Posts by An0n C0w4rd

BT! dumps! Yahoo! after! 10! long! years! together!

Re: Yahoo loves spam and deserves the harvest

By the time the first abuse reports come in it's generally too late and the spammers have moved onto a new drop box already.

Re: Great, maybe now they'll stop with the adverts.

I strongly doubt they will. More and more service provider customers are looking to do ads in webmail because it lets them lower their upfront cost, which is all most people look at when comparing services.

People frequently complain that the Y! home page isn't as clean as Google or Duck Duck Go (or countless other sites, including other media/news sites). People who work at Y! are also frustrated (or at least the ones I know are) and there *is* a stripped down search interface that few people know about at http://search.yahoo.com

Transporter upstart Connected Data could will merge with Drobo

At my last job (an ISP) the marketing dept. tried to force operations to buy USR Total Control Rack modems because they had lots of flashing lights instead of the Ascend Max 4004 that they eventually went with (and then the Ascend TNT).

Blinky lights aren't always the sign of a good product (although I think Apple went too far the other way with removing the drive access lights from their laptop range)

Dialog Bluetooth chip boasts battery life of four YEARS

1) not everyone has a device that they can use to control the tv (e.g smartphone). so the manufacturers still need to include the remote.

2) WiFi is incredibly power hungry which means it is not a good replacement for the infrared remote

My complaint with IrDA is the line-of-sight problem. Even with nothing between the remote and the device there are sometimes communication issues which means you have to alter the angle between the remote and the tv for it to work. And then there are some devices that have a poorly designed IR port on the device or the remote so anything other than directly in front of the device doesn't work, e.g. 30+ degrees from perpendicular. Removing the line-of-sight requirement sounds like a plus to me

Controlling the device from another room could be a good thing, e.g. If you distribute Sky to other rooms you don't need those darned Sky eye dongles all over the place. Switching the wrong device is also easily solvable - e.g. through pairing (the remote only ever controls one device at a time)

If you've bought DRM'd film files from Acetrax, here's the bad news

Re: Inheritance

Why would they? The accounting types will be rubbing their hands in glee because they think people will go out and buy/"license" another copy from somewhere.

Which is where this entire scheme they've cooked up fails - why should I have to buy different copies of the same product from different places if I want to play them on multiple devices? UltraViolet is a step in the right direction, but it is still too restrictive.

Microsoft reveals Xbox One, the console that can read your heartbeat

Re: No second-hand games

I prefer to install games on my old Xbox 360. Means the noisy DVD drive spins less and the games load faster. Don't see why installing games on the Xbox One would be any different.

Difficult to see that they could make each DVD/BluRay different, so there would have to be a unique code in each box to put in. If so, that's a PITA. Maybe they use the Kinect and put a QR code in?

In any event, the game companies trying to either ban or get a cut of the 2nd hand games market is going to happen somehow. It's surprised me it's taken this long to be honest.

Irish deputy PM: You want more tax from Apple? Your problem, not ours

Re: Rules, laws and more rules.

@Busby

Whether or not the big accounting firms had a hand in the crafting of the tax legislation or not:

- the people in govt who are on these soundbite-generating committees and investigative panels, or their predecessors, signed off on the laws that they are now blaming the companies for following and "avoiding tax".

- the people in govt. should stop showboating and change the laws rather than blaming the companies they are calling to their 3 ring circus for using the laws to their advantage.

They're too chicken to fix the tax laws because they're scared of the results. Even if the change is "revenue neutral" (i.e. the treasury gets the same tax the year after as it did the year before), the long term implications of tax changes are more difficult to understand and could actually make the problem worse. So rather than take the risk, they try and blame someone else for the mess.

Senators: You - Cook. Apple guy. Get in here and bring your tax books

Rather irked by this entire process

The entire business of appearing before government committees is, to my mind, largely a waste of public money. It appears to me to be nothing more than publicly funded advertising for the members of the committee to try and appear to be doing the right thing in the eyes of their voters. I've rarely seen these circuses make public policy changes as a result of their "investigations".

Admittedly its fiction, but Skyfall made the point rather well when the female committee member just kept ripping into MI6 without any testimony or any comment from MI6. Which appears to be more or less the point of the exercise - committee members get to espouse their political views for personal gain.

Re: Probably because

There may not be a legal duty to shareholders to pay as little tax as possible, but there is a duty to pay the tax as per the law. If the law doesn't require them to repatriate funds and pay 35% tax on that transaction, why should they do that?

Google tells Microsoft to yank its new WinPhone YouTube app

Re: Not so nice when the shoe's on the other foot is it Microsoft?

@Spartacus

As opposed to when they're using their search monopoly to cross-subsidise free products into other areas, or turning off Exchange Active Sync ...

Turning off EAS made sense to me as MS require royalty payments for using the patents related to EAS of serveral US$/month/user. Why should Google pay MS for a technology when it has other open, non-patent-encumbered, protocols available?

I've yet to find any news articles stating that they've disable CalDAV or CardDAV.

MS were the first (and so far AFAIK the only) competitor that whined to about it, presumably because Windows Phone DOESN'T implement CalDAV or CardDAV, and so they're SOL. That's a MS problem for not building in operability for non-Exchange environments, not a Google problem.

UK.gov blows a fuse at smart meter stall, sets new 2020 deadline

I strongly oppose them, they have no right to cut a bill paying customer off. Period.

Really? Checked your supply contract? I bet there are a TON of get-out clauses in it that benefit the supplier and leave you without heat or power.

Re: Happy with mine

I'd be surprised if it will be as effective for you in a year. The "ooh shiny" aspect of the service may wear off and you'd be back where you were before in terms of consumption.

And you only mentioned benefits for electricity. Where are the benefits of the gas meter? I already have my radiators in rooms I don't frequently use set as low as they go, so I don't see any benefit from smart gas meters at all.

Solution looking for a problem?

I still have yet to see a convincing, well reasoned, argument for this. Other than not having to pay G4S to come read meters by hand to make sure people are not telling fibs in their self-submitted meter readings, I see absolutely no advantage to this scheme, and tons of disadvantages. Especially when you are told it will "help manage grid load" (in other words, you can have your supply turned off to stop the voltage or frequency for other people dipping too much). If it's done at the meter, I hope to !($^*(@% the security is good.

Oh, wait, look at all the insecure SCADA devices out there. This can't go wrong, can it? <groan>

Brits' phone tracking, web history touted to cops: The TRUTH

Re: Simple solution

You forgot to mention that you should pay by cash.

Also, don't use a phone with GPS as there is allegedly a way for the operator to send a query to the phone to get its GPS co-ordinates (if GPS is enabled)

Or just give up and realise that your right to privacy is a myth.

PayPal security boss: OBLITERATE passwords from THE PLANET

Re: Bad idea and overkill

Even better, I strongly suspect that the FIDO stack will allow you to be tracked amongst all these different sites, even if you're not Facebook or the Govt.

Rules, shmules: Fliers leaving devices switched on in droves

Re: The real reason they want them turned off

Partly.

BA lets you use the IFE system from the minute you sit down now, but during takeoff and landing you have to use their headphones, presumably to prove that you're plugged into the IFE and not your own iPod or other device. I assume that's so that you can hear any announcement over the PA which interrupts the IFE and broadcasts to the headsets too.

Which is another silly rule as most of their headphones (apart from the ones for J and F which tend to have odd connectors - audio and power so they can do noise cancelling) work just fine in non-BA issued gear, or at least they used to.

I've noticed when flying that on a large proportion of flights I've taken from the US to the UK over the past decade, on approach to LHR I hear the distinctive Nokia feature phone SMS received tone, presumably their carrier welcoming them to a foreign country. I suspect with the demise of the feature phone I won't hear them as much now.

My parents were on a Virgin Atlantic 747 flight a few years back and related to me that the captain tried starting the engines, couldn't, and came over the PA saying for people to turn their phones off as it was causing interference. I highly doubt this, as the engine winding down noise was about the same time as the announcement, and there is no way the captain could have deduced the problem that quickly. I suspect that the cabin crew complained about people not turning devices off to the captain, and he started the air bleed from the APU to the engines to spin the first engine up but didn't turn the fuel on so the engine would never fire. Either that or he did that every flight to scare people.

American Airlines got permission from someone, I presume the FAA, to let passengers turn their phones on once they cleared the runway upon landing. Why AA can do that and other airlines can't I have no idea.

Review: Crucial M500 960GB SSD

Re: I'll give it a pass

My main concern with SSDs is that often the firmware needs to be updated to fix bugs that weren't exposed in the dev. cycle. Most vendors release new drive firmware at some point to address issues, whether degraded performance or something else. Nearly all upgrade notes say to back up the data first, in other words - this may brick your SSD

As for data loss, 99% of SSDs are still relatively small. End result: it doesn't cost that much extra to have a backup kept on a traditional rust based drive. Even if it's just the OS and apps, that backup will save you a lot of time if the SSD goes Tango Uniform.

Adobe kills Creative Suite – all future features online only

Re: Rip-off UK pricing

They have a UK subsidiary and are therefore subject to UK tax laws. Which doesn't mean much as has been recently seen.

EFF report identifies which internet firms 'have your back' on data

Do published policy and actual behaviour agree?

The report seems to focus on what the companies say they'll do. However, I don't think they looked for evidence that they do that in all cases. That may be nearly impossible to obtain, but the "inform user" gold star could very easily be made of fools gold if the companies don't follow through with their commitment.

They also need to add a star explicitly for not holding data longer than needed. A lot of companies will fall foul of this, which just gives law enforcement even more data to pick through when they send their NSLs to sidestep all the pesky due process issues.

e.g. Apple isn't really clear on how long they keep iMessage data from what I can see.

While I can understand the lure of doing otherwise, I wish companies would segregate data to jurisdiction specific silos. e.g. EU customer data was retained in the EU and under the laws of the EU and not shared with other countries unless necessary (e.g. send an iMessage to someone outside the EU)

Hotel marketplace Airbnb: Show us your privates if you want to book a bed

Don't assume your information will be safe with the government

I never assume that. Some minister will leave their briefcase on a train or something and some random list of peoples details will become public knowledge.

I also see no reason to store the documents beyond a few days to enable the validation has been done. All they are doing is painting a huge "hack us" target on their back.

Apple: You thought Google dodged taxes? Get a load of THIS

Re: What will they do with the overseas assets?

@Tim

Really? What on earth makes you think that the reinvestment will be limited to the US economy? People outside the US are allowed to own stocks and bonds in US listed companies, and even if the stock and bond holders *do* live in the USA, there is nothing to force them to invest in US based companies or buy goods made in the USA . How many of them go out and buy Audis or BMWs or Mercs? OK, the dealer in the USA gets a cut but the rest probably goes overseas. Or maybe they invest in an private jet made by Airbus, Embraer, etc.

Also, I believe the last tax holiday was done because the companies themselves pledged to grow their US operations, hire more staff, etc. That might have happened with some of the money, but the vast majority of it went straight to the people who need it least, or they promptly outsourced everything to India or China and told their US workforce to get stuffed.

Trickle down economics doesn't work as well as its supporters claim. All that happens when you cut taxes for the upper 1% of the income bracket is that they have even more money that doesn't go to the bottom of the income bracket, that probably need it more. If a person has a net worth measured in hundreds of millions (or more) already, an extra 5% off the top rate of tax for them isn't suddenly make them go out and hire more gardeners or have some redecorate the house and actually pass on their wealth.

They're more likely to invest in companies and then demand said companies increase their profit margin by laying off their US staff and hiring overseas. Not exactly the stimulus you want, is it?

Re: What will they do with the overseas assets?

@David Kelly 2

The assumption with any of these repatriation schemes is that the money is used to invest in the USA. Generally it isn't. The last tax holiday for reparation back to the USA most of the funds went to stockholders and bondholders and bonuses to executives and things like that and did sweet F.A. to boost the economy.

Or to put it another way: rich people find ways of getting richer, but the rest are left to fend for themselves.

Re: So what happens when the bonds mature?

Depends on the distribution of debt across the different bonds. Note that some bonds mature in 10 and 30 years. I'm sure they can make enough money back in their USA business alone to pay off the bonds if they weight the distribution towards the longer maturation dates. They may also be some tax dodge relating to overseas bondholders, etc.

Re: What will they do with the overseas assets?

You forget that they buy a lot of stuff overseas already, not only assembly but also parts, etc.

As for the R&D bit, I'd prefer they keep it in the west somewhere. I've seen what R&D out of Asia is like.

As for the tax laws, they need serious overhaul, but the trick is getting the governments to act. No individual government wants to be the first to close the loopholes as they think they'll be at a disadvantage and companies will shift stuff around to minimise their tax exposure there and use the fact that other countries haven't caught up to their advantage. It requires co-ordinated action from multiple countries, and you've seen how well that has worked with such endeavours as emissions trading.

In other words, don't hold your breath. I think there is a better chance of the Monster Raving Loonie Party becoming a serious contender in UK politics than there is of co-ordinated tax avoidance reduction across the EU, let alone the rest of the world.

Plusnet's 'Everyone's a winner' claim is a plus-sized whopper

Re: Deliberately misleading nonsense.

As revealed by the fact that PlusNet is just BT in drag, with the exception of Virgin, ALL these brands are selling essentially one product -- internet over BT's copper wires (whether via Fibre to the Cabinet or not).

Sort of. OK, the "last mile" is the same, but unbundling comes into the picture with most large competitors so the DSLAM is theirs. The backhaul - no idea. Could be someone different, or could be across the BT network (so why have their own DSLAM?)

You're also ignoring the services on top of the broadband, e.g. static IPs, and a tech support that isn't based in India.

Plusnet just happens to be BT more than most of the competition.

One of the world's oldest experiments crawls towards a fall

Re: As boring as watching...

but it makes molasses look positively speedy in comparison. The Boston Molasses Disaster proved molasses isn't that slow at ~35 MPH.

So much for "as slow as molasses"

Maybe we need to start saying "as slow as pitch" instead?

Amazon goes legit with cloud certification plan

Weighting of the topics

I love how the "Data Security" topic is 10% of the exam score but has ~20 bullet points under it, and "Designing highly available, cost efficient, fault tolerant, scalable systems" is 60% and has 9 bullet points under it.

I won't be sitting the AWS Certified Solutions Architect exam any time soon, but I hope it is worth more than some of the other vendor courses I took which turned out to be "here is our product data sheet, regurgitate it without showing any understanding of the contents"

787 battery fix approved

Re: Thank you, FAA...

And what is apparently not being mentioned as much in the mainstream press (haven't checked more aviation centric sites) is that the FAA may limit the ETOPS (Engines Turn Or Passengers Swim, sorry, Extended Twin Operations) rating for the 787, which also reduces the routes it is viable for (or makes the airlines fly way longer routes to stay within the ETOPS rating). That means that the 787 may not be the dream plane that many airlines are hoping for, unless it can keep it's ETOPS 180 rating that the B777/A330 enjoys.

And until there is a full, and publicly published report on the CAUSE of the failures of the battery, I agree. The solution just prevents the batteries from (HOPEFULLY) making a mess. It doesn't stop the problem.

Airline cabin fittings (seats, etc) are required to be tested to prove they are either fire resistant or do not contribute to a fire. Unless Boeing deliberately triggered a thermal issue in the batteries during the test flights, the solution ISN'T TESTED TO ADDRESS THE PROBLEM.

Considering that none of the published reports investigating the existing battery incidents on B787s has provided a cause for the incidents, the modifications are no more than further protective measures. Only once the root cause is found for the existing incidents (and any future ones) can the charging circuits be replaced/updated to avoid future problems.

T-Mobile UK ordered into humiliating Full Monty strip

Re: SMTP

No, 587 is submission (RFC 2476)

TCp port 366 is for ODMR (On Demand Mail Relay). I even had to look it up as I'd never heard of it before, and if you read the RFC (RFC 2645) it is NOT for what you think it is.

However, I agree that people whining about port 25 being blocked should use other ports. And if they insist on using port 25, then they deserve all the spam that they get.

Re: Blocking access to Remote SMTP servers?

@Neill Mitchell

Your "I can't think of a more expensive method of sending spam." comment implies that the spammers would sign up for mobile service and use it to send spam. You miss the point of these blocks. Very few, if any, spammers use their OWN link and haven't for years.

The block on port 25 outbound is because of botnets and trojaned PCs (and I guess smartphones and fondleslabs at this point too, although it is still mostly PCs)

Also, TECHNICALLY, you should NEVER send e-mail over TCP port 25 from anything other than another MTA. MUAs (i.e. outlook, thunderbird, mail.app, etc) should use TCP port 587 (submission). If your SMTP server isn't listening on port 25 then it's your own problem.

(I haven't read the RFCs recently, but there is also TCP/465 (smtps). However I can't remember if its for MUAs or MTAs)

DropBox adds single sign-on

Re: Business use?

Businesses are doing it already in much larger numbers than people think. SalesForce is the prime example. If used as a sales tool and not just CRM/support, not only do they hold your internal price lists but also full records of all current, past and prospective customers and your relationships with them.

Then you've got a whole slew of SMEs using Google Apps, etc.

Do I agree with the outsourcing of business critical data like this? Not particularly, but then again I appear to be in the minority. Co-workers have no issues uploading sensitive data to Dropbox, Basecamp, Google Apps, SalesForce, etc. I used to point out to people the risks they were taking (especially since we have internal resources for doing file sharing, collaboration, etc), but I've long since given up.

Gov report: Actually, evil City traders DIDN'T cause the banking crash

Re: Bollocks

I don't think the article disagrees with that

What the article disagrees with is the regulatory response, and the rhetoric from the politicians who were falling over themselves to point fingers at everyone BUT themselves (despite some indications that deregulation of banking, and lack of a sufficiently competent and resourced regulator or other organisation tasked with making sure they weren't being dumb, played a part in the subsequent collapse)

The regulators view the investment banking divisions as the cause, and view ring-fencing investment banking from commercial banking as the solution

However, if it wasn't the investment banking activities that caused the collapse of the banks, then the regulatory reforms aren't worth the toilet paper they're printed on.

BSkyB punters drown in MASSIVE MYSTERY Yahoo! mail! migration!

Re: Here's a thought...

@Andy_H

That only happens if they reset the POP UID (as seen with the UIDL command). I don't know about Google and Yahoo!, but I know that when I do mail migrations I try and preserve the UID for that very reason.

IMAP is more difficult to preserve UID (for various reasons), but also easier to do migrations for since you don't normally care. Since the read, etc, flags are attributes you can migrate those quite easily and not have to worry about preserving the UID and folder UIDVALIDITY.

The only downside to not preserving UIDVALIDITY/UID in IMAP migrations is that the IMAP client will force a full resync of the headers and message metadata (at least if it follows RFCs), so immediately afterwards the platform can be under much higher load, but that is a one-time deal and most users won't notice the resync.

Re: Wait, they run an ISP...

Large companies like BT, Sky, etc, like outsourcing large parts of their service for multiple reasons, but I think the biggest one is transfer of liability. The supplier is responsible for providing a stated uptime and there are financial penalties if they don't. If they ran the operation in house they wouldn't have that luxury.

Other advantages:

- by bidding the service out you can usually force the price down. In-sourced services are tend to be less flexible on price

- economy of scale. even someone the size of BT or Sky can't pull the tricks that Google pulled with gmail because they don't have enough users

- in most cases you reduce risk from security breaches. if the outsourced platform is compromised, they typically don't have a stepping point into the internal systems of the ISP or other parts of the service.

- reduced liabilities from service improvements and necessary upgrades. I haven't seen one of these contracts, but I would tend to suspect there aren't limits on number of messages per days, etc, it's probably more around numbers of active users. So if a platform (e.g. Facebook or Twitter) comes along, gets very popular and suddenly the number of messages being processed dramatically increases, the ISP is no longer responsible for the cost - the supplier either built it in to their margins or loses out. In either case, the ISP doesn't care, it's not their problem, they just expect it to be fixed.

There are other reasons as well, but I don't particularly want to get into those in a public forum.

Some of the above can also act as downsides, and when outsourcing you can be subject to network instability outside your own network, but I'd best in most of those cases they set up a peering across multiple pubic and private peering points to remove the risk of a transit provider having issues.

Torygraph and Currant Bun stand by to repel freeloaders

Re: BBC for the headlines

It's also one step closer to the loss of (perceived) anonymity on the Internet. If papers push most of their content behind subscription systems, it becomes very easy to link a commentator to a verified credit card billing address.

Given how the UK police and security services (as well as our lovely friends in the USA) have over-reacted numerous times to innocent comments posted on the Intertubes, I'm not convinced that this is a step in the right direction.

Gartner magicians mumble, fling bones, scrawl new disk pentacle

Re: Not much of a quadrant

@Don

Hardly. I've seen competitive situations where purchases are made entirely based on the Gartner MQ positioning.

So while techies question their usefulness and accuracy, their role in purchasing decisions is unfortunately all to real.

Google offers limited data on National Security Letters

"Security" through obscurity? Oh no, not again?

"This is to address concerns raised by the FBI, Justice Department and other agencies that releasing exact numbers might reveal information about investigations"

I'd love to know how knowing exact numbers of NSLs and users could in any way shape or form reveal information about ongoing investigations when you're dealing with the number of users Google has on their systems. If there were 59 NSLs in 2012 about 214 users, what does that tell you? Not much.

If there was 1 NSL with 23 users then that may be a different matter entirely, as the single NSL DOES provide data. But assuming that on the typical year they get many more than single digits, I'm not sure how you could derive any information about ongoing investigations from more exact numbers.

Amazon, eBay, banks snub anti-fraud DNS tech, sniff securo bods

Re: DNSSEC and GSLB

@Gerhard Mack

Yes, but with GSLB the answer can change on *every* query. Admittedly between a limited set of answers, but it's still nowhere near your situation. Either you have to load signed zones for each possible answer onto the GSLB device, or you have to load the signing keys onto the device. The latter is undesirable in the extreme.

DNSSEC and GSLB

How does DNSSEC fit in with GSLB? Most of the big tech players have distributed web sites relying on DNS servers that change their replies based on data on where the query came from. I would suspect that would not play well with DNSSEC

The other tricks some people use is injecting BGP routes and have multiple boxes answer for the same IP, but the load is "distributed" based on shortest path routing. That would probably be OK for DNSSEC, but it'd still be a pain to have to sign all those different zone files.

Satanic Renault takes hapless French bloke on 200km/h joyride

Re: "he drove the car off the road when it ran out of petrol."

…Wait, what? The damn car finally runs out of petrol, and he that's when he decides to drive the car off the road? This contradicts the info that he had a full tank of gas. Half a pack of cigarettes, it's dark, and we're wearing sunglasses.

No engine = no power assisted braking or steering. He might not have been able to control the car properly without the power assist. And a ditch is probably a lot more forgiving than the central reservation or another car.

Maybe the French police need to look a the reinforced steel tube bars that they fit to American police cars to allow them to push other cars or assist in cases like this. On the Pennsylvania roads there can be no hard shoulder on the Interstates so the cop uses the tube arrangement (and there rubber pads on it too) to push the car to safety at the nearest off-ramp (never lived in PA but driving through once I saw it being done)

Spanish boffins increase GPS accuracy by 90%

Re: GPS for Dummies

Sorry, which GPS is actually giving you an indication of which *lane* you're in? It might know "northbound" vs "southbound" or similar (which is carriageway information, not lane) but it knows that purely from your actual direction. Sat navs "snap-to" roads, allowing them to be very accurate. Try coming off a road onto a farm track and watch it lose its way quite quickly.

Even better, if it tells you to take a slip road off the motorway, and you don't, it'll take quite a while to figure out. It assumes that you are following it's instructions until you exceed the "snap-to" failure threshold. Normally it takes my car until I pass the roundabout at the end of the slip road before it figures out that I've ignored it's advice because near to home I know the roads better than it does (most sat-navs don't figure traffic lights into time calculations, so while the way it sends me is shorter, it takes longer because of the stop-start traffic. So I go the long way because there are no traffic lights. Usually get home sooner)

Of course, if you wanted to get real accuracy you'd use the encrypted GPS signal only (officially) available to the military. I forget what the accuracy is, but it's sub 1 metre from memory.

NASA melts mysterious 'metal Martian flower' myth

Who?

The Martians or NASA?

Google to splurge $82m for exclusive airport exec enclave

Where will they put all this? The airport is hemmed in on all sides by roads (101 goes past the northern end of the runway and Interstate 880 goes past the southern end, for example) and existing buildings and facilities like car parks. There is some vacant property nearby (at least at the last time the sat got a pic for google maps), but it's the other side of Coleman Ave from the airport.

3 Brits banged up for £300k VAT scam

"We are working relentlessly to combat those involved in tax evasion and fraud and bring them before the courts. With over £10 billion being stolen from UK finances each year by criminals, it is serious crime which we are determined to eradicate."

Is that £10 billion calculated the same way that the movie and recording industries calculate their losses due to piracy?

Or to put it another way, if they know they're losing £10 billion a year due to tax fraud, why haven't they stopped it?

Dell finally takes Dell private - with $24bn and help from Microsoft

Re: @Mark Cathcart

So you just admitted that Linux is more popular on your servers than MS Windows.

No, they admitted that most Dell customers don't want to pay for the retail versions of the OS's Dell offers. People with Microsoft volume licensing probably fit in that category as well.

Senators propose permanent ban on internet sales and access tax

Re: I don't get it

The Federal law won't affect state law. The Federal law already exists, but has an expiration date. Really. all they're doing is removing the expiration. Since the state taxes already exist and are not challenged/overruled by the existing federal law, there will be no change there.