Posts by yeah, right.

used to want to go there.

I used to want to work there. I've actually worked there, and it's quite nice for the richer classes. But stories like this make me rethink that desire. Third-world, religious nutter legal systems like this should not be be encouraged. Unfortunately, they seem to be quite popular with the rich crowd. The crowd that DOESN'T get tested at airports.

One law for the rich, another for everyone else. I guess they've followed their mentors well. The US and the UK both also have such systems, although a little less blatant.

Motto

Do recall the Microsoft motto and mantra. Repeat after me:

Embrace. Extend. Extinguish.

Only fools think that Microsoft has changed its tune after all these years. This is only the latest victim. Watch and learn as "Microsoft's effort" vanishes from the open source domain over time (assuming it's even there to begin with), leaving that company in charge of yet another proprietary, lock-in product.

From computer languages to network protocol stacks to file formats and beyond, it's the same story over and over ad nauseum for the last 20 years or more.

@ A.J. Stiles

So food and drink should also be free? Might want a reality check.

Reality

It's a pity that European MPs aren't made to take a test on "reality" after being elected to office. They seem to be a bunch of mostly uneducated dolts who will gladly jump on the first bandwagon that comes along their way. All without doing the basic research that a journalist like Lettice can do.

Unfortunately.

The vested interests with money in keeping the status quo are not limited to just stating the science. Not to mention the fact that most people, when presented with an emotional appeal that's a load of bullshit and a dry, scientific analysis of the facts will almost invariably agree with the emotional appeal. Just look at the whole "Creationism" (a.k.a. "Intelligent Design") lies being successfully spread around.

People don't want facts. They want sound bites. And the scientists who cater to that understand more about social psychology than those who are more honest about their findings. Yes, it makes them no better than their despicable opponents, but at least they then have a half a chance at getting SOME message out, rather than getting drowned out by the usual "nothing to see here" crowd.

Until society rewards honesty, I think we'll be stuck with the current level of hyperbole. Unfortunately, I don't see society rewarding honesty very soon. There's too much money to be made in hyperbole, and even more in deceit.

let's see.

So they keep fiddling with the game until they win, then declare that their version of the game represents reality?

Frankly, although the US has some really good geeks on their payroll, the people actually making the decisions are so hampered by bureaucracy and corruption that I doubt they could react fast enough in the case of a real "attack". Which won't come from any vector they've predicted anyway. It never does.

Wow.

Wow again. A more one-sided piece of tripe has rarely been seen. The author seems to have pushed most of the F.U.D. buttons on open source and on patents, that's for sure. There's definitely a place for this author at Fox News.

As for those who in the comments have managed to completely misunderstand and misrepresent "open source software" right along with the author, again, wow. The level of ignorance being displayed, the sheer level of deliberate blindness when the whole idea is pretty well documented, is astounding.

Several companies are proving, there is, in fact, a lot of money is "free" software. For those here who have demonstrated they can't do even the most rudimentary research, all I can say is that finding out how it works is left as an exercise to the reader. Mainly because repeating the fact that just because the software itself is "free" doesn't mean that the expertise around it is free would be a waste of my time, given the deliberate ignorance displayed so far.

just one short comment.

"oh, bugger".

typical

Typical of the US "Justice" system to not deal effectively with the perpetrators. They're being dealt with as corporations, and are thus being given as many chances as they want to rip people off, then not being effectively censured for it.

The US authorities had them, barely gave them a slap on the wrist, then let them go without effective monitoring. Sounds like how the US deals with just about every other corporation that breaks the laws down there. At least Spamford is in "good" company.

In the US, individuals get life for stealing bread, but corporations... just get to try again and again.

Much better.

Simon's back! Giving me some cracking good ideas too...

wow.

Well, it's their license, so I guess they get to say what they want.

I hope all five of them have fun using the software. Actually, looking at the restrictions in a bit more detail with a legalistic eye, I'm unsure that anyone alive in a "modern" western nation could claim to be able to follow the license restrictions to their full extent without at least some wilful hypocrisy.

But hey, whatever floats their boat.

wow,

I've never seen such a thinly veiled attempt to introduce national ID cards through the back passage...

fake value

There data was not "worth 2.5 million". The projects the data were for might have been worth that much at one point, but I really doubt that if the data itself was really worth that much that they would not have any backups whatsoever. Sounds like something a lawyer, system admin or manager would come up in order to qualify for a better insurance payout in this case. Hell, I've assigned such fake values to data myself in order to qualify for a better backup budget. I can see why they did it, but in this case they are lying to the court.

enough.

Would this author and others please refrain from reprinting, almost verbatim, press releases by organizations that have been known to fudge their numbers to make them look better?

As the commenter before me said: prove it.

The fact is, they haven't been able to prove it in the past, and they can't prove it now, because they're pulling numbers out of their arse and they know it. Their methodology is crooked, their arguments are exaggerated, and someone from the Reg should damn well know better.

If you're going to print an article, at least TRY to make it look like you're doing SOME research on the subject before acting like a BSA mouthpiece.

impressive.

Now if someone comes up with a way to "mod" the shoddy build quality, the Eee PC would definitely be a winner. The form factor, for starters, is perfect for "on the go".

Hmm. Actually, a bit of extra glue and a couple of screws might fix some of the bigger issues, such as the keyboard module sliding under the edge of the case.

Nice pc...

I've recently had a chance to try an Eee PC. I Really wanted one, and found a local dealer who had one I could try for a bit.

Lovely form factor. Very readable screen. Obviously built to the price though, because just using for 10 minutes I thought it was going to break on me. Really. Things moved and creaked on it when I picked it up, and it's really not heavy enough that it should do so. Then there's the keyboard. I have small hands, so it's about the right size for me. But it still didn't really work right. Some of the keys seemed to stick and not work when pressed. Others doubled up on their output. The keyboard is actually on a separate tray that isn't properly attached, and some of the keys had managed to find their corners trapped under the rest of the case.

It's cheap. Not "inexpensive". Cheap. As in shoddily built. Feels like a toy, but I've seen much more robust toys.

Which is really unfortunate. I was prepared to get one right there and then. I love the idea. The concept is quite good, and it's really very portable and could be really useful. Unfortunately, in this case, the execution left a lot to be desired.

(off topic continues) @ Coward re: 2 Comments

Actually, NoScript allows you to configure what javascript gets run by domain or sub-domain. So I'm not barred the pleasure of using Google maps, because I have the option of allowing javascript along with the pleasure of denying other sites access to my browser in that fashion. It's been incredibly useful these past few years.

It's the usual Apple.

People clapped because it's what had been predicted, so people were getting confirmation of the rumours that they'd been hearing about.

It's your typical Apple product post-2005. Excellent, brilliant piece of engineering with contempt for the consumer built right in by the marketing dept. I'm guessing the battery could easily have been made user replaceable, but wasn't due to some marketing bod figuring they could make more this way. Same type of people who locked the iPhone to some of the least competent mobile companies. It all fairly screams contempt.

From its low spec to its non-user-replaceable battery, all the way to its over-the-top price, the whole thing fairly screams "we think we're too cool so we can treat the consumer like crap".

Bloody brilliant bit of engineering though. It looks very, very nice.

Wrong end of the stick?

The IT departments that I've worked for over the last couple of decades have invariably reminded of "Mordac the Preventor" from Dilbert. The author here seems to have been an unfortunate proponent of that philosophy.

A sorry combination of "we aren't going to support it because we didn't write it" with a hefty dose of "we aren't going to write it because we don't think you need it even thought you're asking for it", and a dash of "we'll tell you what you want, how dare you tell us how you do your job".

Yes, jury-rigged apps are dangerous. However, the flip side of the coin is that if people are USING them, perhaps IT should get off its arse and make proper applications with the same functionality actually available. Instead, it was invariably a case for the business end of "better to beg forgiveness than ask permission". With the expected results.

So we have a system where the people on the front line of both IT and the business all know what is really needed, but it has to go through so many layers of management that by the time IT gets a hold of it, it bears no resemblance to what was required in the first place.

We had tremendous success at one workplace with a "semi-official skunk works project office". People on the business end would come up with nifty ideas for apps, someone in IT would hack it together PROPERLY (ie: designed, documented, tested, etc.) but in a minimal-overhead environment with high user involvement, and the user (or small group) would go off quite happy. If the app became popular it was then already in the IT system and it could then more easily be made more robust (having been designed right in the first place) for more extensive deployment. If it died only a few hours of someones time was wasted. The business case was that we were writing prototypes for new apps, and the users were happily testing them.

This system worked very well.

Unfortunately, that system died when the IT dept was outsourced to a large concern with IT "managers" who held their positions more due to their arse kissing abilities than their ability to actually get things done. Suddenly the people in the business couldn't get what they needed, and the company quickly became stupefyingly obtuse in its use of technology.

The team disbanded very quickly, and we went our separate ways. Pity really.

Race to the bottom.

It's a race to the bottom. Which government will allow their people to be exploited the most by multinational companies? That's the real meaning of "globalization". It's not about creating a smaller, better world for people, it's about creating a richer world for a very small number of large corporations. Unfortunately, local governments keep falling for the same song and dance year after year. Ireland spent millions attracting certain manufacturers there, only to have them vanish as soon as the money couldn't be grabbed back. All over the USA it's the same thing.

So long as governments stop at artificial lines, and corporations can cross those lines, the corporations will play one off against the other again and again. They've been doing it for centuries, and will continue until they're either stopped, or they become the government.

Wrong complaint.

If they'd complained about the fact that what's in the advert has nothing to do with how the game actually looks, I'd say they have a point.

But for crying out loud, they're shutting the barn door after the horse have not only escaped, but grown old and died! If they don't want violence condoned as an option they shouldn't air the damn daily news about the world around us. They allow news stations to advertise REAL death with REAL bodies with REAL guts strewn over the road, but they won't allow this? I don't mind not glorifying violence, but I certainly do mind the obvious double standard the ASA and other agencies seem to have about the whole thing.

Where the hell do they FIND the people who make these asinine decisions at the ASA? Some geriatric or psychiatric hospital with no access to TV past 1950?

About time

It's about time that foreign companies learned that in order to do business in a country, you follow the laws of that country.

Google and Yahoo claim to do that when they shop their customers to the authorities.

Amazon is just one more American company that thinks the world is the USA. It isn't. France is incredibly _consumer_ friendly in both price and practice. They defend the consumer, not the businesses. Fresh food? No problem. I can safely eat raw eggs or meat in France, even if purchased in the centre of Paris. Wouldn't dare try that in the UK or USA. Good food? Everywhere I've visited so far in that country. Decent prices? Books, as others have mentioned, generally cost significantly less in France. There is also a much wider choice of books from large or small publishers, along with a wider variety of topics and styles. Unlike, say, the USA or the UK where only a few major publishers currently survive. Just about every bookstore I've visited in either country, apart from the second-hand or speciality stores, has pretty much exactly the same monotonously uniform selection of formula books. Forced bundling of software? Well, the courts have found against that disgusting anti-consumer practice as well.

Vive la France! The UK and the USA have a lot to learn from that grande dame about how to protect the consumer, not the enterprises that would feed on them.

Already legal.

Actually, current law in Canada says that it already IS legal in Canada for people to download music for personal use. At least until Canada's bought-and-paid-for-by-American-business "Tory" government and their front-man Steve Harper can change the copyright laws. They tried once already, and were driven back by howls of outrage.

So yes, I'd say that letting ARTISTS decide how and when their music should be heard is definitely causing a case of panic in the big labels who will see their empire crumble as people realize that no, nobody needs them. At all.

next step...

The next step, after this is done, is to announce that all the planes will now have Microsoft operating systems installed on the flight deck and for user convenience.

Watch me start taking the boat again. And not an American warship:

(http://www.theregister.co.uk/2007/02/26/windows_boxes_at_sea/)

not over yet.

The fight isn't over until the fat disk sings, and it hasn't done so yet. There's still lots of time for the technically inferior product to win this particular spat.

Personally, I'm not playing this fools game. I'm of the firm opinion that storing information on easily scratched spinning disks is a thing of the past, and I'm looking forward to a more robust solid state approach to data storage, be it for movies or backups.

video game map

So, like many current video games, Google will be able to embed advertising into street scenes captured for "Street View".

That should provide for some amusement to see Google adverts embedded into the pictures of Microsoft Redmond Headquarters. I wonder if they'll be able to map advertising images onto shirts, briefcases and cars, or if they're going to settle for fake billboards on the Grand Canyon? A really subtle way would be to simply replace the reflections in windows with advertising. That would be almost subliminal.

Real issue.

The real issue is that Firefox is not displaying the given realm-value in any sort of way that allows easy discrimination between what the site provided and what Firefox is wrapping around it.

As for "sanitizing" the realm value, RFC 822 is quite clear, quoted-string can include spaces and quotes. RFC 2069 and RFC 2617 both state that realm-value is a quoted-string. Sanitizing the string would therefore make Firefox non-compliant with said standards.

So Firefox seems to be correctly following the standards, but it could make things clearer about what has been provided by the website as the realm name. Which means that Mr Raff's "problem" and "solution" would seem to be more geared towards attracting press attention (successfully it seems) rather than actually fixing the real issue that Firefox isn't making a dramatic visual distinction between the provided realm-value and the rest of the authentication text.

So no, not quite as embarrassing as Mr. Millar would have us believe.

can only wonder

I can only wonder how quickly my bandwidth limits would be exceeded by such a service, in which case would I get one of those $32,000 bills in the mail for excess bandwidth usage?

Nice touch.

The mention about the book was a nice touch. She'll go far with the RIAA or the US Dept of Justice, Guantanamo Division.

no show

OLPC didn't show up in court because they still haven't been served with the complaint. I wonder what kind of legal system they have in Nigeria? I'm guessing it's a good capitalist judicial system, where those who pay the judge the most win the case. But I could just be cynical.

what's the point?

Given that the "legal babysitting" has been completely ineffective so far, and given that the US government has basically allowed Microsoft to do whatever it wanted to do anyway, why would anyone believe that 5 more years of of this scam would do anyone any good? The US government isn't interested in competition. It's interested in making sure that the large corporations make as much as possible. If it was interested in competition, they would have busted up Microsoft, and they'd be doing something about the Autocad monopoly while they were at it.

The real babysitting seems to be getting done in Europe, where in just a few months (well, couple years anyway) they've done more for competition than the entire US legal system has managed to do in a couple of decades.

moral is...

...shop at Walmart, get molested.

Sounds par for the course given Walmart's proclivities to doing the same to their staff, their suppliers, and their suppliers slaves, er, staff.

poor choice.

Given Forbes lack of any ethics or knowledge with regards to technology reporting, I'm surprised you gave them the free plug. They don't report on the technology, they merely provide a paid-for "3rd party" opinion for those companies that have paid them enough.

Bully to them for having grabbed a share of that market, but it's unfortunate that their disclaimers aren't quite as upfront as their astroturfing.

@ JeffyPooh

It's not just about video surveillance, it's about the protection of personal data. Canada has good laws on the subject, unfortunately enforcement is spotty at best and difficult to obtain. Given that the federal privacy commissioner can only recommend action, and cannot take direct action (unlike, say, the B.C. privacy commissioner), the federal law is a bit of a joke even if it does look good on paper.

The US, on the other hand, has few if any real privacy laws, and what laws they have are completely ignored by their government. As for the UK, well, the less said the better. I'm wondering when they're going to try introducing subdermal RFID chips for all residents.

profits?

Number of units is nice, but what would probably be just as important is how much profit each company makes from those sales. DS and Wii are, after all, a lot cheaper than PS3, but I'm betting that the profit on a PS3 is a greater percentage of the price than the Wii or DS. Combined. Then again, the Wii and DS are pretty low-tech machines, so I might be surprised.

It would go something like this: find someone who has done a calculation of the real cost of building each unit (component costs), find a leak for the wholesale price, then compare actual profit for each company for the various platforms.

I could do the research myself, but I can't be arsed, mainly because I'm not the one getting paid to do these kind of comparisons, unlike some of the writers here.

losing it.

The Statute of Anne of 1710 broke the monopoly of the London Company of Stationers, creating a public domain and getting rid of the concept of "perpetual copyright", amongst other things.

Today: re-introduction of "perpetual copyright" through the back door, using a combination of insanely long copyright terms (up to 100 years now, and rising), criminalization of DRM removal (thus even if it's in the public domain, if it has DRM you can't get to it) and the ability to copyright the copies of a work that is already in the public domain (which effectively remove that work FROM the public domain).

Looks like the London Company of Stationers is back in business, and we can all kiss our public domain, and our copy RIGHTS, goodbye.