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."
And none of it will support IPv6! (Score:2, Interesting)
The organisers of the London Olympics have announced that they will not offer IPv6 connectivity to or for the games.
Re:Waste of money (Score:2, Interesting)
If the advertisers, retailers, networks, etc etc who are supposed to make great profits and contribute to the "massive local tax revenue" that's supposed to benefit the local economy would actually pay the billions in investment rather than sticking it to the taxpayers with the help of the Olympic committee and the acquiescence of the local government, then I'm sure the taxpayers might be a bit happier with the situation. As it stands, almost every initiative of business and government is ultimately billed to the taxpayers in some form and the money used primarily to line the pockets of the rich.
Re:Waste of money (Score:5, Interesting)
If you do it right the Olympics can be a net gain. Tourism, free advertising worldwide, infrastructure that provides jobs and long term benefits...
In fact a major part of our bid was getting the cost down and benefits up after China's almost unlimited budget. Maybe we are getting it wrong but people could at least try to get past the Daily Mail hatefest and blame games, and try to make the most of it.
Re:Television Coverage (Score:4, Interesting)
Not where they are building the Olympic Village. Before work started on the village, the only thing that CCTV would have seen there would have been a bunch of kids coming in on dirt bikes and vandalising the cameras. Of course, it would then miss the kids leaving the area as deserted as it had been before.
I assume you know that most of the figures cited for the number of CCTV cameras in use in the UK are bogus, by the way. A newspaper counted the number of cameras in two fairly seedy London shopping streets, and extrapolated the number based on the total miles of road in England (including rural lanes), then Citogenesis [xkcd.com] took over and even the government started citing the inflated figure. Yes, there are about 1.85 million cameras [readytogo.net], but the majority are "inside premises, rather than facing the street". Most of the time we are not being watched on the street -- but we are if we go into retail or other business premises.