Posts by David Ward 1

Microsoft: IE9 will never run on Windows XP

clearly you are doing it wrong!

I work in a lab doing exactly the same think, have multiple serial to USB adapters (even up to rack mounted 16 way ones!) many of which have been working 24/7 for the last 3 years, so you are doing it wrong!

Council urges army drinkers to break the law

student discounts

It is silly that any official form of ID is not accepted and on quite a lot of licenses the type of ID is not specified so in many cases it is the specificity of the license which is silly, the law itself isn't silly as it simply requires the terms of the license as set by the licensing body to be adhered to.

IMHO a military discount is less common because the military is paid a wage for doing a job. Students are not paid as such, some are given some maintenance money to survive while studying, if you look at my stipend from one of the research councils when I was a post graduate student as pay then it worked out at less than £2 an hour. Establishments such as cinemas and restaurants often find it advantageous to make up numbers from the invariably large student population via discounts.

Laws puts brakes on gov IT spending

Fast-Track recreuitment is still open for business..

Based on a phone call yesterday afternoon to a civil service recruiter they heard at lunchtime that the fast-track recruitment track is not affected by the recruitment freeze either..

Newzbin code leak could lead to return of Usenet indexer

still breaking copywright law

Unfortunately FACT disagree, it is not blocked in blighty by accident or for technical reasons but because you have no license to watch it, and by doing so you are breaking the copyright restriction, same as grey importing DVD's or any other avoidance of regional restrictions.

Microsoft's Cambridge boffins to up sticks in 2012

Yep further away!

Where they are now, they literally couldn't get much closer to computer science (in the William Gates Building across the road) Maths, Physics and electrical engineering, so which academic departments were you thinking of them being closer to in town?

Isn't the private science park in Milton? or were you thinking of the one on Newmarket road, both of which are closer to town than they are to the west Cambridge site IMO.

Opera alerts EU to hidden Windows browser-ballot

South Park reference fail

Fag (Făg) n. 1. An extremely annoying, inconsiderate person most commonly associated with Harley riders. 2. A person who owns or frequently rides a Harley.

London council loses thousands of kids' details

council IT workers

Because blanket retroactive security policy is cheaper than anyone with a brain thinking about why the person was working at home and if it is necessary providing a secure solution for them in the first place!

Personally the statement "Sorry I can't do that from the client site because your IT policy does not allow me to securely connect to that data" comes in useful quite handy at changing the IT policy and saves the possibility of data loss quite frequently.

indeed

Wouldn't that be covered by "I will put good money that this council does not have a secure method of doing so in place!"?

Implementing an access control system to manage the risks of data loss is what is required. I have worked in too many places where they simply ban behaviour retrospectively based on past failure and by making work more difficult for people they actually open up more and more obscure holes. Same as health and safety in this way IMHO.

A fundamental change of attitude is required in valuing data, which is the actual problem here, if data was considered an asset by everyone in the hierarchy, not just the database maintainer etc then this wouldn't be a problem as people would not just walk off with a USB stick full of data?

Unfortunately chief among those who do not value their data are the public who readily give it up in exchange for 'freebies' then bitch about it later.

did you read the story past the headline?

Did you come here via a link from the Daily Mail by any chance?

"Personal information should be stored encrypted AT ALL TIMES."

Wow are you seriously suggesting that those with access to the data should be trained to read encrypted data directly? Maybe we could get some of those operators from the Matrix working at the councils?

If you allow people to access data they have to be able to decrypt it, if they can decrypt it they can save the decrypted form. Sure you can make it more difficult by using bespoke hardware (or disabling the output devices etc) but security by obscurification is not the answer, people simply don't understand the implications of taking the work home to finish off (I will put good money that this council does not have a secure method of doing so in place!), and education is difficult to achieve to make them (us) understand this without everyone becoming paranoid.

Apple display patent enslaves sun

isnt this a transflective backlight display?!

How is this different from a standard 'transflective' LCD backlit display?

(such as this diagram http://www.nemacom.co.uk/Downloads/transflective_lcd_explained.pdf)

Dell bars Win 7 refunds from Linux lovers

powerdvd et al

Does the PowerDVD EULA specifically state that you are entitled to a refund of PowerDVD should you not agree to the terms outlined in the EULA?

apparently it does

"...IF YOU DO NOT AGREE TO THE TERMS OF THIS AGREEMENT, PLEASE DO NOT USE THIS SOFTWARE, PROMPTLY REMOVE IT FROM YOUR COMPUTER AND RETURN IT TO YOUR LOCAL RETAILER FOR REFUND OR REPLACEMENT.."

"As I understand it, the EULA for Windows refers to being entitled to a refund of Windows - not the entire product, i.e. hardware and software - if you disagree with their terms and conditions."

The legal guy I talked to suggest that you do indeed misunderstand it, the text in question says

"IF YOU DO NOT AGREE, DO NOT INSTALL, COPY, OR USE THE SOFTWARE; YOU MAY RETURN IT TO YOUR PLACE OF PURCHASE FOR A FULL REFUND, IF APPLICABLE"

1. Dell say that it is not applicable as they associate no cost to it, however they may return it to Microsoft for the cost they pay for it (which we do not know of course).

2. Dell is perfectly within its rights to treat its sales and returns as an all or nothing thing.

I don't know the business costs for doing it another way but in the end it is up to Dell, if enough of their customers wanted Linux or naked systems they would sell them that way and charge whatever they could get away with for them, if there were cost savings which generated them more sales by passing them on they would. End of story!

As an aside my legal contact says that a judge in Italy made acer (I think) refund someone for the bundled software which was publicised a year or two ago, however this decision was actually later reversed by a court of appeal and the wording for the EULA in Vista and beyond was presumably subtly changed for OEM's, though ACER did in this case refund the user in the end out of 'good will'!

I don't believe this has actually been tested in court in the UK so there is an opportunity for one of you to challenge the wording if you feel that strongly about it...

"Similarly, I've not read the Apple EULA but I wouldn't have bought the hardware if I didn't want to run the software."

But you would with Dell clearly!

"I'm sure my Xubuntu has an EULA but again I've not read it... anyone know if it's worth reading seeing as though I paid nothing for the OS in the first place?"

Finally Ubuntu doesn't have an EULA.

Firefox and some other things (Sun Java, Adobe etc) do when you install their packages.

They are obviously not disregarding the law

"is it idiotic to buy a Dell machine when you don't want Windows", ehm who are you quoting here?, I don't believe I said that!

Would you feel it was fair to remove the CPU from a system and return it for a refund?

According to my legal friends who have read the EULA, they are complying just fine by treating the whole item as a product, i.e. hardware and software, if I bought a DVD player and it came with power dvd and I didn't agree with the terms and returned it for a refund I would need to return the whole product not just the power DVD disk, they would not be complying if you bought the item and gave you no refund if you then sent it back because you read the EULA and disagreed with it.

Having said this if I were dell I would probably offer the hardware with no software installed for those who are so offended by windows licenses or don't understand how to format the hard disk, as this is no skin off my nose, however I wouldn't offer a discount as there are so few of them and the hassle in the production line and testing etc would probably offset the cost saving anyway. Also I guess I would remove all entitlement to any sort of support for any non-standard system.

I have a couple of dell laptops and a dell desktop at work, all of which are running ubuntu or Debian, and all of which came with various windows licenses. I don't feel offended by this as I know that if I could have bought the same hardware from another vendor sans windows I could have done, but that Dell's business model and totally up to them.

nothing to see here...

They are abiding by the EULA by refunding the product if you return it as sold (i.e. on the machine it was installed on).

Do you apply the same standards to apple? Bar for the exact wording of the EULA it looks like the same argument to me, can I claim to be installing Linux on the machine and return it for a refund too?

Vodafone hands out free books

503 Error

There may be a good reason to hide the page away where no-one can find it as there is currently not the capacity on the server to service those who actually find the link! getting 503 errors for the last half hour now :-(.

Doctors tell government to stop the health records roll-out

I agree

I agree, its a lot of hassle having patients opt-out, the system is well designed and there are much more obvious security problems than this! Personally I can't be bothered with the 3 patients I have who have chosen to opt out, so I have chosen to opt-out of having them as my patients and had them struck from the list, good riddance to them!