Thursday 26 July 2012

Interesting News Of The Week 23/07/2012

New week, new story, you get the idea by now.
Here's the stories.

Windows 8 a 'catastrophe'
Slightly technical story for the first one this week about Microsoft's Windows 8 operating system.
Here's the story.

It has been said that the operating system Windows 8 will be a "catastrophe" for the majority if not all PC game makers.

Speaking at the Casual Connect game conference in Seattle, Gabe Newell said the next version of Windows could mean big changes to the PC market, many people took his comment as a criticism of the changed user interface in Windows 8 as well as its built-in Windows Store, but it is unsure that whether that is truly what he meant.

The Windows Store could dent the success of the Valve's (involved in software for computers and other devices) own online market, some of you will know Valve through Steam, which players buy games through.

Mr Newell, who has worked for Microsoft for 13 years on Windows and is now the boss of the company Valve, said his company had embraced the open-source software Linux as a "hedging strategy" designed to offset some of the damage Windows 8 was likely to do to the market.

He followed it up by saying: "We want to make it as easy as possible for the 2,500 games on Steam to run on Linux as well. Windows 8 is a catastrophe for everyone in the PC space.".

Let's put this into perspective, the arrival of Windows 8 would be likely to drive some PC makers and others out of the business because it put so much pressure on them and their sales margins.

He said the success of Valve, known for its Half Life, Left4Dead and Portal titles, had been down to the open nature of the PC. "We've been a free rider, and we've been able to benefit from everything that went into PCs and the internet," he told the conference. "And we have to continue to figure out how there will be open platforms."

The openness of these things that helped Valve also helped firms such as Google and Zynga could disappear with Windows 8.

The new "Windows Store" in the Microsoft operating system is a shop through which users will be able to buy apps for their Windows 8 device and appears to only be those devices, not being open to Windows 7 and earlier versions.

On some versions of Windows 8, it will be the only way to get downloadable software such as games.

Microsoft will take a cut of up to 30% of every sale made through this store, meaning that they could be making a lot of money out of this. This could also be a significant threat to the massively successful Steam online game store.

Windows 8 links with Microsoft's Xbox Live online game service, basically taking that and updating it for their new devices.

Mr Newell left everyone with the following statement:
"This isn't about video games, it's about thinking about goods and services in a digital world.".

Here's an image of Valve and their Steam's logo's:




Flag Fallout - London To Blame?
Well I'm sure you've all heard about this story by now,
but here it is anyway.

Olympic officials in London are said to be to blame for a flag row which jeopardised a women's football game at Hampden Stadium in Glasgow.

The North Korean women's team walked off after a video produced to introduce their players showed the South Korean flag rather than their own.
Fortunately they later returned to play the match.

BBC Scotland understand that the video package was sent from London but Hampden organisers had no input.
Prime Minister David Cameron described it as "an honest mistake".

In a news conference on the eve of the opening ceremony of the Games, he told assembled journalists: "This was an honest mistake, honestly made. An apology has been made and I'm sure every step has been taken to ensure these things don't happen again. We shouldn't over-inflate this episode - it was unfortunate, it shouldn't have happened and I think we can leave it at that.".

The North Korean team could only be persuaded to return for their match against Colombia after the error was corrected, which in my opinion is rightly so, why would they want to play under the wrong flag.

As yet the London games organisers have been reported to be unable to clarify who made the video, either that or they don't want to say.

Now you might be wondering why this flag error had the impact it did, well it's because of the situation which exists between both Koreas.
Both countries are still technically at war after the 1950-53 conflict ended in an armistice, so they were extemely right to be offended.

Speaking after the match, North Korea's coach Sin Ui Gun said: "Our team was not going to participate unless the problem was solved properly." rightly showing their flag and respecting not only the team but the country.

The incident has made headlines around the world except in communist controlled North Korea, probably because of the outrage it would cause.
State news agency KCNA reported the women's Olympic football team beating Colombia 2-0 but made no mention of the flag row, once again avoiding conflict.

Meanwhile, Hampden Stadium will host two more Olympic football games on Thursday and hopefully getting the flags right this time, more checks are expected to be made before the next games.

In the men's preliminaries, Honduras will play Morocco at 12:00, followed by Spain v Japan at 14:45.

Here's the BBC's news coverage of the situation:




Summary of the week

So this week we have Microsoft possibly making big mistakes causing upset to a lot of people and London 2012 getting of to a bad start.

Thursday 19 July 2012

Interesting News Of The Week 16/07/2012

The weeks seem to go so fast now.
Here's this weeks stories.

Spelling Screw Up
The first story this week is do with the Olympics and a torchbearer who got a new tattoo to celebrate her role in the Olympic torch relay.
Here's the story.

Jerri Peterson, from Atlanta in the US, carried the torch through Derby on 30 June after being nominated by the hotel chain she worked for.
You may be thinking, whats that got to do with spelling?
Well, that's not the main part of the story.

Before coming to England, she had decided to spend $10 (or £6.50) on a tattoo to mark the occasion.

After having the tattoo it was a while later the 54-year-old noticed it featured the mis-spelling "Oylmpic" rather than "Olympic", whoops bit of a mistake there on the artists behalf.

Mrs Peterson was one of 70 international employees selected by her firm to take part in the relay as a thank you for her years of charity work, she said: "I always wanted to have a tattoo but I never quite felt passionate about any one thing to have it put on my body permanently", but this event seemed to be significant enough for her.

She said to reporters "When I was selected for this wonderful honour, I thought 'that's it - I'm ready to have my tattoo'.".
She booked a session with a "really good" tattoo artist in her home state of Georgia, and took a friend along for moral support.

Initially she was delighted with how it looked and it was only when she sent a photo of the tattoo to a friend that the spelling mistake was pointed out.

She then said: "I looked at it and I was so disappointed. I called my husband and he giggled a little bit. Then I started laughing about it and I've laughed ever since.", obviously feeling more comfortable with the mistake after confiding in her husband, which naturally you would.

Mrs Peterson pointed out the mistake to the tattoo artist responsible but declined his offer to correct it.

She said: "He felt so bad when he found out. He wanted to fix it but I decided I want to keep it. It's fine.", she then finished the interview by saying "It's the Oy-limpics, it's as unique as I am.", what a nice way to look at the situation.

If any of you are wondering what this incorrect tattoo looks like here's a picture courtesy of the BBC news team:




£276,000 Victoria Cross
This story is one that's not got anything to do with the Olympics, I thought seeing as it's going to be in most news stories now I would include one that isn't, this story is to do with the Victoria cross which was awarded in World War I.

The first Victoria Cross awarded to a private in World War I has just sold for £276,000 at an auction, that's right £276,000.
The medal, awarded to Private Sidney Godley of East Grinstead, West Sussex, England. The medal originally was expected to fetch up to £180,000 and was valued around that price.

Godley manned a machine-gun position defending Nimy Bridge in Mons while under fire from German soldiers in the first weeks of the war.

A second VC was awarded posthumously to a Gloucestershire soldier around the same time and that was sold for £240,000 at the same auction.

Oliver Pepys of Spink auction house in London, where the medal was sold described Godley's medal as "hugely important". He said to reporters "The Godley VC is one of the most distinguished medal groups of the Great War, so it was not surprising that it attracted much interest. I am delighted that the sale drew attention to such a valiant man.".

Now what I don't understand is if the medal is "hugely important" and part of the "most distinguished medal group", then why would people even consider selling them, they are a great part of history and can be fantastic things to pass down through the generations to show families histories.

The medal was originally presented with the top military honour to Godley by King George V in 1919 after he spent four years as a prisoner of war and unfortunately for us the auctioneers are not identifying the seller, probably due to pride issues.

Well lets have a little more information on Godley.
He was 25 when he was sent to the Western Front with the 4th Royal Fusiliers and was badly wounded in the attack, on 23 August 1914.

At the time of the attack he had shrapnel in his back and a bullet in his skull, but still persisted to protect British positions in the face of a German onslaught until he was captured.

During his four years as a prisoner in Germany, he was told by his captors that he had been awarded the VC and was invited to dine with the Germans one Christmas Day in recognition of the honour, which seemed a nice gesture from the Germans, showing they can't have all been bad, even though they were made out to be.

Godley unfortunately died in 1957 aged 68 and was buried with full military honours in Loughton Cemetery in Essex.

Since his death blue plaques have been placed at East Grinstead Town Council offices and at the house in Torrington Drive, Loughton, where he lived for some time.

Here's a picture of what the cross looks like for any of you who are unsure:




Summary of the week

Time for the summary, this week we have tattoo artists getting all caught up in the "Oylmpic" games and people selling off medals from the wars just for money, so much for family values.

Thursday 12 July 2012

Interesting News Of The Week 09/07/2012

A little late tonight but lets get straight on with it,
Here's the stories.

Florence out of Music
Now before anyone panics Florence from "Florence and the Machine" is not out of the music game, shes just been temporally removed by doctors orders.
You'll understand what I mean in a minute.
Here's the story.

The singer Florence Welch from "Florence and the Machine" has had to pull out of two European festivals after losing her voice.

Florence went on Twitter to announce that doctors have told her to rest her voice after she felt something "snap", it is unclear as to whether this was during a performance or in practises.
She followed this by returning to the social networking site to thank fans for their support.

The singer recently performed at Radio 1's Hackney Weekend, which it is speculated to be where things started to go wrong for her.
She has apologised on her website for having to cancel further gigs.

She made a statement to the media saying "I'm so sorry to all the fans, I was desperate to still perform, but was told without question not to, so as not to do permanent damage."

What interests me about this story though is that Florence Welch is not the only singer to have had voice problems within her time in the music industry, never mind recently, last year singer Adele had to cancel numerous appearances due to a haemorrhage on her vocal cords, in simple terms damaging them.

Florence + The Machine are booked to appear at other festivals this summer, including a headline performance at Lollapalooza in Chicago this August, and hopefully Florence will have recovered her voice by then to return to perform the gig.

The band may also get their first number one this Sunday with their single Spectrum after performing well in this weeks midweek charts, so we will see on that one.

Sorry this story is quite short but here's a nice picture of Florence on her way to an event:




O2 Outage
As many people may know O2 the mobile phone company suffered from server problems on Wednesday and continuing on to today, effecting a lot of mobile phone users not only on O2 mobiles but on Tescos and GiffGaff as well, because they all use the same masts.

I've chosen this story because it effected both me and Gemma yesterday and mostly last night.
Here's the story.

O2 has described the recent connection problems as a "Network Fault".
There have been few details have been given about what has caused the issues to so many users.

O2 representatives said "We can confirm that the problem with our mobile service is due to a fault with one of our network systems, which has meant some mobile phone numbers are not registering correctly on our network,", the numbers affected seemed to be mostly the Tescos and GiffGaff users.

It is not clear how many of O2's 23 million customers were hit by the fault but the operator said the problem was not based on geography (a specific place) beacuse across the country some were still able to connect at the same location as others who cannot.

As with most situations both consumers and businesses have sent messages via Twitter to complain about the issue, here's a couple.

Joanne Clarkson from Newcastle said "Being the mother of a child with special needs I need my phone. Until this is fixed I will have to stay home so I can be contacted by my landline if the school needs me,".

Chris Benson, owner of Crystal IT services based in Barry, Wales said "It's a little difficult to direct our workforce, contractors or suppliers when they all have to rely on landlines." meaning it had effected his work and business.

The widespread issues began "at lunchtime" yesterday which meant many lost voice and data services.
In a statement today the firm said: "We can confirm that our 2G network service has now been restored. Customers who were affected should now be able to make and receive calls. Our 3G service is starting to restore and customers should expect to see a gradual return of data services as the day progresses.".

So at the moment services are partially restored, and the company is advising customers still affected by the outage to switch their mobile phones off and on to reset their devices so that they will hopefully connect to their 2G services for the time being.

Having the 2G network back up means that customers should now be able to make and receive calls, and for others can also send and receive texts again, if you think about it its like going back to the old networks for the old black and white display mobile phones.

Customers have been told they can keep track of developments via O2's service status page (put in a link so you can get there from here).

Here's the news coverage from the BBC talking to a representative of Gizmodo.com:




Summary of the week

So this week we have yet more singers in bad conditions resulting in stopping performances and the O2 network having server problems that have effected many customers.

Thursday 5 July 2012

Interesting News Of The Week 02/07/2012

It's Thursday, and today is even more special than any other Thursday because on this day I have been with Miss Gemma Oliver 7 months and hopefully I will continue being with her forever more, but yeah that's just me being all emotional.
Anyway, here's this weeks stories.

Lifeguard Fired For Helping Drowning Man
Yeah that's right this weeks first story is about a lifeguard in Florida that has been fired from his job for helping a drowning man who was not within his section of the beach, sounds stupid, that's why I selected this story and here it is.

Tomas Lopez a 21 year old lifeguard at Hallandale Beach north of Miami was told that a swimmer was in trouble in an unguarded area of the beach, so he rushed to the mans aid and because of that he has now been fired.
"I wasn't going to say no," the lifeguard said, which is completely right, your not going to turn around and say no to a call of help.

But his bosses still fired him and said he had broken company rules and could have put other swimmers at risk, so he was expected to stay and let a man possibly die, this was followed up by at least two colleagues resigning in protests.

"We have liability issues and can't go out of the protected area," Susan Ellis of lifeguard, provider Jeff Ellis and Associates said.

She added that the stretch of Hallandale Beach that Mr Lopez was supposed to be patrolling on Monday was being protected by other lifeguards who were on the phone to emergency operators at the time, so if there was other lifeguards on duty, then I don't see what the problem is, they could of had it covered.

Mr Lopez who was four months into the job, ran some distance to help the swimmer who had already been pulled out of the water by other beachgoers, showing dedication to his work and the life of the poor man. He and an off-duty nurse then helped the man until paramedics arrived to take him to hospital and that could of made all the difference, perhaps if they weren't there then the man could of died.
Now the unidentified swimmer is said to be in intensive care.

Mr Lopez has no regrets about losing his $8.25 an hour (£5.30; 6.60 euros) job, and neither would I, a mans life is more important than a £5.30 an hour job, besides now he's had publicity he's more than likely to be hired elsewhere.

"I think it's ridiculous, honestly, that a sign is what separates someone from being safe and not safe," Mr Lopez told CBS television, and I'm sure many other people agree with him.

Another colleague, who found out that Lopez had been fired, said he radioed his manager to cover the beach for him and promptly quit, which just shows how much the managements action can and will effect their work force.

Here's a video of the news coverage:




Armed Police Close Down M6 Toll
This news story is extremely new in fact it took place at 08:20 this morning near Litchfield in United Kingdom.
It involves a very serious event investigated as being suspicious on the M6 toll involving a single-decker coach.
Here's the story.

Police said the coach stopped on the hard shoulder "of its own accord" (With no need) at 08:20 BST.
48 passengers on the Megabus Preston to London service were led off the coach and forced to sit apart in a boxed off area on the opposite carriageway, so that police could identify the situation.

The coach left Preston at 05:10 and was due in London at 10:55, but obviously didn't reach its destination, stopping and causing panic to police and our other services.
The fire service and police involved were from the West Midlands and Staffordshire area.

At around 12:00, the passengers were moved on to another coach which remained parked under the canopy of nearby toll booths, presumably under observation.

Eyewitnesses say that the police called into deal with the situation were not standard policemen and women, they arrived in unmarked police cars, helicopters and with sniffer dogs.
A man on scene also said "It all just took off, ambulances left right and centre and armed police in black caps.", suggesting that police were bomb squads rather than standard police as that is they're usual uniform.

Diversions were put in place to send traffic away from the toll road to avoid anything effecting the polices investigations, the Ministry of Defence also confirmed military personnel were assisting police, maybe explaining the described policemen and women in dark or black clothing.

Eventually about four hours after armed officers arrived, police confirmed the scene as safe.
They had spoken to all of the passengers individually one by one from the large group, keeping one passenger separate from everyone else, a possible suspect.

A police spokesman later said "We are also not treating anyone as a suspect." despite keeping the one passenger separate.

The investigation started and was thought to be something to do with terrorists but it has now been made apparent that the sweep was prompted by the discovery of a fake cigarette, 4 hours for that one cigarette.

Here's an interview with a passenger:



Summary Of The Week

Well this week we have unrecognised heroes and fake drugs causing big problems, what is our world coming to?

Oh yeah, we need a nice picture this week, so here it is, our planet (and the moon):

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