Posts by William Old

Microsoft touts trustworthy browsing with IE8

"Trustworthy browsing"..?

Please, please, please... if ANYONE sees that claim contained in a Microsoft advertisement anywhere in the UK, post it here, or mail the details to El Reg, so that complaints can be made to the Advertising Standards Authority. Better still, make the complaint yourself as well!

It breaches their codes of practice under the categories: substantiation, truthfulness and comparisons, and if a complaint is made to the ASA, Microsoft will have to factually substantiate their claim that it is "trustworthy", or agree (or be forced) to remove it - which, given the discussions about the "Microsoft security" oxymoron, will make interesting and entertaining reading! Cough... Active X controls... cough, cough!

So keep your eye peeled, folks! :-)

Scareware runs amok on PlayStation site

@Monkey

> Modern SQL is Microsoft

WTF...?

So, "Modern" is what the "M" is for in "MySQL"..? What does the "y" stand for, then?

Jeez... I've just looked at one of the menus on "MS Word" (someone else's machine, of course, I use OpenOffice on SuSE10.3), and looked under "Language"... So it seems that Microsoft wrote "English", as well... :-(

Microsoft gets hip with da yoof to flog email

I use Kopete...

... running on SuSE Linux to talk to all IM users [Yahoo, AIM, and... (sigh...) yes, MSN users...] - so, as presumably Microsoft's Messenger servers don't discriminate between users' operating systems (a big assumption, I admit), does that mean I too can swell this "generous" (barf..!) donation to Charidee...???

Court slaps UK BitTorrenters with landmark damages award

@Various...

@Steven Jones:

Thanks for saving me the effort of explaining this to the large number of readers who need to take a greater interest in how the various legal systems in the UK actually work... :-(

@Daniel Grey and others:

There is no such thing as a "UK Bill of Rights", no matter where you read about it. The 1689 Bill of Rights relates only to England (and Wales??), because until 1707 Scotland had its own Parliament, and even to this day the Scottish civil and criminal legal systems are wholly separate and distinct from those in England and Wales. However, the Scottish Parliament did pass the 1689 Claim of Rights, a different constitutional instrument in its own right.

@Matt Hawkins:

No, you cannot steal electricity - it is not, and cannot be, "property" within the meaning of S.1 Theft Act 1968. But you can "abstract" or "divert" it.

Just one final point: the (English) High Court is mentioned, but if the individual awards of damages are so small (well under the £5,000 limit used in allocating cases to the appropriate case track), why were these not classed as "Small Claims", where neither side can claim legal costs? If these people had been sued individually, they wouldn't have to pay a penny in legal costs to the other side, only witness expenses and the issue fee for the summons.

Court rules 90s UK.gov wiretaps violated human rights

@Watashi

> The EU needs to take a pro-active attitude with the laws of member states and test them in simulated law courts before ...

I was going to ask what on Earth s/he meant by "simulated law courts", until it hit me that our criminal courts have been successfully demonstrating "simulated law" for some years... it's almost as good as the real thing...

19-year-old p2p botnet pioneer agrees to plead guilty

Another Paris Hilton story...

> and had items shipped to a vacant resident in the Cheyenne area.

Paris, because she was the "vacant resident" involved.. or should that have been "residence"? :-)

Flirty texting could land Scots in jail for 10 years

It won't just land Scots in jail for 10 years...!

... because of the following provision:

S.47(7) Any act of incitement by means of a message (however communicated) is to be treated as done in Scotland if the message is sent or received in Scotland.

So you flirty Sassenachs had better behave, as well!

Multi-threaded development joins Gates as yesterday's man

@Mister Cheese

You should write more El Reg comments... you have a great sense of humour!

And I enjoyed all of the discussion about single and multi-threading code complexity whilst thinking of the bag of spanners that is Windows... technically awful software, unreliable memory management, no consistent security model, and no true multi-user capability.

Maybe Bill G should have bought all *nix derivatives, rebadged them as Windows 9, and done his usual superb post-branding marketing wheeze? *

* I'd just like to make it crystal clear that this is a joke, not legally possible because of the way Linux is GPL'd, and that I'd rather pluck my eyes out with a blunt spoon than install "Windows Linux"... :-(

Virgin Media and BPI join forces to attack illegal filesharing

@Eponymous Cowherd

> Similarly, if I offer you a copy of my IP, you accept (e.g. you buy my CD) and then offer it up online to anyone who wants a copy and several people actually download copies then I *can* sue your shitty little ass off.

The car analogy doesn't work for what you are trying to prove. Remember, it's been a fundamental tenet of the IP owners' claims that they are NOT selling you the actual IP itself, only a license to use it under certain (ridiculously prohibitive) terms and conditions. Remember also, the second-hand software market in Germany is alive and thriving because a superior court there ruled that the "licence to use" could itself be sold on legally irrespective of any legalese included in the terms and conditions that tried to prevent it. So, in every case, the actual Ts & Cs need to be tested by court proceedings.

Mark is perfectly correct in his correction (he beat me to it)... it hasn't always been illegal to copy IP, that only became an offence relatively recently. It was unlawful, i.e. "not sanctioned by law", but that's legally a completely different thing.

So... individual claims need to be pursued by IP owners against alleged infringers, and if they use the criminal law, it has to be proved beyond all reasonable doubt... the technical documents identified in this thread plainly demonstrate that such a course of action is dead in the water, because it can't be proven who (the actual human being) did the copying - you can't prosecute an IP address or a computer, especially not when cloning and spoofing is going on.

VM wouldn't be getting dragged into this if those pushing the initiative weren't getting desperate that all the other measures have had no effect, nor any likelihood of success.

Peter Gabriel cranks his f*ck machine

Language...

... is a mechanism for communication, and communication works best when language usage isn't ambiguous. Precision in the use of vocabulary and (most importantly) grammar ensures that if the listener hears the words, he/she understands what the speaker intended to communicate.

So when the illiterati dribble on in text-speak and fail to use language properly, it simply increases the likelihood of miscommunication and misunderstanding. That's why we should continue to point out grammatical errors and to correct them.

I might sound like a grammar Nazi, but I've just watch a TV advert for Dettol that refers to "one bacteria"* and I've had to lie down in a dark place to recover... I haven't felt this bad since Baby BMI produced a TV ad in the North-West that advised about the "Additional fee for credit card's"... the Apostrophe Protection Society (there really is one) was not amused.

[* The singular form of the plural noun "bacteria" is "bacterium". I despair about the extent of the damage that lliterate advertising droids have done to our language.]

Gates threatens to buy millions and millions of servers for Microsoft

@SpitefulGOD

> "What a load of dicks you all are, if it weren't for microsoft none of you would be posting comments on this story infact we would all be probably worse off."

Well, all of us Linux users still would be posting comments, and as Apache running on Linux enjoys such a substantial proportion of the market for the world's Web servers, I can't quite see what Microsoft's essential input is to this.

And given the God-awful pile of crap that Windows (all versions thus far) is as far as security and technical excellence is concerned, I very much think that the majority of the world is much, much worse off as a consequence of Microsoft's efforts...

Maybe someone should write an SF story about just that "Microsoft never was" scenario...

A quarter of UK adults to go on child protection database

El Reg staff have lost their maps again... :-(

> "Volunteering England is a government-supported charity, set up to promote volunteering in the UK."

Errrmmmm... no, it isn't. Bizarrely (if you look at the name, it gives you a cryptic clue), Volunteering England is a government-supported charity, set up to promote volunteering in England *.

The UK has got some additional bits, stuck on the top (Scotland), and on the left-hand side (Wales), and a weeny extra bit that floated away and got caught on the top of Ireland (I'm lying, but I'm manic today...).

* From the "Volunteering England" Web site: "Volunteering England works to support and increase the quality, quantity, impact and accessibility of volunteering throughout England."

Apple store detains teens for installing iPhone game

@kain preacher

> Its called citizen arrest. If the have lawfully detain you for a crime and you run they can add resisting arrest .

And if you have been unlawfully detained, you can sue...

@AC "Mallrats!"

> A bit of old-fashioned policing is I know ignorant of the distinctions between civil and criminal law sometimes (or am I confusing UK and US legal systems there?)

THere's no such thing as the "UK legal system" - there's one in England & Wales, and a completely separate and different one in Scotland (and, for the pedants, a third in Northern Ireland, which *is* part of the UK). Scotland's civil and criminal legal system is unique. Until a few years ago, police officers in E&W had no jurisdiction whatsoever in Scotland, and vice versa.

Home Office hands over £50m for police mobile devices

Well said, Greg Fleming...

... but it was the Home Secretary that refused to pay the award given by independent arbitration - even though the police authorities around the country had already budgetted for it (and it was paid in full in Scotland).

As you say, spend the money on proper policing! And the same comment can be made about this Government's headlong rush towards replacing police officers with CSOs. The number of sworn officers dropped by 647 at the last count (see official Home Office publication of "police strength" figures at http://www.homeoffice.gov.uk/rds/pdfs08/hosb0208.pdf) and the Edmund Davies recruits of the late 1970's and early 80's means that 40% of the current police strength will have gone (retired) by the time the Olympics start!

So, one must assume the Labour Government is deliberately making it impossible to police the Olympics properly (14,000 officers will be needed but it won't be possible for forces to release that many) on the assumption that the Tories will already be in power at that time...

Vacant police officer posts don't need PDAs, however secure they are. You read it here first!