Microsoft does a 180 on Exchange 2007 support (in a good way)

Microsoft does a 180 on Exchange 2007 support (in a good way)

After notifying customers and partners that Exchange Server 2007 wouldn’t be able to run on Windows Server 2008 R2, the latest version of WIndows Server, the Exchange team has reversed its decision.

In a posting on the Exchange Team Blog, Microsoft officials said they’d heard the negative feedback loud and clear. Customers didn’t want to be forced to move to Exchange 2010 before they were ready, just so as to be able to run a version of Exchange on Windows Server 2008 R2.

Full story : HERE

With thanks to Notes_Bloke for this one !

Lose the data, go to prison ?

Lose the data, go to prison ?

The Ministry of Justice is consulting on whether to introduce custodial sentences for knowing or reckless misuse of personal information.

At a time when legislators are trying to move away from custodial sentences, this clearly signals the importance of this issue. Should this proposal be enacted into law, it could have a profound impact on the IT profession, and the profession's ability to benefit the wider public.

This is the latest leg of a journey that BCS has been on long before HMRC lost the famous discs, and a part of the government's response to the threat of malicious abuse of personal information.

For those involved in the design, implementation and maintenance of systems containing personal information, which is a huge swathe of the IT Profession, it has some implications; it would suddenly be extremely important to understand what, from a professional perspective, constituted 'reckless'. It...

Virgin Media 50Meg price cut boosted customer numbers

Virgin Media 50Meg price cut boosted customer numbers

Virgin Media has completed the roll-out of its 50Mbps product across its cable network, and in its third quarter results is pleased with the numbers of customers signing up to it faster broadband products. The 20Meg and 50Meg products account for some 503,500 customers, which is a 40% increase on twelve months ago, the majority are on the 20Meg service, with just 20,000 subscribing to the fastest 50Meg service. The recent price cut on the XXL service has boosted the numbers signing up to that product and over 40% of those signing up to this service are new to broadband on the Virgin Media network.

While the low numbers for the 50Meg product look poor compared to the millions of broadband customers Virgin Media has, remember that the 20Mbps service is also sharing this infrastructure, which should help with the paying back of the millions that Virgin Media invested in the DOCSIS 3.0...

XBox 360 Sky Player floored by demand?

XBox 360 Sky Player floored by demand ?

It looks as if the XBox 360 and the new Sky Player that runs on the platform has attracted too much interest in its first week of existence. This has lead to Sky adding the message "Following an unpredicted technical issue at launch on Tuesday, the Sky Player on Xbox 360 service was suspended." on the Sky Player page. This highlights the problems of offering TV over a broadband infrastructure, i.e. it is not just the issue of contention but getting scaling of servers and other facilities ready. The suggestions are that the problem arose due to unexpectedly high demand for the service.

Greg Howson on The Guardian Games Blog has written about his experience of the new service, with the summary being when it worked it was impressive. From watching the publicity material it seems the avatar mode where people using the XBox 360 can join each other in a 'theatre' to watch a programme may prove popular for...

Is Digital Britain to be taxed back to the copper age?

Is Digital Britain to be taxed back to the copper age?

Computer Weekly has spent some time looking into the business rates that affect fibre networks, and has also uncovered plans that could see Wi-Fi hotspots and WiMAX networks having to pay tax backdated to 2005. BT Retail with some 600,000 home routers capable of acting as a hot-spot could face a bill of £29m a year.

Business rates on fibre networks are well known about in the industry, but the affect that these have had on the roll-out of unbundled networks and next generation access are considerable. The tax is charged at 48.5p in the pound, with the value being based on what the HM Revenue and Customs' Valuation Office Agency (VOA) estimates as the operating profit that the network owner could make if the fibre was rented to a third party and the length of the fibre is also taken into account. This means that even if you were in a situation where you had someone willing to put fibre in...

Free Google sat-nav shakes market

Free Google sat-nav shakes market

Shares in sat-nav device companies have fallen substantially after Google unveiled its free live sat-nav for mobiles on Wednesday.

US firm Garmin fell 18% after details of Google Maps Navigation were revealed. Dutch firm TomTom fell 9.5% when markets closed on Thursday.

The Google application promises free real-time, turn-by-turn directions for people to follow on their phones.

The Motorola Droid will be the first mobile phone equipped with the system.

Full story : HERE

Prevent a network own goal

Prevent a network own goal

Following the first ever online only live streaming of the England football team’s 1-0 defeat to Ukraine, Blue Coat’s EMEA Marketing VP Nigel Hawthorn, looks into the implications that live online video streaming events could have on an organisation’s network infrastructure ahead of next summer’s World Cup.

The 2010 World Cup in South Africa promises worldwide coverage like never before, with the BBC's Sport website offering live video streaming of all matches.

Though a small number of matches were shown online in 2006, next year the number of matches available across the web includes all matches that the BBC has the rights to. More importantly, the success of the iPlayer and YouTube has led to an assumption on the part of users that the quality will be good to the desktop.

This concept was fully supported by Director of BBC Sport Roger Mosey, who commented ahead of the World Cup in 2006: 'We know...

Net set for 'language shake-up'

Net set for 'language shake-up'

The internet is on the brink of the "biggest change" to its working "since it was invented 40 years ago", the net regulator Icann has said.

The body said it that it was finalising plans to introduce web addresses using non-Latin characters.

The proposal - initially approved in 2008 - would allow domain names written in Asian, Arabic or other scripts.

The body said if the final plans were approved on 30 October, it would accept the first applications by 16 November.

The first Internationalised Domain Names (IDNs) could be up and running by "mid 2010" said the president of the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (Icann).

"Of the 1.6 billion internet users today worldwide, more than half use languages that have scripts that are not Latin-based," said Rod Beckstrom at the opening of Icann's conference in Seoul, South Korea.

"So this change is very much necessary for not only half...

Ubuntu readies the Karmic Koala

What do French gendarmes, Andalucian school children, Wikipedia and San Francisco International airport have in common?

It is not the set up for a tortuous pun. Instead all of them are big users of the free Ubuntu operating system.

The French national police force runs its operations on the open source OS; computer systems supporting Spanish schools have their own version; the online encyclopaedia runs its hundreds of servers on Ubuntu and SFIA's internal computer system is based around it.
Ubuntu is based on Linux - the open source operating system that is maintained, expanded and extended by legions of fans and professional programmers around the world. Thanks to their efforts Ubuntu has become the most popular of all the Linux distributions.

On 29 October, version 9.10 of Ubuntu is released. All versions of the operating system have an alternative alliterative appellation. Ubuntu 9.10 is known as Karmic Koala. Read more...

Conservatives plan to reverse 50p broadband tax

Conservatives plan to reverse 50p broadband tax

The Digital Britain Report introduced a 50 pence per month levy (the so called 'broadband tax') on copper phone lines, which would be used to fund the rollout of next generation broadband to the areas where market forces were not expected to deliver on their own.

In an interview with the Financial Times this morning, Jeremy Hunt, shadow culture secretary said that if the Conservatives win the general election, they would reverse the Digital Britain Bill and are considering changes to how the BBC is structured. This would mean scrapping the proposed 50p per month levy on phone lines which is expected to raise £175m to fund next generation broadband in mostly rural areas.

Full story : HERE