[Wood FT]

so with a seagate 1tb I'm in the clear right, right?????????? 

[slackline]

Its worth noting as the article says that these were consumer-grade HDs used in RAID arrays which may not be optimal usage as they're not designed to be used in RAIDs (and unless you've RAID arrays yourself you may be fine).

[Obi-Wan is lost...]

To avoid confusion with Sky TV (the first thing you think of when looking for cloud storage  )…Microsoft were forced by BSkyB to change the name of Sky Drive and they chose the not confusing at all 'One Drive'.
So that’s…
OneDrive
Not to be confused with…
One.com cloud drive
One Drive
1Drive
Ondrives

Are we clear now?

[slackline]

First sensible thing from the coalition since the announcement of the referendum on scrapping first past the post...

Cabinet Office minister Francis Maude plans to standardise on open formats to cut costs on Office suite and break 'oligopoly' of IT suppliers

Some £200m has been spent by the public sector on the computer giant's [Microsoft] Office suite alone since 2010.

 

In the first instance, this will help departments to do something as simple as share documents with each other more easily. But it will also make it easier for the public to use and share government information. ... Technical standards for document formats may not sound like the first shot in a revolution. But be in no doubt: the adoption of compulsory standards in government threatens to break open Whitehall's lock-in to proprietary formats. In turn we will open the door for a host of other software providers.

 

[slackline]

The Day we Fight Back is today, a day of "action" against survielence.

[slackline]

Europes highest court decides not to break the internet

[slackline]

If you're running < Android 4.2 then be wary of scanning QR Codes, as there is an exploit that makes your phone vulnerable.

As good a reason as any to root and install Cyanogenmod or another ROM if you are stuck waiting for (or if they've been abandoned)  OEM updates .

[Obi-Wan is lost...]

DON'T turn it off and on again!

Cisco’s official advice regarding an issue with a dodgy memory component present in a lot of their kit is to ‘Minimize unnecessary power cycling’ aka ‘DON’T turn it off and on again!’ which is probably a first from an IT company.
http://blogs.cisco.com/news/ciscos-commitment-to-customers/
http://www.cisco.com/web/about/doing_business/memory.html#~impacted

[slackline]

Major cock up by Apple n the way they implement SSL/TLS (the technology behind making secure connections). Affects iOS & OSX, amazing that they've made such a fundamental error. Some patches available but not for everything yet.



Apple mobile devices at risk of hacking, firm says

[slackline]

OSX patch now released for Apple fans to apply.

[tomtom]

OSX patch now released for Apple fans to apply.

eh? like this?

[slackline]

 

You could try, but I doubt it would sort out the SSL/TLS problems.


This is a very basic, yet serious cock-up on Apple's behalf, and I would expect it to undermine people's confidence in their products (but realise it will likely have little impact).

[slackline]

Another goverment body saves money switching to open source.

Munich, Valencia, Canary Islands, Brazil  and even talk of the UK following suit (first step being open document formats linked above, software should follow though).  Its a long slow process but tides are changing.

[mr__j5]

I do wish that these journos would stop using 'open source software' and 'free software' as interchangeable terms.

Open source software does not imply that it is free to use. Take Android as a good example of that.


The articles always say 'money saved by switching to open source' when they really be 'money saved by switching to free software'

[slackline]

Most of the stories seem to lack the detail to be able to make the distinction, but somewhere like Munich has gone with FOSS (Free Open Source Software) in so much as they derived their own customised Linux distribution for use on government desktops.  Brazil use GNU/Linux on a lot of their data servers.  I guess the big saving outside of switching OS is an Office Suite and whilst Star Office used to be Open Sourced it was only free for individual/educational use and not for commercial, but my understanding is that OpenOffice and LibreOffice are both FOSS.

Of course there is nothing at all stopping companies from giving away open source software for free and charging for subsequent support (it works well for Red Hat).

Android is both though isn't it?  The licensing of Google Applications (Gmail, Maps, Now, Search, Translate etc.) on top of AOSP (Android Open-Source Project).  Thats why custom ROMs are free and you install the ROM/Android in one step and GApps in another as the ROM developers aren't allowed to distribute the Google applications.

Besides, theres not many journalists who seem to do decent research on what their asked/expected to write up.

[slackline]

I do wish that these journos would stop using 'open source software' and 'free software' as interchangeable terms.[/url]

I went back and re-read it and whilst later in the paragraph they do use the term "open source" its only after they have stated that they are using FOSS...

Last year, the IT department successfully concluded the switch to a cluster of computers, running free and open source software. This cluster includes 30,000 servers and workstations and is used for government’s databases, payroll systems, the government websites and its email services.. As per La Provincia, this switch to open source saved around a million euro in proprietary software. Good news is that the islands government pays 300,000 euro per year for the support for free software used by IT department.

So in this article they have made it quite clear at the outset (but not in the articles title) that the software is both free and open-source (and that they are paying for support rather than a license and support).

Do you have links to any examples where its reported that savings have been made from "open source" when in reality they are using proprietary software that is simply given away for free?

I'm genuinely interested and not attempting to pick holes as I think switching to open document formats (current proposal by UK government) and the switch to FOSS (and not just free or just open source software*) is a good thing in general, and in order to encourage this it needs to be reported accurately so that others don't get the wrong idea.

[mr__j5]

It was more the sentences like -

As per La Provincia, this switch to open source saved around a million euro in proprietary software.

that I was getting at.

I was complaining about the fact that they switch between the 2 terms as though they are the same.
I don't recall any articles where they only refer to OSS and assume that it is free.



BTW, as I understand it, although Android is free to download and build yourself, it includes open source implementations of technology that needs to be licensed, such as some MS patents and so it isn't theoretically free to use.

[slackline]

Cheers, I think the interchangeable use of the two terms stems from the fact that Open Source Software is almost always given away for free, and as you say the opposite isn't necessarily true as there are many proprietary projects that give away the compiled programs for free without allowing access to the source code.

Its like everyone referring to "Linux" which is just the kernel that gets the hardware to communicate with each other, when most people install GNU/Linux, the "GNU/" part being a huge suite of software developed by the Free Software Foundation (even on embedded devices such as routers, they still have stripped down set of GNU tools doing all the software and networking tasks, whilst the Linux kernel gets the hardware working together).  On Android the Linux kernel is used to get (most of) the hardware working together, whilst the UI is what is really Android....

...I'd heard that before about Android needing a license from MS due to patents, but from what I recall, and a quick search suggests (although dated from 2011) suggests its not necessarily Android in and of itself, rather some of the hardware that some manufacturers choose to use in their devices which presumably require proprietary drivers for which Microsoft hold a patent, since its the hardware manufacturers who pay the fee*.  A more recent article from the end of last year also suggests its manufacturers who foot this license.  Hard to find details of exactly what patent is being infringed though (and I don't really have much inclination to trawl through tons of tedious legalese).

Here is an article that covers more about the bundling of Google applications I was referring to.  Individuals can still download the apps and install them themselves.


* This could of course be the only way to get any fee if Google give away Android for free, but it that then raises the question of how they are able to give away patented software which you shouldn't be able to do, which makes me think its more a specific hardware/driver patent.

[slackline]

Slightly more entertaining is a survey of Americans knowledge (or lack) of technical terms...

    11 % of respondents thought "HTML" is a sexually transmitted disease.  It stands for Hyper-Text Mark-up Language
    77% of respondents could not identify what SEO means. SEO stands for "Search-Engine Optimization"
    27% identified "gigabyte" as an insect commonly found in South America. A gigabyte is a measurement unit for the storage capacity of an electronic device.
    42% said they believed a "motherboard" was "the deck of a cruise ship." A motherboard is usually a circuit board that holds many of the key components of a computer.
    23% thought an "MP3" was a "Star Wars" robot. It is actually an audio file.
    18% identified "Blu-ray" as a marine animal. It is a disc format typically used to store high-definition videos.
    15% said they believed "software" is comfortable clothing. Software is a general term for computer programs.
    12% said "USB" is the acronym for a European country. In fact, USB is a type of connector.

Despite the incorrect answers, 61% of the respondents said it is important to have a good knowledge of technology in this day and age.

  (Survey source may be slightly biased though).

[slackline]

Senior UK Politicians Start To Call For Review Of GCHQ's Spying Activities

[tomtom]

:D

http://www.independent.co.uk/life-style/gadgets-and-tech/news/one-in-10-americans-think-html-is-a-sexuallytransmitted-disease-study-finds-9170597.html

[slackline]

Cat and mouse continues for the movie industry with PopCornTime

[Obi-Wan is lost...]

Cat and mouse continues for the movie industry with PopCornTime

Works great if you don't mind watching the middle bit first might be quite good for something like Pulp Fiction!

[slackline]

Not tried it as I don't torrent copyrighted material, but I figured they might have thought about that and tweaked the torrent protocol to favour the start of the file first.

[Obi-Wan is lost...]

According to their FAQs it won't work in the UK without a proxy. I think it would best be avoided anyhow, easy enough for all the powers that be take note all the users and start legal proceedings...