Slashdot Mirror
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."
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.
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 Only downside is it's slightly out of date.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.
These posts express my own personal views, not those of my employer
Next to Torchwood!
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.
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.
Take Nobody's Word For It.
I though you were joking at first but then I searched around and I found this:
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/10394970
The AACS key is NOT 0xF606EEFD628B1CA427BEA93A9CA9773F