We have just published a series of articles on "How to create an 8 processor tablet PC with 16GB ram for £220". Yes there is a catch: two days ago ago we did not have such a beast and now we have and we only spent £200. Here's how.
Just before the local elections the BBC News carried an article from a relatively obscure economic body saying that there was unlikely to be an economic recovery in the UK for the next 5 years. The response of the Conservative party was that forecast was out of step with virtually all other economic forecasting bodies. The BBC is well known for over egging "impartially" on some subjects. In many respects, the political persuasion of the BBC news room being left of centre balances the overall right of centre press. So we have a dichotomy.
The question arises, if we are trying to get a clear picture,
how do we get a clear view? With various bodies spinning the
figures this way and that, what is the actual forecast for economic
growth taking current indicators into account?
The CBI have a vested interest in an accurate picture, it's much
easier to make a profit if you are going with the grain, just
before an economy goes into expansion is the optimum time to
invest.
CBI Economic forcast pdf document
The current public view of banks is that they are good at skimming profits when times are good, but not prudent with other people's money. Never the less, if we want to know where we might be going, a good idea of where we have been helps. With that in mind then the following freely available reports may shed some light:
lloyds bank business barometer quarterly report
lloyds bank economic research latest-reports
Actually dear old Aunty comes up with the most graphically
impactful digests:
BBC news economy tracker pages
If you just want to an idea of the current level of padding vs
real news then:
BBC general buisness
stories
Well the temporary employment sector is a good barometer. Either we have done a much better job of search engine optimisation (SEO) recently or people are at least giving full consideration using our technology to do better in the future temp staffing market.
Short and sweet, we have updated our web page on free storage and backup to link to a new article we found recently which also covers Google Drive. We have also updated the links to the Microsoft live backup service, now called SkyDrive.
Google has, somewhat belatedly, entered the "free" cloud storage market.
Their offering of 5GB (as opposed to the 2GB available elsewhere) is designed to be attractive when you cross the 2GB barrier and otherwise have to use a paid service. Some may argue this is unfair competition: that is not the issue to be discussed here, more are you giving away the family jewels?
We have trialled and abandoned a number of these services. Our main issue is their ability, every now and again to start duplicating files, overwriting later versions, or simply hanging on to a file rendering it unusable until the machine is rebooted. Maybe it's because we evaluated them earlier in their development cycle, maybe it's an inherent flaw. Maybe we are dubious about the security of our data.
So when master of taking large "free" data and making a profit from it comes along and offers a "free" service its perhaps worth looking more closely at what you will be signing up for.
The Google T's and C's give then them the following rights:
"When you upload or otherwise submit content to our Services, you give Google (and those we work with) a worldwide license to use, host, store, reproduce, modify, create derivative works (such as those resulting from translations, adaptations or other changes we make so that your content works better with our Services), communicate, publish, publicly perform, publicly display and distribute such content. The rights you grant in this license are for the limited purpose of operating, promoting, and improving our Services, and to develop new ones" [services].
Now these are pretty large doors that are opening on what was previously your closely guarded intellectual property. Moreover storage of your intellectual property (aka IP) will be bound by the Data Protection Act in the UK. You may well be breaking the act if you use Google's services with these wordings.
These words and attempts at copyright acquisition are not necessary. Compare Google's "do no wrong" wording with big bad Microsoft's:
"Except for material that we license to you, we don't claim ownership of the content you provide on the service. Your content remains your content. We also don't control, verify, or endorse the content that you and others make available on the service. You understand that Microsoft may need, and you hereby grant Microsoft the right, to use, modify, adapt, reproduce, distribute, and display content posted on the service solely to the extent necessary to provide the service."
It seems to me that MS with their army of lawyers are taking a far fairer, tighter and more responsible approach to their terms of service than Google with their army of lawyers.
In either respect, when you use a cloud service, the servers may be outside the EU in which case the Information Commissioners Office (ICO) guidance and rulings will apply.
Information Commissioners Office guidance and ruling
Put simply, you may be hazarding your licence as a data bureau by using a cloud service (especially Google's with their current T's & C's) for data storage and therefore putting your company at risk.
Ava use both Microsoft's and Google's services, although not necessarily the ones referred to in this article.
Ok, this is a bit off topic for Ava: Original T-shirts for the discerning. Is Science becoming ever more sexy?
Let me take a short while to explain. In general the amount of data we have "at our fingertips" is increasing at the same rate as the power of the computers which generate this data. There has been a "law" associated with this phenomenon. It's called Moore's Law. It's usually and simply associated with the ever increasing power of computer chips.
What has this go to do with T-shirts? Well these days you can make your own. But if you do, IMHO a stunning image is always helpful.
I've always been interested in Astronomy: after all, the origin of our universe is quite an important question (as questions go). And the images that come from modern telescopes are ever more stunning.
Why?
Seems a bit obvious once its pointed out. Moore's law is associated with the amount of data that we can gather about everything. These days Astronomy is powered by the same technology as computers: chips that detect light, processors that control the huge (sometimes multiple) mirrors that focus ever more accurately on the most distant objects the human race will ever see.
Lunchtime saw me browsing the article "How big data is changing Astronomy again". Now it is a bit stodgy in some ways. But one of the links led me to the good old NASA site and The Majestic Sombrero Galaxy (M104), and also the Hubble space telescope site Much as I trust NASA to understate their achievements: in this case, a few biilion stars do nicely for the word "Majestic".
For your information, there is also the index page. Just take a few minutes to browse through literally hundreds of images selected for their impact. They are available in various sizes, sometimes it takes a couple of clicks to find the right one for the T-shirt. What is really nice (to me) is that the images are largely public domain, so you can go to a "design your own T-shirt" site and legally upload a galaxy or two to display on your chest, back or indeed anywhere else the t-shirt company will print the picture!
And if you think you'd like it as your desk top wall paper then just click on the picture to go to the various resolutions available.
There have been a number of changes in employment law introduced this month. These have been reasonably widely reported in the media. However if you need to get to the original source, here are links to the government web sites concerned all in one tidy place.
Changes in sick leave benefits when an employee is ill or injured
Changes in Maternity benefits
There have also been a reduction in red tape for accident reporting requirements (possibly no change in accidents though)
The condition to go to tribunal for unfair dismissal have been amended, and this is considered by most as of benefit to employers.
The actual act is here:
and lastly, reforms in work place pension law
Happy reading.
The doomsayers are at it again. The recent KPMG report for REC was spun to suggest that the flattish temp jobs market in February was a result of the Agency Workers Regulations kicking in. This was nothing to do with the weather. Weather upset the natural migration of tulip pickers up the country because the Tulips in the south were delayed and the Tulips in Scotland flowered at the same time and so remained unpicked (and a substantial number of tulip pickers were not employed). Not tulip picking but very much cherry picking the report. The KPMG report was cautiously optimistic about both Perm and Temp job markets. A substantial number of employers were expecting to take on both temp and perm staff in the next two quarters. The KMPG digest of their own report is here.
As someone who is of more advanced years, I have a reluctance to fill in (accurate) personal data on any web site be it Google, Facebook or any other. Even in the early days of email, I used to misspell my name email address etc and was not surprised when unsolicited emails came back to Albut.Einstine@ whatever. So when I read the blog linked below, I felt that it merited a link because of its reasonableness and sense.
Privacy contexts and Girls around Me
By the way, my first programme was written using cards which required me to punch holes in them. Actually while I remember, Dad made a tool for puching the "chads" from a very small nail and a dead ball point pen by removing the empty ink holder, warming the business end of the plastic over the gas hob and pushing the nail into the soft plastic. I then had to complete the next 20 orders for the tool from the Maths teacher for the rest of the class!
With the economy slowly improving, agencies may need to contact staff for whom they have not provided work for some time. These staff, workers or employees will usually have been moved to the archive for old staff. Ava does not delete these entries: it hides them from day to day use. There are a number of simple to use ways to list and then contact these staff. The following linked article describes how.
Is it reasonable to dismiss an employee who had been at risk of redundancy for some time, just before they reached 50 and therefore acquired enhanced pension rights? This was precisely the case that was ruled upon in Woodcock v Cumbria Primary Care Trust. The judgement went in favour of the NHS Trust. A succinct summary is available here:
Inner Temple library Blogg on Woodcock v Cumbria Primary Care Trust
A more turgid fuller account is here:
May be useful one day...