Posts by Mark Randall

EU Commission backs Reding on data caps

Still a rip off

Oh come on, 1GB of data at home £5, 1GB of data roaming €1000! And that's going to save me from "bill shock", I don't thing so.

Lenovo ThinkPad X300 sub-notebook

Not a sub-notebook

This may be an ultra-light, like the air, but sub-notebook it isn't.

eBay Australia faces competition probe

Legal Tender

As winning an auction places me in a position when I now have a debt, I always have the right to discharge that debt with cash. That's what legal tender means. eBay cannot remove that right, and insist I use PayPal.

I know this is true in UK and NZ, and I believe that Australia also has this law.

Confidential Home Office data turns up in laptop on eBay

Enough already.

So the government lost a laptop, it happens. They had taken all the right steps to make sure that all that was lost was a bit of kit, and no sensitive data made available. Your weasely attempts to suggest that the data could still have been copied are pathetic.

When they do something wrong, go ahead and kick them. When they do it right, report that or at the very least shut up.

A US CERT reminder: The net is an insecure place

Subpeona?

"If you use Gmail, eBay, MySpace, or any one of dozens of other web-based services, the United States Computer Emergency Readiness Team wants you to know you're vulnerable to a simple attack that could give an attacker complete control over your account."

It's called a Subpoena isn't it?

BBC Trust backs calls for Linux iPlayer

Content Providers

"I'll leave you to work out what the content providers are going to tell the Beeb to do. There will be two short words containing three Fs."

The BBC is their own content provider, and so are likely to be slightly more polite to themselves.

iTunes Plus - plus user details that is

Data protection?

How can it be a breach of data protection to embed your name in something you own and store on your hard drive and have promised not to give to anyone else?

Indian dealers are squealers over Microsoft piracy raids

Piracy IS stealing, software piracy IS NOT.

Piracy is violent robbery. Is is also often property destruction and murder. Software "piracy" is copyright infringement. The "piracy" term is used by the BSA / RIAA / MPAA / etc to make the offence seem worse than it is, and by geeks who have watched too many movies to feel cooler.

If software "piracy" is stealing, then parking in disabled spaces is rape. I personally don't approve of any of these activities, but at least I know which is which. Please call a spade a spade, and not a bulldozer.