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Dutch ratify net neutrality law

Posted by Rupert Goodwins on 9 May, 2012 14:57

The upper house of the Netherlands parliament adopted on Tuesday a new Telecommunications Act, making the country the first in Europe to put net neutrality into law. The lower house approved the act in June last year.

According to Dutch news site www.volkscrant.nl [in Dutch], the law follows an intense national debate in 2011, after mobile operator KPN started to charge for access to WhatsApp, a free online... Read more

ZDNet UK at TNMOC: What we learned

Posted by Rupert Goodwins on 4 May, 2012 16:52

The idea was simple: let's pretend our offices have burned to the ground, and operate ZDNet UK from out of town. Too simple? We thought so, so we complicated it a bit by picking a venue that would be worth visiting anyway, The National Museum Of Computing at Bletchley Park. They gulped and nervously shuffled their feet, but agreed — and so, on a grey April morning, we gave London a miss and went to Bedford.... Read more

ZDNet UK at the National Museum Of Computing

Posted by Rupert Goodwins on 26 April, 2012 10:52

We have arrived! The advance guard of myself and Charles McLellan safely installed, ZDNet UK is now live from The National Museum Of Computing at Bletchley Park.

Here's what we've learned so far about remote team working.

1. The Tyranny Of Leads. Enough power cables? Enough power sockets? Enough phone cables? The right USB adators? Even when your entire computing environment is on a laptop and nominally... Read more

Google Drive launches with multiformat search

Posted by Rupert Goodwins on 24 April, 2012 18:48

Google unveiled on Tuesday Google Drive, its online storage system. Allowing users to store any sort of data in Google's cloud, access is through the browser or an app for Windows, Mac OS, Android and, "in the next few weeks", iOS.

Once installed, the app maps Google Drive into the local system as a disk drive, letting users drag and drop files as normal.

Google Drive is the web giant's online storage... Read more

Nokia credit rating cut to junk status

Posted by Rupert Goodwins on 24 April, 2012 11:36

Credit rating company Fitch Rating has downgraded Nokia from BB- to BBB+, marking the company as unfit for investment.

Fitch Rating has downgraded Nokia from BB- to BBB+, marking the company as unfit for investment. Image credit: Nokia Fitch said that the company could be downgraded further if it didn't improve financially over the next 18 months, and that it is not convinced Nokia could stablilise its revenue... Read more

ZDNet UK's Bletchley Park big day out

Posted by Rupert Goodwins on 23 April, 2012 18:13

This Thursday, ZDNet UK is upping sticks and abandoning our London offices. We will become a touring machine and run the site, hopefully as normal, from The National Museum Of Computing at Bletchley Park.

We're doing this for a number of reasons. One is that, with the Olympics coming, we want to find out what it's like to take a team of people and do our everyday work from somewhere outside London with just... Read more

The ZX Spectrum: Birthday memories

Posted by Rupert Goodwins on 23 April, 2012 14:02

It may have been startlingly modern once, but at 30, the Sinclair Spectrum is as close in time to the world's first commercial computers of the 50s as it is to the latest iPad.

It's doing rather better than LEO, though; last year, around a hundred new programs were written for the Spectrum, there are double that number of emulators, and thousands of fans still chatter away online.

The ZX Spectrum is 30... Read more

My fight with Microsoft: why APIs need to be free

Posted by Rupert Goodwins on 18 April, 2012 18:21

With Oracle choosing APIs as a legal battleground on which to tangle with Google's Android, I'm reminded of another time when APIs were used in lieu of competitive products in an attempt to control a marketplace.

In another life, I was a software developer. It was a long time ago, back when MS-DOS was alive and well and Windows was still just another DOS app, and when Microsoft was much more of a bogeyman than... Read more

UK space projects get £6m government award

Posted by Rupert Goodwins on 10 April, 2012 16:06

The government has selected four projects to share in £6m for UK space research, with the companies themselves contributing almost a further £6m.

Four space projects will get £6m in funding from the UK government. Image credit: UK Space Agency The awards are the first made under the UK Space Agency's Space For Growth competition, which was announced last year.

Minister for Universities and Science David... Read more

Everything Everywhere LTE spectrum sale nears

Posted by Rupert Goodwins on 10 April, 2012 14:39

Everything Everywhere, the mobile operator combining the UK T-Mobile and Orange networks, has appointed Morgan Stanley to oversee the sale of part of its 1800MHz spectrum.

The sale, a regulatory condition set when the networks merged in 2010, will potentially give its competitors a chance to roll out 4G LTE wireless data in advance of Ofcom auctioning off new spectrum at 800 and 2600 MHz for these services.... Read more

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ZDNet UK Live

What is mildly amusing to me is when someone thinks a strong password is as strong as one may need, when the truth is usernames and passwords are...

29 minutes ago by Fraud_fighter on Passwords are here to stay: get used to it

Performance isn't really the big thing at the moment - not when my ADSL connection will only provide a 8mbps bottleneck to the 3.5gbps speeds these...

51 minutes ago by Andy Bolstridge via Facebook on Next-generation 802.11ac routers

So when is Amazon buying Waterstones?

3 hours ago by pjc158 on Waterstones to sell Kindles with in-store offers

@JoshArg - Well, I am writing this from my N150 Plus, running Ubuntu 12.04 and using a Bluetooth mouse (well, to be totally correct it is a...

3 hours ago by J.A. Watson on Samsung N150 Plus Netbook - Ubuntu Netbook Edition 10.04

@duncanjmurray - At least n the case of the specific system I put the SSD into, it is not the case. The boot time improvement is substantial, but...

3 hours ago by J.A. Watson on Netbook Upgrade - SSD IN, Windows OUT

Sounds like only those who have bought their Kindle from Waterstones will be able to use them in-store - very disappointing. I have no intention...

5 hours ago by archerthom on Waterstones to sell Kindles with in-store offers

From my mainframe operating days... 1) Play hoopla with write permit rings & a can of screen cleaner. 2) Make enormous paper chains (Christmas...

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An OS X perspective Filenames beginning with a dot/period (.) should not be equated with HFS Plus resource forks; misunderstandings around ._ (dot...

6 hours ago by 61253 on SharePoint deployment: Pitfalls of a pioneer

There are many legal download sites for music at least that do not charge an arm and a leg like itunes or Napster. The "real" cost of an mp3 file...

7 hours ago by ians1 on The Pirate Bay infringes copyright, High Court decides

@Crupal.. How does refusing your websites cookies help my privacy? A quick look at your page script reveals four sets of code provided by 3rd...

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There are hundreds, if not thousands of filesharing torrent sites, The Pirate Bay (TPB) is only one of them, while the TPB is blocked many more...

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So could users DownGrade if the new OS didn't worked correctly ?

17 hours ago by Rebin Simpson on Sony delivers on Xperia Ice Cream Sandwich promise

Hmmm, I thought that with SSDs you could get to the mythical ubuntu 10 sec boot time? Is this not the case?

18 hours ago by duncanjmurray on Netbook Upgrade - SSD IN, Windows OUT

Thanks once again! I have installed Linux Mint 13 (Maya) everything runs well but.. bluetooh is not present, "there is no blueetooth adapter" do...

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2 days ago by zdnetukuser on Netbook Upgrade - SSD IN, Windows OUT

Please stop connecting the 'ATeam' to the UK Anonymous collective. Anonymous and the ATeam are not connected. The ATeam are not part of, affiliated...

2 days ago by Amb Rose via Facebook on UK Anonymous keeps up DDoS barrage on ICO

Hi All I have looked into the cookie law today, there are a few solutions that these websites can use. Just add the widget and update your policy...

2 days ago by cpupal on Privacy watchdog to chase big companies over cookie law

I read that many of the governments own websites are not yet compliant...shouldn't they sort that out before chasing others - slightly hypocritical !

2 days ago by dropz42 on Privacy watchdog to chase big companies over cookie law