Quote of the day

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The late JK Galbraith once remarked that left-wing governments’ penchant for intervening meant that they needed to be better at management than right-wing ones. The truth is that practically the only areas the government has got half right – the economy and the railways – are the ones it has removed itself from. Everywhere else, ignoring Galbraith and its own heritage, Labour has marched management backwards.

Simon Caulkin, writing on the irony of how “an administration that sets such store by efficiency and private-sector methods should end up resembling Fawlty Towers”.

The Devil’s new tune

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This morning’s Observer column…

The devil, famously, has the best tunes – ‘Honky Tonk Women’, ‘I Can’t Get No Satisfaction’, etc. But what do you do when he suddenly starts singing ‘Lead Kindly Light’? This is the kind of puzzle set last week when Warner Brothers announced plans to make over 200 films available for downloading. That’s not the funny bit, though: the real scream is that they propose to use BitTorrent to do it…

Airbus turbulence

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I bought The Times as well as the Guardian and the Financial Times this morning (mainly because it was giving away a DVD of Fritz Lang’s Metropolis). There was a feature on the forthcoming Airbus 380 with lots of cod statistics (like: it holds enough fuel to fill 21 road tankers, and its interior volume would enable it to hold 44 million ping-pong balls, yawn), but also an interesting note from the paper’s Transport Correspondent, Ben Webster.

Airbus is struggling to persuade international regulators that the double-decker will not cause dangerous turbulence for planes following in its wake.

In a preliminary ruling, the International Civil Aviation Organisation has said that there must be an 11-mile gap between an A380 and any aircraft landing behind it. That is double the distance for a Boeing 747 and at a stroke would destroy the business case for the A380.

Airbus says that the A380 will solve capacity problems at many of the world’s leading airports, especially Heathrow, by delivering up to 600 passengers for each landing slot. But if the ICAO ruling stands, the A380 will actually reduce the capacity of any airport it uses…

Wrong Guy

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Guy Kewney, a computer expert, was waiting outside a BBC Television Centre studio to discuss the high court ruling on the Beatles’ Apple Corps v Apple Computer on Monday morning. As he watched the news in reception, he was amazed to see “Guy Kewney” pop up on screen. Unlike the white, bearded technology columnist for IT Week, this “Guy Kewney” was black, and appeared stumped when asked about the US computer giant and its tussle with the Beatles over the Apple trademark.

“Were you surprised by this verdict?” he was asked. “I’m very surprised at the verdict,” he gamely replied. “Because I was not expecting that when I came.”

A BBC insider said the wrong Guy was a minicab driver, waiting to pick up the real Guy. When the producer went to collect the computer expert from a different waiting area, he called out “Guy Kewney” and the driver said “hello”. He was then whisked upstairs to meet the BBC’s Karen Bowerman, who asked the first question on live TV.

[Source]

The New York Time’s

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Here’s an excerpt from today’s New York Times:

Mark V. Hurd, Hewlett’s chief executive hired in early 2005, has cut costs and focused his company on profitability while speeding its growth in printing and corporate data centers as well as personal computers, which in 2002 lost the company $400 million. Last year, it made $660 million selling PC’s.

The most telling evidence of the new landscape for PC’s was seen in statistics on worldwide shipments…

Why does the Times persist in abusing apostrophes in this way?

An Apple a day keeps IT support away

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The Isle of Man’s schools run on Apple, not Wintel, kit. Ian Yorston points to an intriguing article in today’s Times Educational Supplement about the Education Authority’s experience with their ICT infrastructure.

Graham Kinrade, school improvement adviser at the Isle of Man Department of Education, is responsible for technical issues across the island.

“To be honest our technical issues are limited. The hardware is very reliable and general failure rates are very low. The hardware failures I see are down to wear and tear. My personal view is that it’s down to good build quality and the tight integration of hardware and software. Each computer is robust and well designed for its purpose. We have a very high percentage of machines that have been in the field for 2 or 3 years and never had to be repaired by an engineer! This says it all. We never have compatibility issues with hardware and software.”

In total Graham is responsible for 3,900 client computers (desktop and laptop). As well as 115 servers, 40 networks, 300 wireless access points (Apple Base Stations) and numerous other pieces of equipment. This is all done with just two technicians.

Hmmm… I wonder how many IT Support people you’d need to keep an equivalent Windows infrastructure going?

Quote of the day

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Michael Fabricant is back! These days he asks only sensible questions, which is disappointing, but yesterday he was wearing a tie in soft pastel stripes and his summer hair, bright yellow, lustrous and so spotless you could eat your dinner off it. I like to think he leaves it on a stand, and a team of Burmese cats licks it clean every night.

Simon Hoggart, writing in today’s Guardian.

Every picture tells a story

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This is from the New York Times web site. It’s the illustration for an article explaining how dire the French (state-funded) university system is. The focus of the piece is the Nanterre campus of the University of Paris, which apparently has very little student accommodation, and what there is did not meet with the approval of the NYT reporter. What intrigued me, however, was the way the picture was used. You can see that the verticals haven’t been corrected, so the buildings lean at an angle that would make even the inhabitants of Pisa feel seasick.

This is a cheap tabloid trick. Bet it doesn’t stop the Times being as pompous as it usually is about journalistic standards, though.