And a recent poll

Run by a well-respected* survey company showed that 82% of iPhone users prefer Rick Astley.

*I made it up.

So what they really really want

Forget record labels - it's largely about the cloud. Currently many corporates and govt agencies are not able to comply with the law of their land and use cloud-based (read: US-owned) services at the same time. (Many still do it but that's a whole different problem...)

For example: Privacy laws demand the protection of the privacy of customers (and their data) on the one hand, yet the Patriot Act allows unfettered access by US law enforcement agencies on the other. There are many other ways under US law that personal data must be handed over, and there are other data protection, data ownership and data governance "law" that can't be adhered to once your data leaves your legal jurisdiction.

Until that "issue" is cleared away, it presents a barrier to the excellent idea of countries pouring money into the US for things cloudy.

@GM Fanboy (AC 18:44) GMO corn, as you well know, is somewhat different to hybrid varieties that american indians came up with. They weren't manipulating individual genes to ensure that they could be weedsprayed but survive, or guaranteed sterility. So less of that shit please, and get back to your job at Monsanto.

Active management?

Having driven round the M25 from J27 to J21a for forever, and round to J14 regular-like, can I just say that there's nothing remotely active about the way traffic is managed. It's bloody chaos!

Wow. The incredible HULC

It should be green and look bublously muscly. And make the wearer's shirt rip open. And make their hair go to hell in a handcart.

An outrage but...

I'm wondering how he presented two forms of ID with no arms. He may have used his feet but I'm going with a prehensile tongue.

I called it ages ago

Call me an Oracle, but I did pick this when the Sun/Orcale deal was first seriously mentioned. And AManFromMars may be right about accounting practises and so on - who knows / cares - but AC 21.18 may have touched on it when he mentioned MySQL. Damn LAMP installs must have cost Oracle a bundle over the years in lost Oracle sales, probably almost as pesky as MS SQL Server.

It's a shame as we'll have one less basket case to laugh about.

Oh FFS FSF

How on God's blue earthdoes Windows 7 make me any more "stuck" than Win XP ?

Oh and for the sake of pedantry for the 'letter from history' bit, an operating system is distinct from a kernel, so you can have multiple, different OSes on one version of a kernel. I believe that this is common in the Linux distro world.

Off to shave now.

I agree with Mark

When Mark Shuttleworth says that the only way that free software will win out is to have a coordinated approach, he is correct.

Too many IT operations & IT people have been burnt by interoperability issues between versions of Linux-based OSs, or by compatibility issues between software running on Linux, to have great amounts of faith in it. It is a perception thing, but you generally don't even get people considering something asan option when their perceptions are negative.

I have a favourite example from a friend. He inherited responsibility for running a Linux / Apache / MySQL website which struck a table size limitation in MySQL. To overcome the problem, an upgrade was in order. To upgrade required a new version of Red Hat. That version of Red Hat required a new version of Apache. And that no longer supported the version of PHP that the site ran. And that meant a re-write of large chunks of the website. And to top it all off, the version of the mail sending program, which the website relied upon, changed from postmail to sendmail or vice-versa.

This drove him mad and made him get the site rewritten in .net. In that order.

As I am all in favour of choice and competition, then I fully support Mark in his desire to get a more homogeneous product. And as for those in the Linux community complaining that Ubuntu hasn't done enough for Debian - what a joke! Debian would be just another also-ran without Ubuntu.

Non-story

It's a SEC filing FFS. They have to 'warn' people or get sued, as has been pointed out already. As for the stunning earnings drop and laying people off, well them's the times. Google just did it, and many others besides. (In fact, a 'recession' is a great time to shed a few pounds without upsetting the real value employees)

BTW - a few people here on about Vista and so on... We didn't upgrade from XP to Vista as I never saw the value. However... Win 7 is much lighter and works better - even in RC mode - and we will be upgrading.

@Ivan Headache

Well as they say, one bad Apple spoils the bunch.

I however am pleased that I gave my iPod to the Missus to go to the gym with....

Wonder if Google is watching

They probably are I guess. So one also wonders if Google's mooted OS will also come, for the EU, with the choice to select browsers or if it will be integrated with it. So if it is the latter, one wonders whether the mighty EU will look at this with the same level of scrutiny. Anything else will smack of imbalance.

Amazing

that Sun lasted this bloody long with all the drivel they've given us o'er the years.

I'm off to enjoy the sunset.

Well, a few comments

1: Saying 9/10 customers want this is not the same as saying 9/10 customers want this as their sole and exclusive way of delivering these applications.

2: I think there's probably a typo in the articel - not even MS has 100,000 million licences installed unless they have an intergalactic business we don't know about.

3: It seems to me that the achilles heel of clouds apps is ironically displayed by the "WPC WiFi network overload" issue referred to in the article - and if more & more people are using the web to do what was the local app domain, the problem may well be exacerbated.

4: I like the _idea_ of cloud computing but the practicalities need work. All those issues (where's my data, how secure/private is it, who owns it, what's my comeback if the service is down, what happens to my service and my data if the provider folds, how do I deliver service to users if there's a network outage, how do I integrate with legacy apps in a timely and performant manner etc) need to be sorted before I'd be comfortable recommending a cloud approach for my organisation.

However, I'm looking forward to seeing what MS has in the pipeline on this front, it could be interesting.

Looks OK

Works OK. I would have to try it more to see if I could be arsed moving from the Big G though.

@carbonrough

Yeah well rather you than me mate.

@Stupid

Of course it's bloody privacy invasion! You are not exactly going to invite the NSA to every phone call you make if you're Osama Bloody Bin Laden are you?

@Lee

I can't work anywhere that requires an employee badge. Or uniform for that matter.

@TheOtherMe

Just correcting a wee mistake, the six original stars on teh Aussie flag were for the original SIX colonies, NSWales, QLD, S A, Tassie, Victoria and W A. The seventh was added for the territory of Papua, now PNG. They never removed the star... I guess that the Northern Territory can borrow it.

On the topic of net filtering... I think it is right and proper for the Internet to be subject to exactly the same levels of censorship as publications, films and so on. To all those who say 'how dare the govt. censor what I read' etc., would you condone the publication of child porn magazines and allow them for sale at the corner shop? I don't, and don't think that it should be published via the web. Of course this means that the danger exists that censorship can go too far, but that is when the people need to speak out.

On another point, the article points out that the NZ law is more coherent and clear than the UK law. I believe that in some countries, the law is made _deliberately_ unclear and obfuscated to enable proceedings to be brought where this suits the powers that be.

Nice but

Expensive. So Expensive.

Offending people

Not that this is what we are meant to be discussing, Paki is (presumably) an offensive term to Pakistanis, whereas Welshman is the proper name for one from Wales.

Taffy would probably be the equivalent for a Welshman, so uk08blahblah should have mentioned his stupid Taffy manager. Much better.

Well done again Sarah Bee. Play on.

What?

I'm no Trekkie but I always thought that like Star Trek was in the future, and that the Klingons were advanced. So why would they use swords anyway?

Stupid idea.

@AC

Yeah, maybe but I don't want to do any of that shite. My car is already tracked by CCTV in this country!

@Robert Hill

Ha ha... pwned by the Bee with a sting in it's (presumably cute) tail...

So what's in it for me

I currently give Evil Google my search data by using their service. This allows me to find stuff on the web, with the quid pro quo that they have my searching behavious (sort of) and can make money targeting me with ads that I ignore.

So what's in this for me? Most times I don't want to be found. If my mates want to get hold of me they call/text/email me. And vice-versa. Why do I want to give Google more revenue for geotargeting me with ads? There's no payback that I can see (but please enlighten me) so I'd want to be, at the very least, paid for this service. Not that I will use it as I value my privacy more every day.

.

I'm with Mark

Except that with the sheer volume of customers that they have (about 750,000!) they'd need a few support techs and implementation dudes, let alone the sales bods and managers.

Happily, their stuff behaves as if it was made by five blokes in a shed. Which keeps the likes of you and I in a job.

@Graham Marsden

Yep.

And yet

I read today that the Bolivian el-presidente is endeavouring to ensure that the world's supply of Lithium is 'controlled' like OPEc manages the oil price. So producing Li-Ion based cars may well become rather costly.

Shame really.

Never mind, I shall have to put up with my Italian V6 for a while longer :-)

Irony

Sweet sweet irony here.

On the one hand, the Govt supposedly wants 'better, more affordable broadband for everyone'.

On the other hand, the Govt will increase the price by burdening users/ISPs with costs.

How does that make sense?

@P.Lee, @Pierre, @AC (Bad Management)

P. Lee - Well I disagree with your contention that this dude willnever work again. Many organisations are very lax at contacting references or even on checking up on whether a person has worked where they say they have, doing what they say they have. Especially for contractors.

Add to this that today's news is tomorrows fish & chip paper, when the guy gets out of the nick he may not have the problems you think he will.

Gutting but true.

@ Pierre - yes, I agree that a simple, single line calling a compiled programme (so not Perl) would be the better way to do it. It's the needle in the haystack (Only one line of code) and a seemingly discreet, small programme waiting to do its thing.

@AC - you might have the world's greatest change control process, but if you have sysadmins with root access to servers in production (which you have to, no way around it) , there's your security hole right there. They don't need to copy files over for release - they can make 'em. No disk needed, just vi and a keyboard.

In my opinion

The IIci was a cracker, I ran one with an outrageously expensive Pivot screen (A giant CRT that swivelled from Landscape to Portrait) that I thanksfully didn't pay for.

I also love the Mac Mini - so much power in such a tiny wee box. It makes a wicked media centre.

You have to say though that, for what you gets, you pays a lot. Hats off to them if they can get away with it.

Re earthquakes as illusion

``The illusion of reality, you know. Cows are on a higher transcendental plain. Or meadow``

That's because they're all on grass.

@Norman Andrews & @ Geoff Spick

Norman - Conversely, if your programmers are rubbish then the best Project Managers won't make much difference either.

Development is a team effort and needs great analysts, developers, testers, project managers - oh, and a good client, to deliver a successful product.

Geoff - which bit needs a refresher?? The coding or the drinking?!

@ The Irish Penguin

Yes, that's true. But 'up 61%' took them from 4% of the market to 6%. So while it looks like a great number, they're still way down there. And let's not forget that their 'desktop' products were cannibalised somewhat, which is why their overall market share is around 5% and holding.

I'd say that if anything is 'reaping benefits' it's Linux.

@AC 15:47 and @ the article

AC 15:47 - I agree. But not in such a fundamentatist way. The reduction of trade barriers means that the work can easily flow to the cheapest place, or (as we have seen at places like JCB) pressure and threats can reduce the cost of labour where the jobs ~currently~ are. There are few barriers to this behaviour and while it creates opportunities for some, it creates disadvantages for others.

@ the article... Apple's Leopard OS is reaping the benefits .. really? with Apple's giant 6% of the dektop and 4% of the laptop market? Making around 5% of the overall 'PC' market, that's not exactly ''reaping''. That's not to say it isn't better than Vista....

Oh come on...

When you have to manage a large and complex network, you need to ensure that the traffic is prioritised so that 'stuff that must get through now' (AKA Real-time traffic) gets through in real time and 'stuff that ain't that important' (AKA the other sh!t) gets through when it can. In reality, this only matters when the pipes are full.

VM are going to offer (up to) 50Meg. Now seriously, they aren't going to have a backbone here that is 50 Meg* number of subscribers, so in order to make the best use of the network when it is full or near full, they will de-prioritise some traffic. I did it with large, complex networks that I was responsible for and it resulted in a better experience for everyone. Why? Simple. Because things like VoIP, video conferencing and http/https traffic got priority, and they are the things that people see happening in real time and are affected by other things blocking the network. Stuff like SMTP, FTP, BitTorrent, BITS and so on can get deprioritised because essentially the end user doesn't really see the difference.

-So your email turns up 2 seconds later than it would have. Problem?

-So your Torrent download takes 3 minutes instead of 2 minutes 40. Is that really a problem?

You will probably suffer more from latency than from prioritisation if your torrent source(s) are far far away.

Having said all of this, VM only needs to look at packet headers to see what sort of traffic it is & it definitely shouldn't be looking at packet contents, which would be a breach of trust in my opinion.

People here are sooo quick to jump to a conclusion and pour forth with an opinion. At least nobody has *welcomed our packet sniffing overlords* etc. thank god.

Step 2

Step 2 requires something in between slugs and humans. I suggest the bipedal life forms I have seen in Ipswich.