Posts by Morely Dotes

Daring Register raid snatches key government URL

It's a gold mine!

1. Obtain URL heavily advertised by the InCompetent Technologists (that's what "ICT" means, you lot!).

2. Place attractive and compelling content on said URL.

3. ??

4. Profit!

We can reQall it for you wholesale

Now FREE! If your IQ is up to 35!

"as long as it remains free there seems little reason not to sign up,"

Yes, the threat of ID theft and having your credit rating destroyed is no reason not to take advantage of a service created to keep muppets from forgetting to pay their mobile phone bill.

If the bloody phone is capable of voice recording, use it to do that. Otherwise, consider carrying a small notepad and a ballpoint. Or hire a minder, if yo ucan't manage to write notes to yourself.

Virgin Media eases off bandwidth throttling

It all seems so odd

I often see comments in the tech press that Europe routinely has speeds between 30Mbps and 100Mbps, and decrying Verizon's FiOS service for not offering higher speeds. I have FiOS, I get 2Mbps upstream and 15Mbps downstream, without throttling at any time. Other than Verizon having totally destroyed "my" router once by trying a remote firmware update, the service has been highly reliable.

And now I see the UK is suffering the woes usually attributed to us poor benighted colonials.

Schadenfreude.

Microsoft wins seven figure sum from distie

Gunner! HE! Foot!

A correction for accuracy is called for:

"This High Court win against Netcom underlines the progress Microsoft is making in its goal to stamp out software."

Full stop.

Fark attempts to trademark NSFW

I can't stand it any more

/wrists

Codemasters pledges to stay civil on file-sharing

There's a far better answer than theirs

Davenport Lyons said it has set up a hotline for people who believe they have been wrongly accused, on 0207 468 2600. It wrote: "Any person who has received a letter and who believes he or she has been sent it in error, e.g. if he or she cannot locate the file on their computer, should contact Davenport Lyons explaining the position and they will investigate it further."

Assuming someone is wrongly accused (which is highly likely, given the dynamic nature of IP address assignments), I suggest the recipient of the blackmail letter retain his own lawyer, let the accusers take it to court, get the case dismissed for lack of evidence, and then counter-sue for whatever the afore-mentioned lawyer thinks is an appropriate complaint.

Frivolous litigation *is* criminal behavior, is it not, when the threat is used to extort monies from the victim?

Top-secret US labs penetrated by phishers

Their problem is obvious

"security provider McAfee"

Need I say more?

Western Digital drive is DRM-crippled for your safety

Alternate solutions

If you can live with the limitations of FAT32, get your own hard drive and Google for "LAN Server USB 2.0 3.5" HDD Aluminum LAN Enclosure" - under US$50, no TURDS (Technology Users' Rights Denial Systems), and highly reliable (I've been using one for well over 18 months; once in a while Windows on the clients does something outrageous, so I've had to reboot it 3 times).

Good-bye, WD. You're off our corporate "acceptable vendors" list.

MySpace celebrity hacker downs hacking forum

Excuse me?

Facebook is an internet security firm?

Seriously, John, what did you *really* mean to write there?

How much does El Reg cost the global economy?

@ JamesAnderson

"Imagine how much better of the world economay would be if the OS group at Redmond had spent the last five years in an orgy of drink, drugs , debauchery and illadvised kebab consumtion."

I have Vista. Please produce any evidence you may have that Vista is not the *result* of the afore-mentioned activities.

The world's most fantastic, imaginary server start-up

Well, actually...

Google beats MS because Google focuses on results delivered to the customer - which results in loyal customers, which results in lots of advertising revenue.

Microsoft focuses on building proprietary apps and services which are intended to trap the customer into a single-vendor operating mode - which results in resentful customers, who move to Google and other non-Microsoft providers whenever possible (or whenever the customer isn't too cowardly to take responsibility for his own decisions), which results in lost advertising revenue opportunities.

Very interesting and amusing article.

Wikipedia black helicopters circle Utah's Traverse Mountain

Why waste your time, Ainsworth?

"When Bagley attempted to level the playing field, he was banished immediately," Ainsworth continues. "Obviously, there's something seriously wrong with the way Wikipedia is being managed and administered. I don't know if it threatens the long-term viability of the project or not, but it is cause for concern among those of us who spend a lot of hours actually trying to write quality articles."

Writing quality articles for Wikipedia is tantamount to polishing a turd; maybe you really can make it look shiny on the outside, but no matter how shiny you make it, under the surface it's still shite, and it stinks.

Software maker releases the hounds on security vuln reporter

One Man's Opinion

"When we believe users are going to be misled, presumably for reasons of self promotion, we make every effort to nicely ask that the organization publish full and accurate information. When the issue continues unresolved, we regret we have to ask more forcefully. All Secunia needs to do is publish the facts in full without leaving out important facts and Autonomy, Secunia and our users will be well served."

O'Really?

Well, here's the facts as I understand them:

1. Secunia discovered a security vulnerability in Autonomy.

2. Secunia learned that at least one customer of Autonomy may not have patched their Autonomy-based code to close the security hole.

3. Secunia attempted to engage Autonomy to determine if the hole was, indeed, fixed and if third-party customers such as IBM had or would soon release the patch(es).

4. Secunia published the "results so far" with, as always, an eye to preventing data breaches (anyone remember TJX?).

5. Autonomy ignored the attempt to engage and immediately fell into

"disaster spin control" mode.

6. Autonomy also threatened litigation if Secunia performed it's ethical duty to inform consumers of a possible security problem; this some 3 days *after* the information had been published.

So, short version: Autonomy would strongly prefer that consumers who rely on their security product(s) suffer data breaches in ignorance, rather than ensure that all products built with their SDK are properly patched and secured.

Can anyone guess why I think lawyers are (as a rule) lower on the evolutionary and ethical scales than the Ebola virus?

Newly-homeless kids get free iPod

Let's be realisitic

Apple isn't going to give away iMacs - there's small enough margin there already.

But an iPod is more-or-less locked into iTunes, and iTunes is hugely profitable for Apple. So there's 100 kids out in California who got "free" iPods after the fire; who live(d) in high-income neighborhoods, and go to (or will go back to) schools with thousands of other high-income kids; and who most likely have "warm fuzzy" feelings for Apple and iPods now. they're going to tell their friends how great the iPod is.

And out of this "humanitarian" gesture, Apple can reasonably expect to sell another thousand iPods, and a hundred thousand tracks from iTunes.

It's a good investment. And it's tax-deductible. Good thinking.

Yes, I'm cynical. I'm over 50, and I believe in the charity of large corporations about as much as I believe in the Easter Bunny. there's good reason for that; I've seen what goes on behind the scenes in large corporations before they commit to "charitable" philanthropy.

Tiscali in shock customer satisfaction win

Doesn't anyone know how you get a high rating?

JD Power is a business - in the business of selling advertising space. Buy advertising from them - get a high rating.

This is not rocket science. It works exactly the same way as getting a high rating for your new game at Gamestop.com

EVE Online update kills Windows PCs

@ Len Goddard

"The problem was active for 2 hours (before the dangerous download was disabled) and affects pre-Vista OS's where the game is installed on the C: drive."

Ah, so only the vast majority of people who run Windows and also play EVE (and would stay up as long as necessary to get the latest, and loudly-trumpeted patch) would be affected.

So that's fine, then, no one in QA should be blamed for causing damage to their customers' installations that, in most cases, will require $100 worth of technical support help (since most of the Windows-using muppets couldn't fix "please insert your Windows XP CD" if you stapled it to their hands).

Auction watchdog says eBay is illegal in France

@ My Opinion

You are correct about eBay charging the seller, not the buyer; however, in those cases where the seller has defrauded the buyer, eBay has then profited from fraud which was committed by a person acting as their "agent" in legal terms (IANAL but I've watched some on TV).

The bottom line is that every time eBay allows a sale which is fraudulent, and does not refund the buyer's money, eBay is guilty of being an accessory to fraud.

Tracking down the Ron Paul spam botnet

Do some research, Mr. Goodin

"Had politics finally stooped to a place where candidates would resort to such a reviled means of communication?"

Politicians have been spamming (both on their own, and in smear campaigns) since at least 1998. Maria Cantwell, a current office-holder, was previously CEO of RealNetworks, which engaged in spam in support of their business while she was at the helm. In 2000, spam was used in a smear campaign in a Minnesota race between Ciresi and Grams. In 2002, the Bill Jones gubenatorial campaign web site was shut down by the ISP because of spam sent on behalf of Jones. In 2006, Charlie Crist, attorney general of Florida and gubernatorial candidate, spammed Florida voters

Political candidates have demonstrated that they will do absolutely *anything* to get votes. I am certain that, if you could convince a politician that televised coprophagia would get them elected, that politician would make every effort to get their next meal of used food onto the biggest networks.

World's Dumbest File-sharer megafine gets DoJ thumbs-up

Re: Gotta love the logic

The woman in question is not someone who has a great deal of "disposable" income, nor someone who has a great deal of knowledge of the law, nor of the Internet, and therefor would not logically be expected to understand the gravity of the possible consequences of copyright infringement. Hell, a lot of lawyers clearly don't understand it (nor, to judge form the actions of the RIAA's agents, are *they* especially concerned about the consequences of violating laws regarding kidnapping, which is a capital offense in the USA).

The "minimum" fine for 24 instances of copyright violation would have been $18, 000 which is just over 8% of the fine that was actually adjudged. The punishment is, indeed, vastly disproportionate to the offense, and in the unlikely event that the RIAA wins all 26,000 suits currently pending, should all of the fines levied be of similar proportions, the total of fines will come to $5,772,000,000 - that's 5.7 *billion* dollars.

The total production of all members of the RIAA for a very long period is not worth that much money.

This is precisely why I refuse to buy audio CDs produced by RIAA members (I do buy from indies) - that, and the fact that the content of RIAA-member CDs is universally dross.

Net Asbo slap for boasting Bebo teen

Insulting incompetent plods is a legal offense?

That being so, the Chief had better not fire any of his minions, since to do so it would be necessary to allege that they weren't sterling constables, and we've already had judge demonstrate that any comments other than praise of the police is an offense.

Too sad that the buggers can't be arsed to get evidence to prosecute *real* crimes, though, isn't it? They're pretty good at murdering Brazilians in the Tube, though, so you have to give them credit where it's due.

And I though we had freedom issues here in the USA...

Fasthosts customers still frozen out of websites

@ Johnn Fitzgerald

I offer competitive pricing and personal service; if you're satisfied with hosting in the USA, I'll be glad to talk to you. However, I am *very* picky about who gets to be a customer, and I won't accept more than 100 hosting customers total (I currently have about 10). I will not host FrontPage nor Exchange, either; the system is Linux and will remain Linux.

If that interests you, you can reach me via gmail.com under username morelydotes.

And if El Reg (understandably) prefers not to post this, I imagine Johnn Fitzgerald would appreciate having it forwarded.

'Swiss DMCA' fears overblown, says copyright authority

Deliberately misleading as well as ambiguous

The term "DRM" (Digital Rights Management) is inherently a lie. The purpose of the technology is to deny users their legal rights to make a backup copy or transfer the media into another format which is more convenient for them.

The correct term is "Technology Users' Rights Denial Systems" (TURDS). It is not surprising that governments who support the RIAA/MPAA pigopolists prefer to use the lie, rather than the truth; after all, imagine what would happen to the career of any politician who was known to vote in favor of TURDS; nor is it surprising that the entertainment industry prefers the positive-sounding DRM to the the honest admission that they sell products which are full of TURDS.

Secret mailing list rocks Wikipedia

The solution is obvious

I implemented it quite some time ago; it's a firewall rule:

iptables -A INPUT -s 66.230.200.0/24 -j DROP

My users don't know that Wikipedia is still on the Internet. None of them seem to care. I know I don't.

MPAA's uni piracy-busting toolkit forced offline

Does anyone *really* think this was an accident?

"security watchers ... said that its default configuration could expose universities' entire network traffic to the internet."

Wouldn't that be incredibly convenient to the MPAA and RIAA, who want to track the exact usage of torrents that are otherwise not available to them without forcible violation if United States Code Title 18?

That's no accident. That's a blatant and deliberate attempt to use "social engineering" to disable the Universities' security, for purposes of industrial espionage.

In my opinion, of course. I could be wrong. And Sarkozy could be Chinese.

Counterfeit Vista rate half that of XP

That's no upgrade; it's a space station!

"That still leaves Redmond with one major problem, however, getting users to upgrade from XP to Vista."

That's a bit like "upgrading" from a Ford Escort to a Vespa, in terms of usefulness. I have Vista Ultimate (tuned to "best performance") and XP installed on two machines with identical hardware. SP outperforms Vista on *every* benchmark. So how is the extra cost and the lower perfomance of Vista an "upgrade?

Oh, and @ buddypepper: "If you've got lots of ram, then you've got to have it. If you want to run Windoze apps and you want to use your fancy 64bit cpu to the fullest, then you've got to have it. Let's all be honest about it....."

Good, let's be honest. If you have more than 2 gigs RAM, Ubuntu Linux (and probably all other distros) will utilize it to the full. If you ahve to run 64-bit applications, Ubuntu 64-bit Linux will do that. It will also utilize *mulitiple* 64-bit CPUs, which Vista 64 will not. If you must run Windows apps, you can use wine, Cedega, or another Windows emulator (including a VMware virtual machine, though it's hard to imagine why you'd want "real" Windows for any reason other than testing).

So, to be honest, you *don't* have to have Vista. You do, however, have to be smarter than a cinder block.

Here's to the pirates, who are smart enough to not bother "stealing" something thye can't sell on.

eBayers offload eBay Xmas prezzie on eBay

Well, technically...

They are rare. In fact, I suspect they're completely uncooked.

Mozilla rubbishes IE Firefox security study

Re: Boot on other foot

Let's try it this way:

199 bugs fixed by Mozilla, average time to release the fix: 2 days. That makes Mozilla's "total vulnerable time" 398 days.

87 bugs fixed by Microsoft, average time to release the fix: 14 days (that's being generous, it's actually closer to 21 days average). Internet Explorer's "total vulnerable time" is then 1218 days.

In other words, you would be at least 3 times safer using Mozilla than uusing Internet Explorer.

And lest Anonymous Coward accuse me of being *any* kind of fanboi, I work in an all-Microsoft shop during the day, run Linux servers at home, with a mix of Linux and Win2K and WinXP client PCs. The only reason I have no Macs is because I can't talk the wife into modernizing (she's the remaining Win2K client; refuses to move to XP or Mac). Each OS has strengths and weaknesses. Security is NOT a Microsoft strength.

I even have OS/2 Warp. Not sure why, really...

Blu-ray widens US disc sales lead

@ Highlander

"Worldwide Sony has sold at least 6 million PS3s"

That's pathetic, compared to Wii sales. The PS3 may be Sony's Last Hurrah in the game console market - and when Sony stops selling the PS3 (at a *huge* loss, I might add), what happens to the BR market?

Personally, I'll stick with "plain vanilla" DVD as long as I have a working player. It has been my painful experience that the people who call themselves "early adopters" are deluded fools, discovering over and over again whose blood it is on the "bleeding edge" of consumer electronics technology.

In other words, until the *players* are selling at a decent price point (sub-US$100) all over, and the *recorders* (for PC use, at least) are at no more than 50% over that, *NO ONE* - neither BR nor HD DVD - will have "won the war."

See http://www.codenamerevolution.com/?page_id=3292 for sales figures. To date (or as "to date" as I can manage):

Wii: 13,977,569

Xbox 360: 11.6 Million

PS3: 5.59 Million

California gov site invaded by smut and malware again

The obvious response

When a Government site (any Government, not just the US) is hijacked in this manner, the obvious - and appropriate, and measured - response is to launch a major, deliberate denial of service attack on the site(s) in the link(s). Governments have the power (and the legal right - I won't talk about ethics nor morals, since no Government has ever had more than a nodding acquaintance with either of those) to defend themselves against attack, and this is certainly an attack.

Furthermore, if the Government in question wants to permanently discourage such attacks, competent IT security blokes (and/or blokesses) should be immediately put on the trail of the ultimate beneficiaries of the hijackings, and once located, their assets and persons seized. Let's put Gitmo to some "good" use for once!

But that will never happen, because, as is all too obvious, competent IT people avoid Government jobs like chavs avoid work.

Rove investigator erases his PCs - to kill computer virus

I call Bullshit!

I've held a Top Secret - Special Compartmented Information clearance. The level of wipe performed here was enough to be considered adequate for information classified Top Secret. There's simply no way a government official would bypass the in-house IT people for cleaning up a simple virus, *and* require that level of data destruction.

This is simply another cover-up by the Bush administration.

Worst. President. Ever. And I'm none too pleased with his staff, either.

Remember, it's only paranoia if they *aren't* out to get you.

Ugly view mars Windows Vista birthday

He's a Mac; He's a PC. I'm disgusted.

"Twelve months after Microsoft missed the 2006 Holiday shopping season, which traditionally boosts retail sales, Windows Vista is finally in a position to make inroads into the consumer market as it rides into peoples' homes on the backs of new PCs."

If Microsoft wants to permanently turn people away from Vista, then shipping out a bunch of OEM-installed Vista Home PCs will do the job.

Frankly, if an auto maker advertised all the features that Microsoft has for Vista, and then shipped cars that were crippled as badly as Vista Home is, that auto maker would be bankrupted by fraud lawsuits. Of course, that would be *after* the Federal court oders to fix the missing/broken features.

Hackers re-poison Google search results

Re: "rogue anti-spyware program"

John, I believe you mean *fake* anti-spyware program. "Rogue" would imply that it really is anti-spyware, but that it doesn't conform to some sort of rules.

And just for the record: *All* IP space controlled by China is considered "add to DENY Tables on sight" by anyone who has the vaguest idea of Internet security.

I'm also of the opinion that the Red Army is behind the majority of this stuff, along with the "poison toys." Once is an accident; twice i coincidence. Three times is enemy action. There have been far more than three such major incidents.

US Army plans robot planes operated by non-pilots

Warrants vs. Zoomie Wing Wonders

I spent 23 years in the US Army, and in 1969 I was on the list to attend Warrant Officer Flight Training. I never went, the war in 'Nam wound down early enough that I wasn't needed for that; however, in all my years in the Army, I never saw even *one* commissioned USAF pilot flying a medevac chopper, or a in the front seat of a Cobra gunship in close ground-support role. That was all done by Warrant Officers, and I'll trust those men with my life again any time.

I'm sure the Winged Wonders are perfectly fine people in their own way, but they are of little or no use to the man on the ground who's trying to hold a piece of real estate. The USAF didn't like having to operate the A-10 warthog, which (from a Mech Infantry point of view) was the single most valuable aircraft they had, and they finally managed to shut down the program. I can't imagine them supporting any program that prevents their pilots from playing "Top Gun" with real lives and real multi-million-dollar equipment.

Bottom line: Bombers based on aircraft carriers successfully flew missions against battleships, in spite of the Olde Guard's objections. Drones *will* be flying close air support in the near future. Learn to live with it, or start looking for a comfortable spot on the sidelines.

Afterthought for James Pickett: "Surely all the enemy has to do is find out how to jam the control signals?" Surely the drones will be programmed to go into fail-safe mode upon prolonged loss of signal. Automated IFF using lasers is very difficult to jam, as well, so a damaged drone can easily be pre-programmed to avoid friendlies during a controlled crash. Pilot or no pilot, there's *nothing* that can be done in an uncontrolled crash. Maybe that's why they're called "pile-its."

Good article. Well-written, no obvious bias either way.

NASA reveals manned Mars mission plans

400,000kg ?!?

Are we seriously discussing sending 440 English tonnes of spacecraft to Mars? In how many launches? The existing Shuttle is only around 100 tons, and NASA can barely get that into fairly low orbit.

I'm very much in favor of manned space exploration, but I really don't think NASA can pull this off. Either that, or our journalist has gotten his figures confused.

Nigerian keyboard firm sues One Laptop per Child

Re: It's a charity, so it's OK

"If it's a fuss about nothing, they'll be laughed out of court."

If all courts were honest and more interested in justice than in personal gain for the judiciary, that would be true.

In the real world, however, and especially in savage tribal areas like Nigeria, whoever can bribe the judge most effectively will win.

Microsoft owns a large interest in LANCOR. LANCOR is suing OLPC, which does *not* use any Microsoft products. Microsoft has more money than the Catholic Church.

Connect the dots: Who can outbid the other party and buy the judge?

US judge debenched for jailing entire courtroom

@ ChrB

"Or sack you for whatever reason (remember the teacher being sacked for pr0n on the school's pc)."

Yes, being sacked is so much worse than being jailed and possibly whipped because you allowed your class full of children to name a teddy bear, isn't it?

Barbarian savages running entire nations in the Middle East, and we hear cretins criticising our self-admitted problems, and *don't* cut off their hands, or heads, or beat them in public. Whatever can we be thinking? We should conform to *their* ideas of justice!

Which would mean nuking their cities until there was nothing left but radioactive glass. Hmm. I suppose that's what they want, though.

Novell vs SCO will go to court after all

Yes, it really is that simple

Try to hijack Linux with bogus patent and copyright claims, watch your business go to the crapper.

It couldn't happen to a more deserving Darlek (sic).

Choice breeds complexity for Linux desktop

I predict that Vista will be released years late!

"A recent report from Forrester forecasts 2008 as the year when Vista - not Linux - will start to erode the current dominance of Windows XP. Forrester estimates that about 40 per cent of corporate users in the USA and Europe will have moved to Vista by the end of next year."

Well, gee whiz, how hard is that to predict? 2008 is the year when Microsoft says they will *stop selling* XP. If the only Windows that's available on OEM PCs is Vista, guess what corporate buyers will choose?

Now, the day Dell announces that buyers will have a choice on *all* new Dell PCs between Vista and Ubuntu is the day we'll find out if Microsoft can compete against the world of free (as in beer) software.

Blu-ray discs outsell HD DVDs almost 3:1 in Europe

US$1 DVD disks are at Wal-Mart now

How many idiots are going to pay US$20 or more to get the *same* content on Blue-Ray or HD DVD?

Come on, people are stupid on the whole - but not THAT Stupid!

Only bicarbonate of soda can save mankind!

A reasonable solution

Sorry, I just realized the titel might be considered a pun; not intentional.

Anyway... The State of Nevada is mostly desert (arguably, including Las Vegas, in a cultural sense). Burying the stuff in tunnels under the desert would lock up the CO2 for the foreseeable future, but make it accessible if it's ever needed (I can't imagine why it might be needed, but that's why you have "contingency plans" - for things you can't foresee).

And it would make large parts of Nevada, outside of Groom Lake, useful.

Apple 'looking into' duff Chinese hard drive claims

@ Nick Galloway

"Was there any reluctance on the laptop manufacturers when the spate of self igniting batteries from Sony became an issue. No!"

Actually, there was a significant delay. Problems with those batteries continued to surface for at least a year.

And I don't own anything made by Apple.

Microsoft on the hunt for 'serious' Windows flaw

Re: Everyone is wrong. You, me, microsoft...

"Microsoft were a bunch of dicks about this one, but let's face it, everybody in software engineering are prone to their own moments of idiocy."

But not everybody in software engineering makes billions of dollars by selling code that they don't even understand.

Microsoft's problem is that *all* of their products are fundamentally flawed on the security front. This is due to all of their products having been built on an "isolated computer" concept, rather than having been rewritten from the ground up for network security. Vista was a (failed) attempt to fix that blunder.

US woman fingered for Porky Pig drugs outrage

@ Karim Bourouba

If you believe *any* government can be trusted to do what they have promised to do, then you, my friend, have never lived in the real world.

But tell me, which "Karim Bourouba" are you? The one who presumably owns bourouba.com, the one who asked a question of Dr. Math at mathforum.org about 08/27/99, the one who presented the short film "Les westerns de mon père", the one in the UK involved in the computer games industry, the one from karimbourouba.co.uk, or a different "Karim Bourouba" altogether? And can you prove it? Because "Karim Bourouba" is clearly a pseudonym used by a known terrorist... Or might be, if a Government employee makes an entry in their database which *says* so.

Wii grasses up cheating wife

Re: My Ex's...

"Does the wii have a Youtube channel?"

In a manner of speaking, yes: Assuming you have Opera installed, you can use http://www.viewii.com/ or one of several other YouTube "relays."

Although I'd have expect your ex's to be browsing sites (not to be named here) other than YouTube

New emails address you by name, then try to hose your PC

@ Steven

"Of course the people that are likely to open these attachments are not likely to use Linux of any flavour"

That's the point, isn't it? The stupid use Windows. The stupid get infested with malware.

I use Windows, Linux, OS/2 Warp, and some obscure OS whose name escapes me right now (it's embedded... Oh yes, PalmOS). I don't get infested. My wife, whose PC is within my firewall's protection, and whose PC is (by my judicious use of a 500k hosts file) incapable of visiting most of the know malware distribution sites, doesn't get infested; I also run the mail server she uses, and guess what? In the rare event that something slips by the Draconian security I have installed on the mail server, she phones me and asks if I know someone names so-and-so who might send me some email about such-and-such, or should she just delete it? *She* *doesn't* *open* *it*. She's not a techie gal, but she's not an idiot, either (although, as she married me, her sanity *is* questionable).

So, sure, the Mac and Linux fanbois are going to jump on this. They're going to point out that Windows is insecure *by design*, and no amount of user education will fix that *if* the user is as stupid as the OS.

Wii-like motion-control games to come to the PS2

Re: Why not PS3?

The PS3 doesn't have the market penetration anywhere to make game development viable. Sony has failed miserably to overcome their justly-deserved reputation as an untrustworthy megacorp who lets greed overrule ethics, and the PS3 is overpriced for the current market, so it's not going to get much more in the way of sales for quite a while.

Bottom line: If you want Wiimotes, and you don't have a PS2, get a Wii.

Giuliani: Eye-O-Sauron™ border scan-towers are top idea

Yeah, right, Rudy.

"Giuliani reportedly said that this kind of approach could end illegal immigration within three years."

Sure it will. But only if you can get the cooperation of the fairies at the bottom of the garden.

Politicians: Liars with high salaries and low IQs.

TJX consumer settlement sale offer draws scorn

A proper settlement

The only morally proper settlement of the consumer class-action suit against TJX would call for the liquidation of all assets now held by TJX - and possibly the liquidation of the management who "oversaw" the network which was so poorly secured that it could be penetrated by script-kiddies, without detection for over three years.

Clearly, TJX is managed by MBAs.

Comet Holmes and the case of the Disappearing Tail

@ Charles

"For example, up to approx the 1960s, plate teutonics was rubbished by the scieeeentists of the day as a very stupid idea, yet we (mostly) accept plate teutonics now (40-odd years later) and look back at the pre-teutonic folk as if they were flat-earthers"

Just please don't mention the war during dinner!

Yes, the long black one, right next to John Cleese's.

Trojan spreads using PI wiretapping scare

Czech or Bulgarian

Judging from the subtly incorrect English in the spam, the writer's probably from Sofia.

In any case, if I thought someone were really listening in on my phone conversations, they'd be treated to my original composition, "Solo Adagio for Police Whistle and Foghorn."