bugg_tb - Slashdot User

The State of UK Broadband — Not So Fast 279

Posted by kdawson on Wednesday November 26, 2008 @06:29AM from the but-you-have-actual-competition dept.

Barence writes "The deplorable speed of British broadband connections has been revealed in the latest figures from the Office of National Statistics, which show that 42.3% of broadband connections are slower than 2Mb/sec. More worryingly, the ONS statistics are based on the connection's headline speed, not actual throughput, which means that many more British broadband connections are effectively below the 2Mb/sec barrier. Better still, a separate report issued yesterday by Ofcom revealed that the majority of broadband users had no idea about the speed of their connection anyway."

Submission + - Which Countries Have An IT Skills Shortage?

Submitted by

bugg_tb

on Sunday May 13, 2007 @05:34PM

bugg_tb writes: "I am a programmer based in England and after a few years in the same job have finally got itchy feet. I don't want to leave the industry but I would like a change in scenery.
So my question is, if the destination really isn't an issue(I've done some contract work in Afghanistan), which countries have an IT skill shortage where I could put my skills to good use?"

Submission + - Study shows file sharing has no effect on CD sales

Submitted by

jibjibjib

on Friday February 23, 2007 @06:10AM

jibjibjib writes: "Ars Technica reports that a study by Felix Oberholzer-Gee and Koleman Strumpf, recently published in the Journal of Political Economy, shows that file sharing is not responsible for declining CD sales figures.

The study, entitled "The Effect of File Sharing on Record Sales: An Empirical Analysis," claims that "a one-standard-deviation increase in file sharing reduces an album's weekly sales by a mere 368 copies, an effect that is too small to be statistically distinguishable from zero.""

Submission + - Microsoft serves up malware via Messenger Ads

Submitted by aussienemesis on Friday February 23, 2007 @05:29AM

aussienemesis writes: WARNING: Winfixer and Errorsafe were being distributed via MSN Messenger banner advertisements

Sandi Hardmeier, Microsoft MVP, reports that ErrorSafe and Winfixer were being pimped via the Flash banner ads that are part of the Windows Live Messenger contact pane.

http://msmvps.com/blogs/spywaresucks/archive/2007/ 02/18/591493.aspx

Submission + - Microsoft loses patent case

Submitted by TheLink on Friday February 23, 2007 @05:22AM

TheLink writes: http://www.latimes.com/business/la-fi-micro23feb23 ,1,3744655.story

Submission + - Did Microsoft buy Kazakhstan?

Submitted by on Friday February 23, 2007 @04:49AM

An anonymous reader writes: Microsoft's open letter on Interoperability, Choice and Open XML is mocked by Opera's CTO in a CNET article titled Microsoft's amusing standards stance. Microsoft claims that governments wants a "choice" among standards.

Which countries? Is it Kazakhstan by any chance? Kazakhstan recently joined the relevant ISO group. In the past, consultants paid by Microsoft have joined standardization groups and become sympathetic voices. Are they buying countries this time?
Further, Microsoft's technical contributions to standards — and in particular Jean Paoli's (who co-authored the open letter) contributions to W3C — is questioned:

One of the authors of that submission was Jean Paoli. It is unlikely that he did much of the technical work on XSL, and he was probably listed for political reasons. Similarly, he was listed as an editor of the XML specification after Microsoft made some phone calls.
The author is not a fan of ODF, though, calling it a "memory dump with angle brackets around it". Instead, he suggests an advanced document format based on HTML and CSS that can be viewed in common browsers.

Submission + - how does one learn to use new distros

Submitted by

Anonymous Coward

on Friday February 23, 2007 @04:34AM

Anonymous Coward writes: "Close on the heels of Raymond Knocks Fedora, Switches to Ubuntu I ask slashdot. How do you switch distros ? I was a die-hard user of SUSE until the 10.1 release came out riddled with package manager problems and switched to ubuntu. Learning apt-get took a while and currently I am pleased with it. Some of my colleagues are using slackware and want me to switch to that. Is there somewhere one can stop ?"

Submission + - SA turns back on Microsoft

Submitted by jacobez on Friday February 23, 2007 @02:39AM

jacobez writes: "South Africa plans to switch all government departments over to open source computer software instead of using Microsoft systems, a cabinet spokesperson said on Thursday. Themba Maseko told reporters the cabinet would use the open source Linux operating system in a bid to lower administration costs and enhance local IT skills. "

http://www.news24.com/News24/Technology/News/0,929 4,2-13-1443_2073631,00.html

DoD Warez Leader Faces 10 Years in Jail 339

Posted by CowboyNeal on Friday February 23, 2007 @01:43AM from the hard-times dept.

An anonymous reader writes "After spending nearly 3 years in a detention center fighting his extradition from Australia, a leader of notorious warez group 'DrinkorDie' was yesterday arraigned before a U.S. District Court to face charges of conspiracy to commit criminal copyright infringement and one count of actual criminal copyright infringement. If found guilty he faces 10 years in jail & a $500,000 fine."

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