* Posts by M Howlign

8 publicly visible posts • joined 21 May 2007

Trade in your software, urges UK reseller

M Howlign

Free or cheap licences

Although I completely agree with the idea of being able to re-sell licences, there would still be licenses that could not be sold. These are licenses that are obtained through some other process other than buying the software. Examples of these are OEM Software (has to stay with the original equipment) and

MSDN or Technet licenced products. As these licenses are aquired at subsidized rates.

Also I would suggest that software houses would be more likely to welcome a law if it took the into account whether the version was current or not. So for example you wouldn't be able to sell the licence of a product that is the current version, but as soon as that product is replace with a new version it's licence would become sellable. This would help to protect the price of current software versions.

MS Patch Tuesday to include trio of 'critical' fixes

M Howlign

RE: David Shaw

I am very very surprised your system admins let you remote desktop into one of the servers. There is no way I would let any of our users do such a risky thing. And besides which you'd still be subject to the Patch Tuesday, just on the remote machine. In actual fact it would be more likely that the server wouldn't get patched (at least not immediately) as it is far harder to patch a server as 80% of the patches require a reboot. Which if you've got an in demand server, is a bit of a no no. We have to roll up the patches and come in on a weekend in order to install them one a low usage day.

US court says just viewing child porn is not a crime

M Howlign

To Steven Knox

I agree that the search history and URLs are the best way of determining the "intentional act" but it's still possible to click on a link and end up on a website that displays something you really didn't want to see. We must all of (at sometime) clicked on an innocent looking link and ended up being presented with porn. I know I certainly have. Does that mean I was intentionally looking at porn? No, but if I keep going back there then I'm obviously intending to look at porn or something more illegal. As I understand it all ISP have the ability to track where we're going and what we're looking at. I'm sure the authorities have a list of "illegal" sites that they monitor the traffic of. They then can trace that back to the ISP and through that the user.

Surely it would also be possible to fit filters into the ISPs equipment to detect keywords? And yes I am aware of this being "Big Brotherish" but if you don't do anything illegal what does it matter?

Apple iPhone

M Howlign

Missing functionality...

What this review is missing is details of the things that you'd expect a mobile phone to do that the iPhone doesn't. Like Multimedia Messages (MMS), and MP3 ringtones. See http://reviews.cnet.co.uk/mobiles/0,39030106,49286836,00.htm for a better review.

All in all the iPhone gives me very little over my 3 year old MDA Compact, and actually loses some of the functionality I currently have. So don't think I'll be "upgrading".

Tiscali TV reaches for Sky channels

M Howlign

Virgin and Sky

During the whole Virgin Sky battle I've seen many people suggest that 24 could be shown on virgin's sky one replacment channel. Now correct me if I'm wrong but isn't 24 a Fox show? And isn't Fox owned by Murdoch who owns SKY. Why in the world would he let Sky One lose this key show to Virgin?!?!?!

Besides from what I've read in the press the Virgin replacement channel is going to draw its show's from Bravo and Living. Channels which I never watch cause its all drivel.

To a certain degree I agree with some of the virgin customers about Sky One being a Simpsons rerun channel but at the same time it probably has the most first run programs we actually watch.

Rivals torture consumers via Microsoft

M Howlign

Google...

Just a passing thought but why does nobody ever moan about googles practices. I've lost track of the amount of times I've had to untick the "Install Google Toolbar" when installing some other piece of software.

As for the whole OS Search debate, Yes it should default to MS Desktop Search but allow you to unistall it completely and (if you require) install a third party product.

But I think the point the article was trying to make is that for people who buy a computer from a manufacture may not get that choice.

It seems that no manufacture gives you an unmodified install disk of the OS any more. Whenever I have to set up a laptop I have to spend half the of the time removing all the bloated crap that the manufacture has choosen to install on it. And some manufactures have specific deals with google or yahoo so the machines come with there products installed. If manufactures are going to do this they should at least provide a blank OEM copy of the OS you purchased.

Indian dealers are squealers over Microsoft piracy raids

M Howlign

@Element

yes I know about ndiswrapper (although it never worked for my netgear pcmcia card). I never said I couldn't fix these problems just that I couldn't be bothered with the hassle. Especially with my latest laptop which has the almost standard Intel PRO/Wireless, which windows will use straight from the install.

M Howlign

Do I just have bad luck with Linux??

Am I jinxed where linux is concerned or do I have bad luck? I've installed Linux loads of times through out my life from early versions of Red hat to the latest envogue Ubuntu and it's never been straight forward, even now. I've always had problems with linux not recognising my hardware, forcing me to spend time finding out manual ways of configuring them. In the past it was always my graphics card or monitor that cause the problem forcing me to use substandard resolutions. Now it's wireless networking that always causes me problems. None of the distributions I've tested (using Live CD's) have ever detected my wireless card. I've got to the point now where I really can't be bothered to go through the hassle that Linux always causes me. My laptop came with a legit copy of windows, and as most of the Open Source software available for Linux is also available for windows why should I bother??