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United Kingdom

Submission + - Urgent: Defend a Balanced UK Approach to Copyright (computerworlduk.com) 2

Submitted by blusquid
blusquid writes: Glyn Moody asks the public to (urgently) submit our own short written submissions to the five questions set out by the APPIG by 30th March 2012. They are asking for "organisations" to submit answers to the questions, and Glyn rightfully points out that the public, as well as organisations, should be weighing in on this important matter.

He says: "What I think... is that APPIG isn't happy with the even-handed and fair approach that the UK Intellectual Property Office (IPO) has taken with recent consultations and proposals, and is looking for reasons to eviscerate it and to give responsibility for copyright et al. to some other state organs that might even believe that IP can somehow be stolen (and in fairies, too, presumably.)"
Science

Submission + - Scientists Solving the Mystery of Human Consciousness (scienceworldreport.com)

Submitted by
fishmike
fishmike writes: "Awakening from anesthesia is often associated with an initial phase of delirious struggle before the full restoration of awareness and orientation to one's surroundings. Scientists now know why this may occur: primitive consciousness emerges first. Using brain imaging techniques in healthy volunteers, a team of scientists led by Adjunct Professor Harry Scheinin, M.D. from the University of Turku, Turku, Finland in collaboration with investigators from the University of California, Irvine, USA, have now imaged the process of returning consciousness after general anesthesia. The emergence of consciousness was found to be associated with activations of deep, primitive brain structures rather than the evolutionary younger neocortex."
Privacy

Submission + - How to Avoid Government Snooping? Use Skype (techweekeurope.co.uk)

Submitted by
twoheadedboy
twoheadedboy writes: "With the UK Government set to allow even more intrusive surveillance over web use, many might want to know how to keep private things private. Just using Skype can help, given the company doesn't hold any data on its own servers. There's also a new tool that lets users running over Tor disguise their traffic as if they were using Skype. Indeed, there are so many ways to avoid government surveillance it makes the Coalition's moves appear very absurd indeed."
Software

Submission + - Will DevOps be as big as Cloud and Big Data? (techworld.com)

Submitted by sweetpea86
sweetpea86 writes: The notion of DevOps could become as prevalent as Cloud Computing or Big Data, according to IT process automation company UC4 Software, with IT departments striving to stay agile while still developing and releasing stable code.

Although developers are building applications at an ever-increasing rate, time and cost pressures mean they are no longer able to test each application in every conceivable environment. This means that when an application goes into production it often breaks, causing headaches for the help desk and operations teams.

UC4's Randy Clark describes DevOps as a “multi-function SWAT team”, with one foot in the development world and one in the operations world. By forcing the two departments to work together and implementing better planning, control and automation, the problems can be vastly reduced, said Clark.
Education

Submission + - Building Schools for Future cut, IT loses £3 (computerworlduk.com)

Submitted by ChiefMonkeyGrinder
ChiefMonkeyGrinder writes: A group of IT suppliers is set to lose as much as £3.7 billion in potential revenues, after the UK government cans the Building Schools for the Future programme. The programme, worth £45 billion overall with about one tenth allocated to IT, aimed to overhaul and modernise school buildings across England.
Government

Submission + - DAB radio has been a shambles in UK (techworld.com)

Submitted by ChiefMonkeyGrinder
ChiefMonkeyGrinder writes: Let's just say it out loud and stop kidding ourselves. The UK's digital radio — DAB radio to be precise — is about as bad as new technology gets. The good news is that the coalition government could be about to admit as much.
Open Source

Submission + - Open Source: The capitalists' choice (computerworlduk.com) 1

Submitted by ChiefMonkeyGrinder
ChiefMonkeyGrinder writes: People often think open source is a socialist concept. But Ben Bell argues that Open Source is actually more true to capitalist principles than traditional proprietary software practices. It all comes down to the principle of efficient markets.
United Kingdom

Submission + - Copyright economics and the law (computerworlduk.com)

Submitted by ChiefMonkeyGrinder
ChiefMonkeyGrinder writes: One of the problems with the debate around copyright is that it is often fuelled more by feelings than facts. What is sorely lacking is a hard-nosed look at key areas like the economics of copyright. Enter 'The Economics of Copyright and Digitisation: A Report on the Literature and the Need for Further Research'. I do think it represents an important statement about the need for basing copyright law on empirical evidence.
Businesses

Submission + - Why No Billion-Dollar Open Source Companies? (computerworlduk.com)

Submitted by superapecommando
superapecommando writes: Glyn Moody says:

Last week, I met up with Jim Whitehurst, Red Hat's CEO. He gave a very fluent presentation to a group of journalists that ran through Red Hat's business model, and explained why – unsurprisingly – he was optimistic about his company's future growth.
Somewhat unkindly, I reminded him of an interview he gave a couple of years ago, in which he said:
When I look at the quality of our existing technology, and the incredible brand that we have and the markets we play in, we should be a $5 billion company or more. If you just look at operating systems and middleware--that's nearly a $100 billion business. We're a $500 million business. We have barely scratched the surface.
Well, today Red Hat is a $750 million business according to Whitehurst. But when, I wanted to know, would Red Hat reach that $5 billion turnover – and why was it taking so long?

Pretty interesting analysis, although it rapidly strays from the original thesis into a discussion of the relative local benefits of proprietary vs open source software companies.
Businesses

Submission + - 7 government IT chiefs paid more than PM (computerworlduk.com)

Submitted by ChiefMonkeyGrinder
ChiefMonkeyGrinder writes: Joe Harley, IT director general and CIO of the Department for Work and Pensions (DWP) earns almost double the salary of the prime minister, a list published by the Cabinet Office shows. As part of the new government's efforts to be more transparent, the Cabinet Office released a list of the senior civil servants across government who earned salaries of more than £150,000. A total 172 civil servants were revealed in the list to earn more than the prime minister.
Security

Submission + - Big IT failures behind BP oil spill (computerworlduk.com)

Submitted by ChiefMonkeyGrinder
ChiefMonkeyGrinder writes: An internal investigation at BP has revealed serious IT failures played a part in the devastating Deepwater Horizon oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico. BP has said the accident “was brought about by the failure of a number of processes, systems and equipment”. It added: “There were multiple control mechanisms— procedures and equipment—in place that should have prevented this accident or reduced the impact of the spill.” These did not succeed.
Privacy

Submission + - Facebook privacy and empty platitudes (computerworlduk.com)

Submitted by ChiefMonkeyGrinder
ChiefMonkeyGrinder writes: There is a lot that Facebook needs to do to clean up its act. Just switching to an opt-in, rather than opt-out, model would be a start. An opt-out model forces Facebook users to turn these new features off instead of letting them decide whether or not they want to use the new feature in the first place. But there are degrees of culpability here. Some Facebook users have no idea that Facebook is not private. The golden rule should be that you should only post what you would want appearing on the public web. If you don’t want a status update or a photo to live forever in some Google index, then don't put it on Facebook.
Microsoft

Submission + - Linux system saves London Stock Exchange £10 (computerworlduk.com) 1

Submitted by ChiefMonkeyGrinder
ChiefMonkeyGrinder writes: The London Stock Exchange has said its new open source-based trading system will save it at least £10 million annually, as well as driving new business. Millennium Exchange, a Linux and Sun Solaris Unix-based platform, which uses Oracle databases, is being rolled out across all of the LSE’s electronic trading systems, replacing the slower TradElect platform, which is Microsoft .Net based. TradElect had suffered a series of high-profile outages and will be replaced by Millennium Exchange in stages from September.

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