I went to the East Acton Forum last night, where it was confirmed to be caused by an un-named but apparently common virus. I was told that all staff are now banned from using any external plug-in memory device or disc. There has been no attempt to remove the incredibly expensive virus collector called Microsoft and replace it with a much more secure Unix-compatible system as used by many of the larger financial organizations, unfortunately most of the council do not understand what is available and are not prepared to check. The EU is trying desperately to persuade the UK to change, but is hitting a wall of ignorance. The government pays lip service, and I have attended two large seminars organized by the Prime Minister's office on the introduction and promotion of Free Open Source Software to the UK, attended by many top organizations, companies, Universities, and other educational institutions, but it is then ignored. There are University courses, but little official help for new users. The BBC also insists on using Microsoft, despite many of their IT staff wishing to move to a Unix-compatible system. The normal estimate is that five times the IT staff are kept busy running around after a Microsoft system, while most of the work involved in running a Unix-compatible system can be done remotely and in comfort, working from home or using a portable computer, even a handheld, as convenient. I have given away literally hundreds of demo DVDs which run a Unix-compatible system direct from the DVD, without any installation, yet I am sure that many are never even viewed unless it is discovered to be very good at rescuing files from a crashed Microsoft system. The same disc ISO image can be downloaded from many official university mirror sites around the world, but it is large and so takes time to download.
Chris Bell ● 6328d