Just Uber

In breaking news the Advertising Standards Agency has officially ruled that Tony blair is not Hitler!

The advertising standards agency (ASA) has ruled that an advert depicting Tony Blair as Hitler does not break rules of decency.

The advert created by Escape Partners for anti ID card group NO2ID shows Mr Blair with a Hitler like barcode moustache and the text “id cards have worked well in Europe before”.

Complainants whinged that the Barcode made Tony Blair look like Hitler, and that comparing a public figure such as Mr Blair with Adolf Hitler was offensive.

In a somewhat uncharacteristic display of sensibility, the ASA decided that the advert was intended to be a comparison of Tony Blair and Hitler based on policy, not personality.

Personally I think the advert is thought provoking, and helps show the reality of the matter rather well. Besides - people with Hitler tasches look funny!

In many of the discussions I’ve engaged in with top brass I’ve been told that IT managers don’t really need technical skills. In fact, some of my bosses seem to be of the opinion that most techies lack management ability, and that having techie skills can be frowned upon because it diverts you from ‘managing’ things.

‘C.J. Kelly’; an experienced security manager disagrees. In an article over at ComputerWorld she explores the reasons why managers need to be able to ’speak geek’.

CJ writes: “My career experiences have led me to believe that those who manage techies must have a blend of managerial skills, business smarts, top-notch technical skills and integrity in order to be effective.”

In that regard I have to agree with her. I’ve sometimes found it frustrating trying to get across a technical issue to a manager who is finding it difficult to understand the point that I’m making.

A little technical knowledge goes a long way to developing the relationship between techies and managers and ultimately helps grease the gears of industry by getting things done a heck of a lot quicker.

I understand the point that many managers make about getting diverted from management and sucked into techie projects but it doesn’t have to be that way…

The skills employed by CJ could help many a techie aspiring to management: “…it’s possible to both manage and participate in technical projects. Those two things aren’t mutually exclusive. Switching Gears. The key is learning to “time-slice,” which allows me to smoothly switch gears and focus.”

Recent increases in share trading have prompted speculation that a buyout of Kingston Communications might be back on the table.

A year ago the Hull based telecommunications company was involved in takeover talks with US financial giant ‘The Carlisle Group’.

The Hull Daily Mail comments “A frenzy of activity on the London Stock Exchange has also left the firm’s closing prices at some of their highest in the past two years…”

Speculation has been growing in the market that KC may have a bid in the works and that higher-than-normal levels of share trading could back this up. Kingston Communications are staying tight lipped however saying only: “There has been a lot of interest in the KC story.”

Kingston Communications is the incumbent teleco for Hull and surrounding areas. With the monopoly for internet and telephony services for over 185,000 residential customers and an undisclosed number of business customers in the non-BT area it stands to be a good purchase in a reviving telecoms sector.

Update: After being approached by a fellow Karoo user for help, Just Uber was happy to give a home to The Unofficial Karoo User Forums. They’re run by a nice chap called Dylan who is trying to build a place where Karoo users can talk about their experiences. You can find me in there under the name lefty

Semiconductor Insights (a provider of technical and patent analysis of integrated circuits), have kindly taken the Nintendo Wii to bits for all those interested.

Some noteworthy finds where GDDR 3 graphics memory, 512MB of Samsung NAND Flash and 2MB of Elpida SDRAM.

Enjoy the dissection…

Open Source software is great. Unfortunately with the Novell/Microsoft farce riding high in the news at the moment it could do with some good press. It’s not about to get some…

One of the common factors cited in implimentation of Open Source software alongside increased security etc is lower total cost of ownership. With multiple support vendors, enthusiastic community support and no typical licensing fees it looks like a winner. It should be easy shouldn’t it ?

Enter Birmingham City Council ICT. Golden custodians of the Open Source flame and trailblazers of free software in local government.

With a budget of £535,000 the council had a plan to deploy Linux software to 1,500 desktops. This pilot scheme aimed to demonstrate the maturity of Linux on the desktop, and it’s potential as a financially viable alternative to Microsoft Windows… Unfortunately it didn’t.

Birmingham City Council managed to deploy Linux to 200 PCs with it’s half a million quid. That’s £2,500 per desktop. Experts had some choice words to say.

“That’s ridiculous,” said Eddie Bleasdale, the owner of open-source consultancy NetProject and an early participant in the project. “It’s an unbelievable cock-up… They decided to do it all themselves, without expertise in the area,”

Mark Taylor, from the Open Source Consortium said: “I have no idea how anyone could spend half a million pounds on 200 desktops, running free software”.

The council’s project ended with them deciding that an upgrade to Windows XP would have been £100,000 cheaper than moving to Linux. As a user of both Microsoft and Linux in a similar environment all I can say is it’s project management gone mad.

Typically like many government projects the bureaucracy outweighs the technology. The whole thing stands up as a senseless waste of taxpayers money at a time when cut backs are rife. This angers me because it makes it even more difficult to get IT management to use Open Source software. Please think - this is an exception rather than the rule…

The fat man finally talks. Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer has now publically stated his belief that Linux based operating systems infringe on Microsoft’s intellectual property. Ballmer reckons that Linux “uses our intellectual property” and Microsoft wants to “get the appropriate economic return for our shareholders from our innovation.”
So far exactly which parts of the Linux operating system actually utilise Microsoft’s IP hasn’t been made clear, which only goes to add fuel to the suspicion that this is simply a FUD ‘Fear, Uncertainty & Doubt’ campaign on Microsoft’s part.

For anyone who hasn’t heard yet, Novell has entered into an agreement with Microsoft to pay cash to protect against law suites for IP infringement. This ‘potential’ law suite seems pretty unlikely however as many Linux users also utilise Microsoft technologies in their businesses. At the end of the day Microsoft would probably loose many customers by suing them in addition to facing stiff legal oposition by the likes of Red Hat et al.

Ballmer went on to say “Novell pays us some money for the right to tell customers that anybody who uses SUSE Linux is appropriately covered,” Ballmer said. This “is important to us, because [otherwise] we believe every Linux customer basically has an undisclosed balance-sheet liability.”

Well bring it on Ballmer! If you have a real basis for an IP suite then use it. Otherwise shut up….

I’ve resisted starting my own blog for quite a while. Initially I assumed that because there are so many blogs out there there was really no need for me to add my rantings to that overwhelming chorus of voices. I originally thought that I’d be wasting my time by putting my thoughts down in words if no one else would read it but recently my opinions began to change.

I’m always learning, and always communicating my musings to others in one way or another. I like to record the things that I’ve learned on the internet so that I can retrieve them wherever I am. To do this I use online services such as del.icio.us and Google Notebook amongst others which in retrospect is a a little like blogging anyway.

So finally here I am, this is my blog, choose to read it if you wish or move on if you don’t. I’m going to use it to dump information in so it’s all in one place and I’ll probably end up putting some rants here too. With any degree of luck, some of the stuff I write will be useful to somebody!

See you soon.