London Wires Up For 2012 Olympic Games 79
alphadogg writes "While London's massive Olympic park is still very much a frenetic construction site, IT engineers are fine-tuning the equipment that will be used to transmit scores, let athletes send e-mail, and broadcast high-definition video of the Games. The Olympic Games are set to kick off on July 27 next year and will be followed by the Paralympic Games. Test athletic events are already under way, which are being used to evaluate the resiliency of high-speed data networks costing millions of pounds. Acer has a large role in the 2012 Olympics and will provide much of the IT hardware, including 11,500 desktops running Windows 7; 1,100 laptops; 900 servers, and other parts including SAN storage systems, touchscreen monitors and standard monitors."
Acer? (Score:5, Insightful)
Is is just me or is the olympics getting worse and (Score:5, Insightful)
I'm probably just getting old, but today's Olympics seem less personal than what went before. It's always getting bigger, the athletes are less and less like the everyday folk, and even the big ones are pretty much forgotten after 2-3 years.
But I'm just a geek so I'm probably just not getting it.
Waste of money (Score:5, Insightful)
Will probably be seen as a troll for these comments, but this is what it feels like to those that actually pay the taxes in the UK (not the freeloaders who back the "games").
When you add in all the costs of all the bits that are counted as someone else's budget for building for the Olympics, £20bn will have been wasted on a two week event. The 2012 legacy will be massive debt for the taxpayers to pay off, while "sponsors" laugh all the way to the bank.
Who does the "games" benefit? The politicians who love to grandstand with someone else's money, the construction industry who are big donors to the political parties, and the athletes who love bumming off others taxes and sponsorship instead of getting a job.
The TV companies have already promised saturation garbage coverage in the UK of the "games".
The taxpayers are sick of it.
in the usa will be able to get bbc feeds over NBC (Score:4, Insightful)
People don't want the story filled time delayed NBC crap they want live feeds but will you need to get a uk proxy or will NBC put up the same feeds on there web site.
Re:Is is just me or is the olympics getting worse (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Waste of money (Score:4, Insightful)
I'm involved in the tourism industry outside of London.
Unfortunately, tourism here won't benefit much from the games. Most of the games venues are already tourist traps (e.g. London), and thus would have been booked to near capacity anyway. If you've ever tried to get a late hotel or restaurant reservation in London in August, you will know it's already pretty busy. You could argue that games-goers will spend more per night than other tourists, but I haven't seen any evidence for that. If London etc are busier than normal, then businesses will struggle with overcapacity. A restaurant can only service so many covers per hour; having a queue of people waiting to be seated doesn't count for much, and taking on extra staff / overtime will hurt quality, reputation and margins.
Additionally, because of the perception that the whole country is going to be crammed, advance bookings are way down in the rest of the UK, as people are worried that airports and accommodation are going to be crowded. If only.
London already has the best public transport infrastructure in the UK, and is one of the most well known cities in the world, and now we're spending tens of billions of pounds on the one city that really doesn't need it. It's actually far from the best place to hold an event for people in the UK - it's not centrally located, and is relatively hard to get to by car. Public transport is very good, but the money they have spent improving it just for the games could have built a brand new metro system in any other city. There is a strong perception that London was chosen because that's where the people making the decision are, rather than the national interest.
I've been involved in the planning for (obviously much smaller scale) events in the past, and the general modus operandi for working out "leveraged value" (the amount of money spent by attendees not counting at the event) is to claim two bed nights (before and after) for every day a person is at an event, plus three restaurant meals (evening, lunch, evening). A bit of statistical tomfoolery, and you come up with a figure for something like £1000 per person per day ticket as the additional economic benefit. Working out the actual value is strongly discouraged by the organisers, who have probably claimed match funding based on their own over-generous assessment of the leverage.
Re:Is is just me or is the olympics getting worse (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:Acer? (Score:5, Insightful)
That is completely wrong.
You have a statutory warranty of two years. If a product beaks within that period it is up the shop to prove that you mistreated it, otherwise they must honour the warranty and replace or repair it. Even failure due to normal wear and tear is covered as the product must be designed to last two years of normal use.
After the two year warranty period the Sale of Goods Act gives you additional protection. It states that goods must last a "reasonable length of time". For example a laptop is usually expected to last five or six years of normal use. If it fails during that time because of a manufacturing defect, bad design or poor workmanship you are entitled to a partial refund or replacement. The refund will normally be based on the amount of time you have been able to use it for, so if your laptop died after 3 years you would be entitled to 2/5ths or 3/6ths of the purchase price.
Retailers are not keen for this stuff to become common knowledge, and some even try to slyly abuse it. John Lewis is a good example, they proudly proclaim that everything has a two year warranty as if it were some kind of special benefit they offer, when in fact it is the legal minimum.