Boardmad

Much of my day-to-day involves putting together solutions that do a bit of data extraction, transformation and loading somewhere else (That’s the ETL bit). So that’s the transactional bit, at then end of the production line, once we’ve speont all this time, money and effort loading and validating this info you then need to quantify and carry out analysis on the metrics derived from this data…this is the OLAP.

With the imminent release of Microsoft SQL Server 2008 comes MDX or Multi Dimensional eXpressions. This article on ElReg does a better job of explaining than I ever would but I’m actually quite keen to get a better understanding of the ‘closing the loop’ power of the expressions language as increasingly our systems become ‘touchless’ and business processes need to be able to be run with minimal/zero intervention this sort of business intelligence becomes invaluable.

This post from well known and respected UK ISP Zen has to set alarm bells ringing ! Hot on the heels of the news that the UK’s BT Home Hub is borked comes the news that the chipset used globally by a third of all ADSL router integrators ’causes intermittancy’

Yikes…this could run and run !
As I suspected the comments that have arisen after this info appeared on the net point to confusion, misunderstanding and and an utter lack of faith in the BB market in the UK.

Following some serious problems with my preferred wordpress template for the site…I’ve had to resort to the default implementation until I can get to the bottom of what was wrong. It’s ugly I know but bear with me !

Occasionally I laugh out loud at the Despair.com posters…more often than not the raise a wry and slightly cynical smile. However this one’s just a peach.

You’re not Hemingway…get over it.

XPost from here

I’ve long been a DRM hater - I don’t own an iPod because I want to listen to my music in the format I choose, not what apple wants me to. The media furore over this American woman’s pitiful defense about the use of Kazaa is becoming a feeding-frenzy and I don’t imagine it’ll be too long before we see her doing heavy rotation on the daytime chat shows. However out of all this hoohaa, and alongside the Radiohead album release for free, a simple message from a chap trying to make the music industry realise it’s being overtaken and will rapidly become redundant. I like this message and for one will be looking for his books.

Chapter 1
Chapter 2

I love the idea for this - a mobo specific hardware embedded Virtual machine that boots first on startup giving you hardware access to your internet connection without the drag of having to wait for WIndoze to shake itself and roll out of bed. ! Love it…just hope it’s something they can extract out of proprietary mobo configs and let us mere mortals install for ourselves

clipped from www.splashtop.com On or Off, with nothing in between. Remember when booting a computer gave you enough time to make a cup of coffee? Not anymore… With Splashtop you can read e-mail, chat with friends, or surf the Web seconds after pushing the power button!

Surprise surprise…people in the UK still aren’t getting what they thought they would when ordering Broadband. I do sympathise with the ISP’s to some degree here…they’re selling a 2nd rate product over a third-world POTS copper network which in much of the UK predates WWII.
Technology being used in the BT backhaul is ‘just’ keeping Broadband speeds ahead of what people expect nowadays but with news that the internet2 backbone has gone live in the US (University & student faculties only !) at speeds of up to 100Gbps (yes that’s right a 1000 times faster than your normal 100Mbps office network !) and fibre networking delivered to the home the far east for less than we pay per month for ‘Max’ ADSL (there’s a misnomer if ever I heard one !) It’s hardly really surprising that the ‘big six’ are getting their bum’s felt from Ofcom.
Just you don’t expect anything concrete or earth-shattering to arise from this meeting of minds !

The main problem is the marketing guff that the ISP’s get away with selling their products with…”up to 8Mbps” to your average Joe in the street..’Oh well if I get the right kit and turn up the volume then I should get the full speed’ When you then get into the conversation with them trying to explain line length, signal attentuation, copper twisted pair being repaired with Aluminium, lack of capacity in the exchange,  rate-adaptive products, 10 day training periods etc etc they just give up and burble ! Hardly surprising really is it…but then if you were > 4km from the exchange would you be rushing off to Talk Talk to get their great 2Mb service when your mate living 2 street from the exchange gets full speed !?

clipped from news.bbc.co.uk Net firms quizzed on speed limits Bosses at six of the UK’s top net providers are being asked to explain why consumers do not get the broadband speeds firms advertise. The six executives are being questioned by Ofcom’s Consumer Panel which acts as the regulator’s customer champion. The panel wants consumers to get more information so they are not misled about the speed they sign up for. The panel also has proposals on what net firms should do to improve how they sell and advertise broadband.

I shouldn’t really be surprised, half the Pumas play their rugby in the heartland of the French game but why can’t we get past these guys. And why the hell when Hadden claims we’ve ‘tried and practised a number of ways of playing the game’ did we pick that crappy high ball affair which was little more than a mirror of their gameplan ? We’d've been far better off letting Parks keep them back in their own 45′ and pick off the points as the Argie indiscipline began to lapse from Patterson’s boot.

Sigh…I foretold this as a low score, tight and attritional game. Damn I hate it when I’m right. Now I have to suffer the additional indignity of hearing Ingerlund fans talking up their chances for the remainder of the event.

Bollocks I hate it when we lose, but I hate it even more when we lose and play with such crashing mediocrity. Nods to the Lamont brothers, moments of honest crash-ball heroics. Dan Parks for his kicking from hand and Patterson keeping us within striking range until the final minutes.

Ah well…