paddysteed - Slashdot User

Comment 16 Y/O UK (Score 1) 632

by paddysteed on Monday October 08, 2012 @03:58PM (#41589609) Attached to: Ask Slashdot: What Were You Taught About Computers In High School?

Nothing of note. I did a GCSE in IT and it was rubbish, basically Facebook ethics and how to use Word. I did not chose IT at A level even though I want to do CS at uni. This is because it is more Facebook ethics. I remember one question on my GCSE paper was a table listing three phones and the question asked me which one had the most memory (not even specific as to whether it was RAM or Flash storage although i could infer it), what a stupid question. it was basically, which is bigger 100 or 200, also aparently examiners do not understand that usually flash memory chips come in base two divisions

Submission + - Office to Become Fully Open XML Compliant (at last) (consortiuminfo.org)

Submitted by

Andy Updegrove

on Tuesday August 14, 2012 @12:53PM

Andy Updegrove writes: "Between 2005 and 2008, an unparalleled standards war was waged between Microsoft, on the one hand, and IBM, Google, Oracle and additional companies on the other. At the heart of the battle were two document formats, one called ODF, developed by OASIS, a standards development consortium, and Open XML, a specification developed by Microsoft. Both were submitted to, and adopted by, global standards groups ISO/IEC. But then Microsoft never fully adopted its own standard. Instead, it implemented what it called "Transitional Open XML," which was better adapted for use in connection with documents created using older versions of Office. Yesterday, Microsoft announced In a blog entry — http://tinyurl.com/c5ppkwz — that it will finally make it possible for Office users to open, edit and save documents in the format that ISO/IEC approved."

Submission + - "Pirate" website owner sentenced to 4 years in prison (bbc.co.uk)

Submitted by Grumbleduke on Tuesday August 14, 2012 @11:01AM

Grumbleduke writes: Anton Vickerman, who owned SurfTheChannel.com has been sentenced to 4 years in prison following his conviction last month for "conspiracy to defraud". This is the first successful prosecution of an individual in the UK for running a website merely linking to allegedly infringing content (several earlier cases collapsed or resulted in acquittals).

Vickerman was prosecuted for the controversial offence of "conspiracy to defraud" for 'facilitating copyright infringement', rather than for copyright infringement itself, and it is worth noting that the relevant copyright offence carries a maximum prison sentence of only 2 years, half of what was given.

FACT, the Hollywood-backed enforcement group who were heavily involved in the prosecution noted that the conviction "should send a very strong message to those running similar sites that they can be found, arrested and end up in prison", but it remains to be seen whether this will have any effect on pirate sites, or encourage development of the largely hopeless legal market for online film.

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