No the first challenge was to post as many pictures of cats and biscuit recipes as possible to the cloud as possible. This challenge is still underway, by the time it has been completed everyone will have forgotten what the fuss over 'cloud computing' was all about and moved on to the next big IT craze and not actually implement any sound long term businesses in the 'cloud'.
Such is the power of IT marketing, ooooooooo look a pretty flower...
We already have a number of MVNOs in the UK (we had them before the EU started to promote them); Tesco and Virgin spring to mind but the question remains whether they are having a significant effect on the market, they don't seem to have taken a significant market share just yet. If the merger is let through it may well be on the back of mandatory provision (rate + terms) for MVNO by the merged company.
In 2007 we had 71 million handsets in the UK and the BBC think that the combined company would have 37% market share. It doesn't look like this would be classed as a monopoly however we could be well on our way to a cartel with only O2 and Vodafone in position to be competitive with the new merged company and 3 basically tied to the new company because of their extensive Network sharing with T-Mobile.
Both the EU and UK (Competition Commission and/or Ofcom) regulators will be paying a great deal of attention to the merger, given the high barriers of entry to the market place (i.e. it's not really possible) and the low number of competitors.
The bbc created specific version for the iplayer adapted to the older version of flash on the Wii. I'm sure the bbc iplayer programmers are retreating to their coding den right this minute to get an update together...
I honestly can't believe this article is even being discussed, there is absolutely no substance in the story at all. It's typical a typical Daily Fail story, when there's nothing to hate make something up. It's so ridiculously easy to spot, here's a quick checklist.
The 'idea' is so clearly unworkable and they provide so few details as to how it might be function to leave it entirely up to the imagination of the reader as to how it might work.
The opposition MP they quote isn't even talking about the non-existent proposal, he's talking about something only tenuously related to the issue at hand.
The non-political expert in this case from Google appears completely bemused by the story.
There's absolutely no quotes from a minister, ruling party mp, or government advisor with any clout in the area and to top that the low ranking spokesman who put their looney tunes story to flatly denied it. Then of course he would deny it, he works for the government they're all in on the conspiracy to tax is into oblivion.
The run a story like this everyday if even half of them were true; I'd be taxed 110% of my income.
"On Parker's office wall is a signed photo of Saddam Hussein, gifted to him by the US Army's 4th Infantry Division. During his time in captivity, Hussein was apparently shown the 1999 movie South Park: Bigger, Longer And Uncut, in which he's depicted as gay, and enjoying intercourse with the devil, repeatedly. "I have it on pretty good information from the marines on detail in Iraq that they showed him the movie," says Stone. "That's really adding insult to injury."
Could be a ruse by Matt Stone, I wouldn't put it past them.
Indeed after the 1st 3 and a half years in IT I do believe I've done most of these tasks and I kept the same job title for most of the time. Although the IT Mortician should thank his lucky stars that the same manager didn't point to that room full of health hazard antiques and say 'We have 8 new starters next week but no budget for new hardware, make what you can out of that lot'.
Unless this is stated in a license or terms of service of some sort then you can't really rely on the claim. Valve might not last forever; they might get bought by some negligent company, become negligent, or one day just turn off all the servers without notice because they went bust. How do you get you the install files for your old game? If I've got the boxed copy, it's still mine and I can still play it, sell it or whatever I want.
Valve's solution here is still DRM and it's still unacceptable.
Infact the overheads for these online box shifters are so low that they quite often cheaper than the download options, recently released MMO Football Manager Live is cheaper to renew by buying a 'box' from Amazon than it is to renew by subscription. The arguements against downloading games are the same they were with music downloads pre-Amazon and iTunes going non-drm:
1. It's cheaper to buy the physical item
2. The DRM encumbered nature of today's video games makes it almost essential to have the physical disk and box, if only for proof that you own the damned thing.
3. The pirated version of the game can be less hassle than downloading the game.
4. You have to go to disparate sources to get different types of game downloaded.
Once these issues have been overcome we will be downloading games, but at the moment it seems a long way off. The publisher's of games seem to control the download distribution of their games much more closely than record companies do and let's not forget the games industry is still growing they have no particular reason to change their business model.
If we're playing server OS then Microsoft's offerings breakdown like this:
Windows 7 Starter
Windows 7 Home Basic
Windows 7 Home Premium
Windows 7 Professional
Windows 7 Ultimate
Windows 7 Enterprise
Windows Server 2008 Standard Edition
Windows Server 2008 Enterprise Edition
Windows Server 2008 Datacenter Edition
Windows HPC Server 2008
Windows Web Server 2008
Windows Storage Server 2008
Windows Small Business Server 2008
Windows Essential Business Server 2008
Windows Home Server
And until recently you could also buy the server licenses with and witout Hyper-V. There's no way anyone can argue Microsoft aren't playing games with their various editions, the server OS editions are in-particular are selling a slightly less crippled version of the same thing but at least from Server 2008 onwards they're being honest, anyone who has a volume license gets two dvds one with 32 bit OS and one with 64 bit.
In the UK it is usually the case that the local LEA has oversight on matter such as IT and will provide a lot of the infrastructure, I believe most of the IT for the schools in my area have been centralised in this way. However the Academy schools have been given a remit to effectively trail blaze methods of education so they will have much more independence when it comes to expenditure on IT including the provision of 'interactive' learning and they are given significant budget to do so.
I think the schools should really be looking at lab environments but their use should be for more than just typing up, you should be providing specialist equipment in each lab and looking to integrate computers into the traditional labs for each subject. In each subject you should be looking to innovate your teaching practices using technology, I'm not in education but just having a room full of computers always looked like a missed opportunity to me. Thin client technology is out because the benefit from centralising will be virtually nil given the specialisation required in each subject. Equally issuing laptops to every child would also seem to me of little value unless you are in a particulary deprived area where ownership of computers is very low especially; given the cost of maintenance will be quite high and the fact that most students will have something 'better' at home.
The bbc stream pre-recorded content as well as their live channels. There is however a p2p version which allows you to download the tv but you have to wait for everything to download. People don't like waiting, they much prefer pressing play and watching on demand, so the streaming version although lower quality and a little glitchy is more popular. The BBC responding to feedback on iPlayer want to make the streaming version more bandwidth intensive, they are already pushing the boundaries of what can be delivered over ADSL in the UK and until we get a proper fibre network to the majority of UK homes we're going to struggle with both p2p and streaming of anything that resembles the quality of the over air broadcasts.
The sad thing is the right wing press in the UK will use this as a stick to beat the EU and call for our withdrawl and resulted isolation. The increasingly alarming path taken by the UK government has been sparked by the gutter press, who despite becoming less and less relevent to modern life are listened to more than ever by politicians hunting for the vote of the swing voters in a few small constituencies. The democratic deficit in the UK is reducing our freedoms, it's high time the system was reformed and politicans actually paid attention to what people want instead of relying on economic bubbles to keep the populace happy and reactionary policies like this one to keep the media on side.
I imagine that media, competitors (and entourage), government officals (local and international) and permenant IOC staff will supply their own laptops. There were over 10,000 competitors at the 2008 games and many more visiting media and government officials, now some might bring their own printers but it's unlikely that they'd want to haul them to each venue.
It's a bit a leap for the Open Office developers to develop their own sharepoint style collaboration tools and as pointed out why should they bother there are plenty of Open Source wikis, cms, intranet, change management packages available that would more than make up for Sharepoint. The Open Office developers should build an API which allows browser based applications to integrate seamlessly in a Sharepoint style with Open Office, the world does not need another cms or wiki but OO does need a way to fend off Sharepoint + Office integration. This would not only open up OSS integration but the likes of Google and Microsoft could easily (technologically speaking) allow OO users to work with their collaboration tools.
This is what I was thinking he meant, but it's only going to be true if we get a great cutting depression rather than a recession. In a recession the majority of jobless are going to be okay in the short term (most of countries have some sort of benefits, and family or savings might support you if the state does not). In the medium however they will need a job, Open Source software creation or doing other activities that aren't going to earn corn immediately is a good gateway opportunity to getting one or even just passing the time, so Open Source will prosper. In a depression with rampant inflation, and huge job lossess sure open source is going to struggle for productive workers (lack of interwebs access perhaps becoming a stumbling block) but so would everybody.
Actually the right freedom of speech or more acurately freedom of expression is enshrined in the European Convention on Human Rights and has been part of UK law since 2000.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Article_10_ECHR
(apart from they'll make money on some of songs) It includes their latest album In Rainbows which was physically distributed on XL Recordings. Perhaps EMI have maintained the digital distribution rights to the latest album, since Radiohead are freelance and all but it's clearly the decision of the artist not the label.
Sharepoint works fine on firefox, it's not got all the fancy active x menus but it just requires a couple of extra clicks to use the plain html versions. You can even check documents out so it's probably better for collaboration than just relying on Excel and Calc to make sure documents are locked.
Sharepoint is one of the first Microsoft tools where they have had cross platform built platform built in from the start, sure it works better on Windows + Office but it's also much easier to admin a Linux box on a Linux desktop.
A high volume of seemingly unsolicited email sent through any email domain is going to cause problems such as being blacklisted and filtered, at least Google will keep a track of this for you and stop unscrupulous activity on your domain. If you're truly a Mom and Pop operation then you can just go ahead and create a Yahoo (or Google) group and make sure everything has open opt-in and opt-out options.
For me the biggest problem with Google mail would be that you don't have access to the underlying databases so if you ever want to move away from that platform the migration is going to be one hell of a mess especially if you want to hang onto your existing emails.
Once the bill is written the government has already made up it's mind it's too late, in 99.99% of occasions the bill passes. Because parliament and the government in the UK are not seperate (the government is in power because it has a majority in parliament) if you are in opposition to the government or even part of the ruling party then the only time to really influence government policy is at elections (i.e. you choose the government) or during a so called 'national debate'.
So now is the time to act especially if you have a Labour MP, if the Labour's base support revolts agains this idea and they still push it through they could find themselves in 3rd place in the opinion polls. With back bench MPs especially sensitive about losing their seats at the next election they are unlikely to allow the leadership of the party to push through something that is unpopular.
The actual complaint is not in relation to OOXML but the interoperability of Office 2007 with Open Office et al. BECTA can not recommend Office 2007 because it does not currently support ODF a format widely used by it's cheaper rivals. BECTA's concern here is that they kids (well their parents) on the edge of poverty will have to shell out for Office 2007 and Windows or face being unable to work on their documents at home. If Office 2007 without addons is deployed in a school it is an active barrier to learning and Microsoft should be ashamed for allowing parents to even have to think about the question 'Office 2007 or food?' when they go shopping.
Sky financed the first series of Battlestar reimaging, and they've done some good work bringing the Discworld novels to tv. When they do drama they actually tend to do it quite well, unfortunately they very rarely actually get the budget to do anything. They only have a very small share of the UK audience so it's understandable.
Although XP may have behind Ubuntu on recognising and installing hardware out of the box, Vista is pretty much on par now it automagically loads drivers for most hardware, although it sometimes takes a couple of reboots to get everything in place it does it by itself. Drivers aren't really the issue with OS selection anymore, out there in userland a computer is a box with some functional programs on it. Are people who can't install wireless card drivers really going to want to install an entirely alien operating system and risk the function of their machine without someone holding their hand?
In the grand parent post's case the person holding the hand was kind geek who installed the operating system but in most people's case it's going to be the OEM or their employers holding their hand. You need to convince businesses to adopt linux both as a tool and as something to sell. If the manufacturer's provide hardware that has Linux support built right in, you won't ever have to worry about drivers much again.
Until they make the interface usable I'm sticking with IE6 for all my incompatible with firefox browsing needs. Is it me or did they just redesign the IE interface just to make it different to Firefox, what exactly is wrong with old faithful IE6 and Firefox style layout?
Slashdot Mirror
Such is the power of IT marketing, ooooooooo look a pretty flower...
We already have a number of MVNOs in the UK (we had them before the EU started to promote them); Tesco and Virgin spring to mind but the question remains whether they are having a significant effect on the market, they don't seem to have taken a significant market share just yet. If the merger is let through it may well be on the back of mandatory provision (rate + terms) for MVNO by the merged company.
Both the EU and UK (Competition Commission and/or Ofcom) regulators will be paying a great deal of attention to the merger, given the high barriers of entry to the market place (i.e. it's not really possible) and the low number of competitors.
The bbc created specific version for the iplayer adapted to the older version of flash on the Wii. I'm sure the bbc iplayer programmers are retreating to their coding den right this minute to get an update together...
I honestly can't believe this article is even being discussed, there is absolutely no substance in the story at all. It's typical a typical Daily Fail story, when there's nothing to hate make something up. It's so ridiculously easy to spot, here's a quick checklist.
The 'idea' is so clearly unworkable and they provide so few details as to how it might be function to leave it entirely up to the imagination of the reader as to how it might work.
The opposition MP they quote isn't even talking about the non-existent proposal, he's talking about something only tenuously related to the issue at hand.
The non-political expert in this case from Google appears completely bemused by the story.
There's absolutely no quotes from a minister, ruling party mp, or government advisor with any clout in the area and to top that the low ranking spokesman who put their looney tunes story to flatly denied it. Then of course he would deny it, he works for the government they're all in on the conspiracy to tax is into oblivion.
The run a story like this everyday if even half of them were true; I'd be taxed 110% of my income.
"On Parker's office wall is a signed photo of Saddam Hussein, gifted to him by the US Army's 4th Infantry Division. During his time in captivity, Hussein was apparently shown the 1999 movie South Park: Bigger, Longer And Uncut, in which he's depicted as gay, and enjoying intercourse with the devil, repeatedly. "I have it on pretty good information from the marines on detail in Iraq that they showed him the movie," says Stone. "That's really adding insult to injury."
Could be a ruse by Matt Stone, I wouldn't put it past them.
Indeed after the 1st 3 and a half years in IT I do believe I've done most of these tasks and I kept the same job title for most of the time. Although the IT Mortician should thank his lucky stars that the same manager didn't point to that room full of health hazard antiques and say 'We have 8 new starters next week but no budget for new hardware, make what you can out of that lot'.
Unless this is stated in a license or terms of service of some sort then you can't really rely on the claim. Valve might not last forever; they might get bought by some negligent company, become negligent, or one day just turn off all the servers without notice because they went bust. How do you get you the install files for your old game? If I've got the boxed copy, it's still mine and I can still play it, sell it or whatever I want.
Valve's solution here is still DRM and it's still unacceptable.
1. It's cheaper to buy the physical item
2. The DRM encumbered nature of today's video games makes it almost essential to have the physical disk and box, if only for proof that you own the damned thing.
3. The pirated version of the game can be less hassle than downloading the game.
4. You have to go to disparate sources to get different types of game downloaded.
Once these issues have been overcome we will be downloading games, but at the moment it seems a long way off. The publisher's of games seem to control the download distribution of their games much more closely than record companies do and let's not forget the games industry is still growing they have no particular reason to change their business model.
If we're playing server OS then Microsoft's offerings breakdown like this:
Windows 7 Starter
Windows 7 Home Basic
Windows 7 Home Premium
Windows 7 Professional
Windows 7 Ultimate
Windows 7 Enterprise
Windows Server 2008 Standard Edition
Windows Server 2008 Enterprise Edition
Windows Server 2008 Datacenter Edition
Windows HPC Server 2008
Windows Web Server 2008
Windows Storage Server 2008
Windows Small Business Server 2008
Windows Essential Business Server 2008
Windows Home Server
And until recently you could also buy the server licenses with and witout Hyper-V. There's no way anyone can argue Microsoft aren't playing games with their various editions, the server OS editions are in-particular are selling a slightly less crippled version of the same thing but at least from Server 2008 onwards they're being honest, anyone who has a volume license gets two dvds one with 32 bit OS and one with 64 bit.
In the UK it is usually the case that the local LEA has oversight on matter such as IT and will provide a lot of the infrastructure, I believe most of the IT for the schools in my area have been centralised in this way. However the Academy schools have been given a remit to effectively trail blaze methods of education so they will have much more independence when it comes to expenditure on IT including the provision of 'interactive' learning and they are given significant budget to do so. I think the schools should really be looking at lab environments but their use should be for more than just typing up, you should be providing specialist equipment in each lab and looking to integrate computers into the traditional labs for each subject. In each subject you should be looking to innovate your teaching practices using technology, I'm not in education but just having a room full of computers always looked like a missed opportunity to me. Thin client technology is out because the benefit from centralising will be virtually nil given the specialisation required in each subject. Equally issuing laptops to every child would also seem to me of little value unless you are in a particulary deprived area where ownership of computers is very low especially; given the cost of maintenance will be quite high and the fact that most students will have something 'better' at home.
The bbc stream pre-recorded content as well as their live channels. There is however a p2p version which allows you to download the tv but you have to wait for everything to download. People don't like waiting, they much prefer pressing play and watching on demand, so the streaming version although lower quality and a little glitchy is more popular. The BBC responding to feedback on iPlayer want to make the streaming version more bandwidth intensive, they are already pushing the boundaries of what can be delivered over ADSL in the UK and until we get a proper fibre network to the majority of UK homes we're going to struggle with both p2p and streaming of anything that resembles the quality of the over air broadcasts.
The sad thing is the right wing press in the UK will use this as a stick to beat the EU and call for our withdrawl and resulted isolation. The increasingly alarming path taken by the UK government has been sparked by the gutter press, who despite becoming less and less relevent to modern life are listened to more than ever by politicians hunting for the vote of the swing voters in a few small constituencies. The democratic deficit in the UK is reducing our freedoms, it's high time the system was reformed and politicans actually paid attention to what people want instead of relying on economic bubbles to keep the populace happy and reactionary policies like this one to keep the media on side.
I imagine that media, competitors (and entourage), government officals (local and international) and permenant IOC staff will supply their own laptops. There were over 10,000 competitors at the 2008 games and many more visiting media and government officials, now some might bring their own printers but it's unlikely that they'd want to haul them to each venue.
It's a bit a leap for the Open Office developers to develop their own sharepoint style collaboration tools and as pointed out why should they bother there are plenty of Open Source wikis, cms, intranet, change management packages available that would more than make up for Sharepoint. The Open Office developers should build an API which allows browser based applications to integrate seamlessly in a Sharepoint style with Open Office, the world does not need another cms or wiki but OO does need a way to fend off Sharepoint + Office integration. This would not only open up OSS integration but the likes of Google and Microsoft could easily (technologically speaking) allow OO users to work with their collaboration tools.
This is what I was thinking he meant, but it's only going to be true if we get a great cutting depression rather than a recession. In a recession the majority of jobless are going to be okay in the short term (most of countries have some sort of benefits, and family or savings might support you if the state does not). In the medium however they will need a job, Open Source software creation or doing other activities that aren't going to earn corn immediately is a good gateway opportunity to getting one or even just passing the time, so Open Source will prosper. In a depression with rampant inflation, and huge job lossess sure open source is going to struggle for productive workers (lack of interwebs access perhaps becoming a stumbling block) but so would everybody.
Actually the right freedom of speech or more acurately freedom of expression is enshrined in the European Convention on Human Rights and has been part of UK law since 2000. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Article_10_ECHR
(apart from they'll make money on some of songs) It includes their latest album In Rainbows which was physically distributed on XL Recordings. Perhaps EMI have maintained the digital distribution rights to the latest album, since Radiohead are freelance and all but it's clearly the decision of the artist not the label.
Sharepoint works fine on firefox, it's not got all the fancy active x menus but it just requires a couple of extra clicks to use the plain html versions. You can even check documents out so it's probably better for collaboration than just relying on Excel and Calc to make sure documents are locked. Sharepoint is one of the first Microsoft tools where they have had cross platform built platform built in from the start, sure it works better on Windows + Office but it's also much easier to admin a Linux box on a Linux desktop.
For me the biggest problem with Google mail would be that you don't have access to the underlying databases so if you ever want to move away from that platform the migration is going to be one hell of a mess especially if you want to hang onto your existing emails.
So now is the time to act especially if you have a Labour MP, if the Labour's base support revolts agains this idea and they still push it through they could find themselves in 3rd place in the opinion polls. With back bench MPs especially sensitive about losing their seats at the next election they are unlikely to allow the leadership of the party to push through something that is unpopular.
The actual complaint is not in relation to OOXML but the interoperability of Office 2007 with Open Office et al. BECTA can not recommend Office 2007 because it does not currently support ODF a format widely used by it's cheaper rivals. BECTA's concern here is that they kids (well their parents) on the edge of poverty will have to shell out for Office 2007 and Windows or face being unable to work on their documents at home. If Office 2007 without addons is deployed in a school it is an active barrier to learning and Microsoft should be ashamed for allowing parents to even have to think about the question 'Office 2007 or food?' when they go shopping.
Sky financed the first series of Battlestar reimaging, and they've done some good work bringing the Discworld novels to tv. When they do drama they actually tend to do it quite well, unfortunately they very rarely actually get the budget to do anything. They only have a very small share of the UK audience so it's understandable.
Although XP may have behind Ubuntu on recognising and installing hardware out of the box, Vista is pretty much on par now it automagically loads drivers for most hardware, although it sometimes takes a couple of reboots to get everything in place it does it by itself. Drivers aren't really the issue with OS selection anymore, out there in userland a computer is a box with some functional programs on it. Are people who can't install wireless card drivers really going to want to install an entirely alien operating system and risk the function of their machine without someone holding their hand?
In the grand parent post's case the person holding the hand was kind geek who installed the operating system but in most people's case it's going to be the OEM or their employers holding their hand. You need to convince businesses to adopt linux both as a tool and as something to sell. If the manufacturer's provide hardware that has Linux support built right in, you won't ever have to worry about drivers much again.Until they make the interface usable I'm sticking with IE6 for all my incompatible with firefox browsing needs. Is it me or did they just redesign the IE interface just to make it different to Firefox, what exactly is wrong with old faithful IE6 and Firefox style layout?