Techno Babble
Created | Updated Jul 10, 2002
Microsoft
Now then folks, let's give Microsoft a chance here eh? I plead from the bottom of my, hold on, no I don't.
I was going to mention that the hordes of Open Source fans queing up to take a pop at Microsoft at the Linux World Expo might feel sorry for the poor schmucks that get hired to run their stall there, after all this must surely be a show of good will? A sign that Microsoft do may well want to embrace the open source community and the ideals that it stands for; that one day Windows will be a free product with the source code available for all.
But...
In the news this week it is rumoured that Microsoft is looking to extend its Passport online identification system to take care of credit card transactions as well. Not all credit cards mind you, just Visa and Mastercard, so that's alright then, it's not like they're major cards or anything.
And if it wasn't easy enough to have a go at Mr Gates' company, an East Anglian MP is calling for them to change their pricing policy. Him and the rest of the civilised world. This, however, is down to the way Microsoft charges schools, colleges and universities for its products. Colleges and Universities pay a flat rate fee, but schools pay per pupil. Now, it could be argued that the schools are still getting the software a lot cheaper than the rest of us, but come on Mr Gates, you earn enough as it is so why not hook your users at an earlier age? Or perhaps there's the worry that if the price were levelled for schools people would protest that you were trying to capture too early an audience?
Ebay
There really doesn't seem to be any stopping this company. The auction site where you can buy almost, and I do mean almost, anything is making what must be a very sensible move. It's buying $1.5bn stock in Paypal. Great if you live in the States and don't mind their occasional foul ups. Actually it's not a bad idea all round, cut out the middle man and keep the transaction charges for yourself.
Bring Back The Luddites!
Liverpool City Council has come up with a novel idea. In a bid to encourage its staff to communicate more efficiently... Its banning them from sending internal emails on a Wednesday.
WHY?
The councils' 6,000 staff apparently send 40,000 internal emails a day, wow, er, that's 6.666 each per day. It's doing this, it says, because 'there are times when it would simply be quicker to pick up the phone'. Yes, I agree, there may well be times when it's quicker to pick up the phone, but there are also times when you pick up the phone and end up chatting away for ten to fifteen minutes about nothing in particular, or you have to sit there and listen to someone drone on about how their little Gerald has the measles at the moment, or how Auntie Mabels' angina is playing her up, when all you wanted to know was if an invoice had been paid.
It's not a strict ban though, but transgressers will be frowned upon. Naughty transgressers!
Italian police have closed down five websites this week. Wow you may think, that's pretty heavy stuff. What did the people who wrote the site put up there? Child porn? How to make a bomb? Naked pictures of the Queen? No, far more sinister than that, blasphemy! The Vaticans' newspaper made a complaint about remarks on the site about God and the Virgin Mary. Well Gee-Whiz. Who shall we complain about now to get shut down? The Vatican's own site for being a very poorly designed site and therefore blasphamous to art lovers everywhere? Not to mention that their main page has split the pcture saying 'The Holy Father' into two which load separately, leaving you reading 'The Holy Fat' while the rest of the page loads.
Forward Thinking
HavenCo, who you've probably never heard of, have set up in the sovereignty of Sealand, which you also probably haven't heard of.
Sealand is an old concrete platform of the East coast of England, and a self proclaimed soveriegnty in its own right. It even has its own passports. Now some chaps have set up a data hosting service there. Bucking the trend by governments around the globe to restrict what can and can't be hosted on servers within their countries, HavenCo are also bucking the downturn in the dot.com industry.
The Dutch government has caught onto a really strange idea, something that you wouldn't normally expect governments to do. They're closing legal loop-holes. The one in question here is to do with virtual child pornography. Until now it was perfectly legal to generate virtual child pornography but, thanks to some sensible thinking and actions, the loophole has been closed and jail sentences are in store for offenders.
