Interesting about "Hitler, enraged by the Swiss air force shooting down Luftwaffe planes that strayed across the border, ordered invasion plans drawn up, but they were never acted upon.". When USAF planes were involved in large scale bombing raids over Germany, some were shot down by Swiss anti-aircraft fire when they strayed into Switzerland usually after being 'injured' over Germany. The USA threatened to declare war against Switzerland if it continued. The Swiss immediately stopped their 'target practice'.

Bt

I'm not able to access certain websites since yesterday afternoon. I'm on a BT Business line. It could alternatively have something to do with my local BT exchange going fibre. Anybody know if it is a BT fault?

How to put 'thumbs' icons after message

Somebody, please, tell me how to put the thumbs up & thumbs down icons after a message. I've tried clicking on them and also dragging them into the message. Is it something to do with using Firefox rather than Internet Explorer?

Analysts & Managers

I'm going to be provocative. My view is that there are too many project managers who are too obsessed with Prince and other paper generators. Analysts should be the project managers as they are the people who best know what the users want and should be cost & benefit focussed. I also see no use for full time testers as they have no idea what features are vital in a system and what features are of little importance. Again their jobs should be done by analysts.

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US Veterans System

The solution to the primary admin & clinical system has been around for years, namely the US Veterans System.

Can anybody tell me how to 'sell Nokia shares short'?

Can this Trojan 'infect' Linux distros (e.g. Ubuntu)? If so, what software (e.g. Firefox add on) can prevent it happening?

SAP

At least Oracle provide products with some semblance of user friendliness. Whereas, when I first saw SAP (approx 5 years ago), I thought that I was in a 70's time warp.

Revenue?

I'm baffled as to where Facebook make their money. I've never even noticed any ads on Facebook's site though I use it very little: perhaps that is because I use the CustomizeGoogle extension with Firefox? Though I have noticed that a number of online newspapers cause Facebook's site to be 'contacted'. Is that their source of revenue?

I'll believe it when I see it

As an example the government has 'sub-contracted' advertising of contracts to the National SME Engagement Programme (supplycontracts.co.uk). This seems to be avenue for advertising IT contracts that have already been awarded! Also, it's a mechanism for a commercial company to get free marketing for their money making seminars.

Rapayment of bail out money

Does anyone know how this money is/has been repaid?

Contracts for SMEs

The government policy on OSS contracts is completely inoperative. In fact, the government policy on allowing SMEs to bid for contracts is also inactive. I've signed up for biddiing for contracts but there are never any advertised in the Midlands region. Does anyone know how to find out about contracts for SMEs?

Fire looks like a great value tablet. Therefore, it's worth buying it and immediately replacing Amazon's no-doubt-rubbish-and-advert-infested Android with another e.g. Cyanogen.

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PS I'm a Firefox user who has yet to figure out how to get the thumb-down & thumb-up icons into my message. I've tried dragging them with the result that it shows their filenames as text. I've tried clicking on them. Please advise me how to do it.

The paragraph about support for 11.04 is interesting. It misses out the point that support for 10.04 (a long term release aka LTS) is for 3 years (i.e. until April 2004). Please see the URL below for a discussion on STS versus LTS:

http://brainstorm.ubuntu.com/idea/16981

I wonder if the main reason for Google to initiate Android was to make life difficult for Apple and to a lesser extent for Microsoft. Google makes so much profit that they can afford to cast a bunch of dollars down the gutter in order to achieve this.

I've never understood what Autonomy actually does. Their web site is a touch opaque. The first presentation of theirs that Oracle made to them seems to have the same characteristic. Canb anybody enlighten me as as to how they add value to companies?

This coalition are often short-termist and/or blinkered in their approach to many important matters. This can be seen in for example: their tripling of tuition fees, probable delay of ring fencing / disengagement of retail & investment banking, attempts to sell off nationally owned forests.

Nuclear Energy

In the article there is no comparison of costs between different method of energy generation. For instance, nuclear energy production is currently much more expensive than energy generation from gas or hydro. And that's without taking into account the as yet unknown costs of fissile material disposal. I suggest therefore that the whole of the article is completely flawed.

I like the idea of anonymity

As the article said, operators want the details (particularly where you live) so that they can sell us stuff. Why shouldn't we have the right to buy phones & sim cards anonymously, just as we can buy computers anonymously which we can then use for anonymous communication?

Re Open Office

I've always suspected that MS's real reason for the Ribbon's introduction into Office was to dissuade newbie users of MS Office from switching to Open Office which uses a similar menu structure to the old MS Office. Obviously, this gives a good chance of maintaining their future revenue from MS Office.

Channel Islands

Let's be provocative. I do not understand why the Channel Islands are allowed to have zero/exempt from VAT for businesses domiciled there. Surely, either the Channel Islands are part of Great Britain or they're not. If they are part of Great Britain then they should have the same tax system as the other components of Great Britain. If they're not, then they should be regarded as non-EU countries.

Further to questions about passthrough

I've just read about Skimming (on Wikipedia). And, as I understand it now, a skimming device attached to an ATM allows the card owner's PIN to be read as it is keyed by the owner and the card's magnetic stripe contents to also be read. Thus a fraudster would duplicate a card's magnetic stripe onto a a 'blank' card and the be able to extract cash from an ATM using the read PIN. I do not understand why banks still put magnetic stripes onto chip & pin cards, since the chip is very difficult to copy onto a 'blank' card. Can anybody explain why?

Mr

Can someone please explain to me why are password changes are needed?

Improving the user experience

I really don't understand Mark Shuttleworth when it is stated that he says that Canonical is concentrating on improving the user's experience. Canonical should realise that their prime market are Windows end users. Otherwise, how could someone in Canonical have thought up the idea of left hand side positioned window minimise/maximise/close buttons with the changed icons for minimise & maximise.

When bugs are reported on Launchpad, there is often no proper response (often there is isn't one at all except for agreeing that it's a valid bug) : there should be an indication of when the bug will be fixed & released into the standard repositories as opposed to some developer gobbledygook. It seems to me that Launchpad (for Ubuntu) is trying to do 2 conflicting jobs: reporting bugs (mainly from end users) and intra-developer communication.

Ubuntu is acquiring a bad reputation for ignoring users: is it trying to compete with MS for the title of being the most user unfriendly software provider? I suggest that Ubuntu should publicise (on their web site) the bug fixes incorporated into the standard repository for the latest LTS release. It might also be a good idea to scrap STS releases and concentrate resources on bug fixing.

SAP is for saps

The basic reason why SAP sells so well is that the people who buy it never use it. It's user unfriendly and is a relic of 20+ years ago systems: my previous employer used to send users on 20+ day courses in order to learn how to use it.

Evolution

This is not a plug. However, I think that the article should have mentioned Evolution, both for & against.

gos Rocket

Have you tried gos?

BTW what wireless card/dongle are you using? I believe that you get different power consumption with Linux driver rather than ndiswrapper using Windows wrapper.

I don't find Ubuntu awash with useless software. In fact I've downloaded lots of extra software e.g. Google Earth, ms fonts, codecs drivers, Scribus, gPaint, Rosegarden.

Regards,

John

BT & TalkTalk

At home we have a BT business connection and a TalkTalk home connection. Both are often equally slow, usually after 4pm, for email & web browsing. We do not use bit torrent and never download films/dvds/music. Can anyone tell me why we this is? BT's status phone service never shows problems in our area. Additionally, there are occasional problems with sending/receiving mail due to BT's pop3 & smtp servers.

Some points

I wholeheartedly agree with Morely Dotes points.

I don't expect my wife to install an OS. I install Ubuntu Linux only because it has been difficult to buy a PC pre-installed with a Linux distro. I wouldn't expect my wife to install any variant of Windows. However, when I've previously bought PCs with Windows pre-installed, I've always had to clear the HD & install again, due to the bloatware & poor configuration done by the PC 'manufacturer'. I don't know if the same applies to Dells pre-installed with Ubuntu.

I don't run servers. My wife uses a desktop with Ubuntu Gutsy and there have been very few problems with it. She also has a laptop with Windows XP (because I haven't got round to putting Ubuntu on it) and there are frequent problems with it. The latest was that it suddenly refused to print to a networked printer. I ended up 'removing' the printer & installing it. The Microsft knowledgebase was of no help.

Often, people make valid criticisms of the documentation in Linux distributions. However, the distribution companies need to make money. As the software is normally free, the usual way to do this is via selling training & manuals. However, people are often unwilling to buy these.

Users often say that a particular Windows application (e.g. Photoshop) is not available in Linux. However, they seem to be unwilling to learn a free of charge application (e.g. GIMP) or criticise it as not having some of the facilities of the Windows application.

Both the above characteristics really stem from many people wanting to have something for nothing without being willing to put in some extra effort themselves. I suspect that this is one of the main reasons why Linux distros will never wrest the mass market from Microsoft.

To Anonymous Coward

You have an apt name. Your message gives the impression that you're part of the Microsoft publicity machine.

Your method of installing a printer is way out of date. On the distributions I currently use it's done by GUI (rather than the command line) and it's as easy as Microsoft's. I'm not going to go into the many superiorities of Linux over Windows.

I use Linux at home and have very few problems with it. I use Windows at work and am frequently suffering with it. Anyone with an open mind soon realises the superiority of a modern Linux distribution over Windows + Office etc.