our first color TV specifically to watch the Games.)

Why?

[Anonymous Coward]

What do computers have to do with sports being performed by people? 11,500 desktops? Why? You don't need that much to stitch together live footage.

I'm sure

[vvpt]

the Olympic dream will make Great Britain a more open and democratic society. Just like it did for China.

Re:Is is just me or is the olympics getting worse

[anss123]

You have an Olympics every year?

It certainly does feel like it. Didn't China host the Olympics, like last year?

Re:And if you want to bring your own food & dr

[mrsmiggs]

Just like City Centres all over the UK there won't actually be any public toilets, you'll be forced into the nearest McDonalds for additional consumer experience opportunities.

Re:londan wires up for 2012

[Anonymous Coward]

When I decide where to host my website I could talk to others for some opinions about service they have received, I could search Google for reviews about hosting companies, or I could use a local company that I trust.

But you know what? Why would I do any of that when I could follow a spam link with terrible spelling from a spamming Slashdot account? Take my word, when you're next deciding on medicines, web hosting, or immigration matters, your best bet is to find a modded-down, pidgin English, irrelevant comment trying to increase PageRank despite all links having a "nofollow" attribute.

So sivas4u, keep doing what you're doing. I think it's the best way for you to escape poverty.

Re:Windows 7? Why not Ubuntu?

[91degrees]

Cost of software is only one factor. 13000 Windows 7 licences probably didn't cost anything like retail price, and the developers are potentially cheaper.

Plus, the winning contract isn't always all about cost. User familiarity with Windows is an important factor.

Re:Windows 7? Why not Ubuntu?

[TheRaven64]

Surely a vendor bidding to use open source software would have made a lower bid.

Almost certainly. I doubt the Free Software Foundation would have bid anything like as much as Microsoft to have its logo all over the Olympics coverage.

Re:Windows 7? Why not Ubuntu?

[Angostura]

But the business about the O2 network appears to be incorrect. http://www.theregister.co.uk/2011/11/02/olympic_coverage/

Re:Windows 7? Why not Ubuntu?

[nomadic]

Almost certainly. I doubt the Free Software Foundation would have bid anything like as much as Microsoft to have its logo all over the Olympics coverage.

The important thing is to make sure that no matter whose logo's all over the Olympics coverage that it's not the official 2012 Olympics logo. Britain has never had a reputation for a discerning aesthetic sense but this is even bad by British standards.

Re:Windows 7? Why not Ubuntu?

[stephanruby]

The Olympic Commission is an openly corrupt international organization which answers to no government. For the most part, governments let the commission do what it wants for fear that the Commission will blackball their country as a future host if they make too much troubles for them.

This isn't to say that corruption scandals regarding the Olympics, or any of the Olympic Commission members, don't come to light once in a while. It's just that you shouldn't expect that the bidding process will try to be fair, or even try to be government-like in anyway. Any bidding process for the Olympics will be completely opaque and directed by the Commission members themselves.

Furthermore, you can count on any value derived from the publicity of being a designated official vendor to the Olympics will be taken into account for any final bill.

Re:in the usa will be able to get bbc feeds over N

[Aereus]

The 2008 Olympics had a website with most events viewable on-demand. In the US I believe it was provided by NBC, and ran on Silverlight technology. I can't remember exactly, but there may have been a premium streaming package you could pay for as well. I would imagine similar will be available for 2012.

I was actually disappointed that the 2010 Winter Olympics didn't feature the same sort of streaming coverage. Unless you had a cable package you were SOL outside of the limited primetime coverage from NBC.

Re:Windows 7? Why not Ubuntu?

[Dexy]

That's all irrelevant for me - I won't be going there at all because I couldn't get any bloody tickets from the stupid ballots.

"11,500 desktops running Windows 7"

[Anonymous Coward]

that's scary