Linked by David Adams on Thu 1st Mar 2012 22:53 UTC, submitted by judgen
The outage on Microsoft's Windows Azure cloud computing platform that caused the government's G-Cloud service to go offline was the result of a calculation error caused by the extra day in February due to the leap year.
Writing on the Azure blog the firm's corporate vice president for service and cloud, Bill Laing, said while the firm had still to fully determine the cause of the issue, the extra date in the month appeared the most likely cause.
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Member since:2009-08-18
Member since:2005-07-06
sadly British government like expensive and often vastly over-priced contracts with Microsoft, IBM and Oracle is simply because it takes liability away from the government.
If MS fsck up and take a government service offline, then IT managers within the government just say "not our fault, it's one of our service providers"
If MS fsck up and take a government service offline, then IT managers within the government just say "not our fault, it's one of our service providers"
Everybody likes to outsource responsibility. Certainly in some Central European places one can see a strong "nobody got fired for using Microsoft or Oracle" of sorts...
...and even when the projects, waaaaay down the line, largely prove to be practical failures - those initially pushing and implementing them moved on, several times already, each time adding another "success" to their CV - and the more expensive, the more lucrative such "successes" are, the better they look on the CV, it seems.
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Linked by Thom Holwerda on 05/21/13 21:38 UTC
At an event earlier today, Microsoft unveiled the next Xbox - the third model, but confusingly named Xbox One. The big focus was TV, integrated Kinect, and all the other stuff we all expected to be forced down our throats. I think it took them 25 minutes to actually come to what should be the core of the story: gaming. Nothing groundbreaking in the gaming department, except for how Microsoft intends to handle the used games market and borrowing games from friends: pay up, buddy!
Linked by Thom Holwerda on 05/20/13 11:29 UTC
The day has finally come! Jolla has finally announced the launch device for its Sailfish operating system - and by god this is a looker. It's decidedly different from other phones out there, but it has good specifications and carries a relatively reasonably price tag - EUR 399, and it's up for pre-order today, shipping in the fourth quarter of this year.
Linked by Thom Holwerda on 05/18/13 21:33 UTC
Why does Google get so much credit in the technology industry? Why, despite the company's many obvious failings, do many geeks and enthusiasts still hold a somewhat positive view on the all-knowing technology giant? A specific talk at Google I/O this week provides the answer.
Linked by David Adams on 05/16/13 4:23 UTC
OSNews is a sponsor of this year's O'Reilly OSCON in Portland, Oregon, USA. A lucky OSNews reader will win a free three-day pass, including two tutorials days. To win the pass, post a comment on this story saying something about Open Source Software or OSCON. We'll pick a winner at random next week. If you don't have an OSNews account, you may email us your entry. Part of the conference is the 9th annual Open Source Awards, and today the 16th is the deadline for nominations. If you'd like to nominate an outstanding open source contributor, do it here. Read on for more information about OSCON. Update: The 20% discount code for OSNews readers is "OSN."
Linked by Thom Holwerda on 05/11/13 21:41 UTC
"Windows is indeed slower than other operating systems in many scenarios, and the gap is worsening." That's one way to start an insider explanation of why Windows' performance isn't up to snuff. Written by someone who actually contributes code to the Windows NT kernel, the comment on Hacker News, later deleted but reposted with permission on Marc Bevand's blog, paints a very dreary picture of the state of Windows development. The root issue? Think of how Linux is developed, and you'll know the answer.
Linked by Thom Holwerda on 05/08/13 14:22 UTC
This is one of those news items that's fun to write, fun to read, fun to comment on, and where no one will be able to say anything unkind. It's all just one big ball of awesome fluffiness. TuneTracker, the BeOS radio automation software, has just released something very special: TuneTracker System 5, the first version designed entirely and specifically for Haiku. In fact, it actually includes Haiku in the software package. Better yet, TuneTracker also unveiled several system-in-a-box products - which have Haiku and TuneTracker pre-installed.
Linked by Thom Holwerda on 05/02/13 15:28 UTC
Exactly twenty years ago, a document was published that played a huge role in establishing the web as we know it today. Twenty years later, and this simple and straightforward document is proof of an irrefutable fact: while closed technologies can change markets, open technologies can change the world.
Linked by Thom Holwerda on 04/29/13 21:06 UTC
Oh multitasking. That staple of computing that got thrown out the window with many modern smartphones. We got some rudimentary thing in its place - but even as multitasking on phone and tablets improves, its user-visible side remains cumbersome. Windows 8 has a neat implementation, and now it's time Android follows in it footsteps.
Linked by Thom Holwerda on 04/24/13 22:24 UTC
They're here! Whether that excites you or not remains to be seen, but the Galaxy S4, which will most likely become the best selling Android smartphone of the year by a huge margin, has been reviewed by all the major sites, and there's lots of interesting conclusions in there - although I think most of you will get the gist.
Linked by Thom Holwerda on 04/18/13 11:21 UTC
Nokia has posted its quarterly results for the first quarter of 2013, and just like the quarters that came before, there's not a whole lot of good news in there. The rise in Lumia sales still can't even dream of making up for the sales drop in Symbian phones, and when broken down in versions, the sales figures for Windows Phone 8 Lumias in particular are very disappointing. In North America, Nokia is getting slaughtered.More Features »
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2007-03-26
You know, I would have found this acceptable in someone's pet OSS project but not in a global service from MS that you probably pay an arm and a leg for.
If I was the guy who was responsible for this in "the government" I would have been having a serious talk with my account rep already and it would not have been easy for them convince me to continue using their product.
agreed, but sadly British government like expensive and often vastly over-priced contracts with Microsoft, IBM and Oracle is simply because it takes liability away from the government.
If MS fsck up and take a government service offline, then IT managers within the government just say "not our fault, it's one of our service providers". For the government, contracts like this are just another form of outsourcing and thus it would take something monumental and hugely publicly embarrassing before any government body would even consider switching providers - let along bring the services back in house where they really belong.
This is just my experiences when I worked for the British government. Things might be different for the rest of the EU or western world (for their sake, I hope so).
Edited 2012-03-02 09:15 UTC