touring Austria

If you want to know why Austria is one of my favourite places to tour on a
bike then see this report from a Croatian rider.
http://www.ukgser.com/forums/showthread.php?t=243631

You may need to register to see the report but it is free.

The quality of the photography is mostly excellent.

I've been to most of the places, although he found a road through the
Nockalm national park that I bypassed by using the motorway which looks
fantastic.

 

Vivid greens. I miss the Alps in summer. Not yet been on a bike - it's
very high on my to-do list...

I've an open invite to stay with a pal in Zurich, and then tour
together for a week or so next year.

 

Worth adding to the list next time round.

Oh, and IIWY I'd stop confusing Croatia and Serbia.

 

I'm sure they won't mind the misrepresentation. It's not like they have
an issue with national identity...

 

He's just updated it with some pictures of the Dolomites. Some superb
views.

 

Here are some photos of the Dolomites from our trip there last summer:

http://bit.ly/9QYaDX

Not bike pictures, but we went there on the bikes. Spectacular mountains!

 

I like #25 where you[?] are looking across the valley and a winding road
can be seen on the little green bit.

 

Probably, you porridgewog...

 

Yes, that's me. It's looking down from the top of the Gruppo di Sella. The
road must be somewhere near the top of the Gardena pass, above Selva.

 

yes

 

Sorry, yes, I should have put the original URL in as well.

I don't think I've ever come across an organization before which has
responded to the world of social media by just banning it. Do they have
an AUP or policy that they would share? It might make an interesting case
study.

 

Ours did for a short while when Facebook started to get big, and also
included google groups and other relatively harmless stuff. Only
lasted a few months, when it was replaced by an uninforced
'justifiable use' policy.

They also tried to ban on-line banking some years earlier, but only
from within IE - Netscape was still part of the standard build for
many olde machines at that time and continued to work fine. They also
dropped this rather shortsighted restriction quite quickly.

 

Yes. I'm a bit surprised anyone is still at the "ban it" stage.

Unless Champ works for MI6, or something. But even they didn't manage to
keep the boss's photos off FB.

 

I've used the systems of two local authorities (1 in England, 1 in Wales)
and both ban access to many sites. The Welsh one was very harsh on anything
it thought might be used by people to slack off, banning anything with
streaming video, including access to www.direct.gov.uk which was a tad
inconvenient as I couldn't access information about services my clients
could be entitled to.

 

At my old place streaming video and 'personal storage' (FlickR etc.)
were the no-nos. IIRC that was a 'Websense' system which I guess can be
configured to suit the level of corporate paranoia about such things.

That reached its height when any USB attached data storage that wasn't
encrypted using the outsourcers prescribed methods was banned. Approved
USB pen drives bearing the authority's logo had to be purchased at
something of a premium over PC World prices. Understandable in some ways
after a notorious data loss incident.

It did, however, cause some operational problems for the latest
generation of noise monitoring equipment which often stores data and
..wav files on SD cards built in to the machines and a USB connection to
pass files to a PC for post-processing. Fortunately the requirement is
usually only to read from the external storage, so that wasn't
insurmountable with a bit of forethought about file processing.


--
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| Pete Fisher at Home: |
| Voxan Roadster Yamaha WR250Z/Supermoto "Old Gimmer's Hillclimber" |
| Gilera GFR * 2 Moto Morini 2C/375 Morini 350 "Forgotten Error" |
+-------------------------------------------------------------------+

 

In my social group there's quite a few that can't get to those sites
during working hours due to their company's policies.

 

V can't even get to GMail from work, let alone Facebook.

So obviously she spends most of her day dicking about via her iPhone
instead.

 

Understandable, considering the propensity of public sector employees to
drop dead with fright when faced with the prospect of some actual work.

 

Facebook's blocked at my place of work.

But eBay isn't. Hurrah!

 

Admittedly the organizations I work with (UN and NGO, mostly) aren't much
good at banning anything. But even the corporates I am familiar with are
more interested in using social media than restricting it. Even if they do
get it hilariously wrong sometimes (google "Nestle Facebook" if you're not
already familiar with that story). I honestly haven't come across an
organization that blocks FB access, and I work in communications
(sometimes) in allegedly conservative and control-oriented Switzerland.

To ban something because you think your staff will waste their time on it
otherwise, rather than doing their work, says something about what you
think of your staff, and also about your grasp of technology (as someone
already pointed out, they've all got FB on their phones anyway).