Posts by Paul

You have to fit in with the framework

Using a framework like Rails, instead of just coding everything yourself directly in some sort of programming language, is a trade-off. A framework requires that you do things "it's way", but the payoff is that you can do those things quickly.

But, if your project just won't fit the way of the framework, or you want to reuse your original database tables in a re-write, there's no substitute for coding the thing the old-school way. Chances are you can't make the framework fit your design, ever.

If I tried to rewrite any of the sites I work on using another *language*, but keeping the same database tables, I could. In fact most of the heavy lifting is done in SQL, leaving the scripting language to iterate over returned queries and generate the output.

But the only way they could ever be safely rewritten using a framework would be to throw *everything* away and build from the ground up, redesigning everything with the chosen framework in mind. Anything less would just be begging for pain.

Rather silly

If I want to watch a show "time shifted" I'll record it on the trusty old VCR, to watch at *my* discretion, without ads I'm forced to watch, while sitting on the couch nice and comfy, on a decent sized screen with good sound.

Even with VHS "quality", that's still better than a self-destructing, forced-adware download that I have to go sit at the computer to watch.

Those who actually care enough about TV to spend the money on stuff like DVR (offered by every satellite provider and probably even every Mom-and-Pop cable outfit over here, or there's always TiVo) have it even easier. You're not seriously going to convince them to go squint at their computer screen for 60 minutes (it would be 45 or less, but they can't skip the ads!) when they probably have an 80" plasma widescreen HDTV with full surround sound set up in perfect alignment with the best recliner in the house.

In the rare event I like the series enough to watch it over and over again, I'll buy it on DVD. Judging by the number of such DVDs on the store shelves, this is a popular option.

Basically I don't see how this can appeal to anyone, except maybe those folks who have a pressing need to watch shows for free on a tiny screen. If that's a sizeable enough market to make this work, then I fear for the future of humanity... :-P

Not again...

We need, at most, 3 form factors:

CF (and microdrive, the CF slot ones, not the dodgy old Sinclair things) for the big capacities and really high speeds needed for high-end pro digital cameras and other posh gear.

SD for normal-sized consumer/prosumer level devices.

One of the really-small-form-factor SD variants (I say just choose the current smallest one, whatever it is this week) for devices like cellphones, where compact form factor matters more than capacity or speed.

You can get adapters to plug an SD card into a CF slot, and adapters to plug the small form factor SD cards into SD slots, so make CF the standard if you're going to build a PC with an integral card reader. The other two formats can plug into it with suitable adapters.

Everything else should go the way of SmartMedia, and soon, with Memory Stick and xD first against the wall.

Is anyone actually surprised?

Seriously, this is PC World we're talking about here.

You might, if all the stars and planets align, and the wind blows in just the right direction, get lucky and find a tech or salesperson who actually knows *something* about computers, but when you walk in there you're pretty much walking into a clue-free zone. I suspect the only training they give their floor staff is on how to sell those stupid extended warranties for any piece of hardware (I bought a mouse there once before I knew better, and they tried to sell me extended warranty. On a 15 quid mouse, for pity's sake! My response wasn't very polite, I must confess.)

I've no reason to believe their techs receive any better training. I wouldn't bring a PC there for repair under any circumstances!

As a Linux user I'm not remotely offended by this, and the only surprise is that a Linux user would set foot in somewhere like PC World in the first place.

We all have a choice

What people like Carlton, and those who inflict barely-usable, ad-laden sites upon us, fail to remember is that the end-user is spoiled for choice. Very few sites can get away with plastering their pages with annoying adverts *and* forcing people to view them.

Unless they serve an extremely niche audience, or have some extraordinary, unique, compelling content, they're not providing anything I can't get elsewhere. Force me to jump through hoops to get at your "nothing special" content, and you can be sure I'll not bother. Make it worth my while and I'll live with some pretty heavy advertising if you force me to, but your content had better be bloody incredible in direct proportion to how annoying it is to access it.

Be a self-important asshole about it, like Carlton is being, and no amount of amazing content will get me to visit your site more than once in my lifetime.

I'd love to block everyone who uses IE6 or below, but I'm not stupid enough to think it's a good idea to *really* do it. As far as I'm concerned, every click is sacred, and every end-user I set my dogma upon is one less person who might return later, or even better, do something that helps raise my overall traffic.

The real solution is for advertisers and site owners to realize that there is a happy medium where users won't feel compelled to block their ads in the first place, and where sponsored sites can remain usable while continuing to raise revenue through advertising.

OS security

There's no such thing as a truly secure OS. If you think there is, then you're asking to be pwned in short order.

Always assume you're vulnerable, and do what you can to reduce the possible attack surface. Linux just happens to be *more* secure than Windows, as a rule, because the default settings are usually more restrictive, and the vulnerabilities which do crop up get patched faster.

Also, any operating system is only as secure as the weakest application running on it. That includes web applications, as in this case, which anyone reading this site should know are generally about as secure as an unlocked car in the bad end of town.

Nothing stays dominant forever

OEMs providing Linux pre-installed on systems you can buy, as Dell have started doing, takes away one huge problem for the average home user - the install. Bear in mind Windows is only "easy to install" because most people never have to, it comes ready to go on their new system, and the restore disk is usually just a reimaging tool. If they can also iron out the licensing issues for media formats, and pre-install those, then one less problem exists to put people off.

Further, if the Linux desktop gains traction in enterprises, or through roll-outs in government offices, schools, etc., that will drive demand for commercial support, will raise awareness of alternatives to MS Office, and will ultimately help it gain support from home users. Businesses are beginning to understand the benefits of open formats, and the bottom line matters; if switching to a Linux desktop with OpenOffice will ultimately help them make more profit by avoiding ongoing license fees and reducing hardware costs, they'll seriously consider it and may end up taking that route even if they have to initially pay to retrain users.

What makes it in the office is important. Remember that the people who got into home computing in the last decade or so largely chose what they knew from the office, and that was Windows. If what they know from the office changes to something else, then that something else has a better chance of making it in the home market.

Games will be a sticking point for some, but really, how many people bought their home PC for playing games? The Internet was the "killer app" that made ordinary people want computers at home, and the Internet isn't tied to Windows, despite MS' best efforts in the past.

Steven Hewitt's first 2 sentences are totally wrong. Linux has changed dramatically in 10 years, from something suitable only for hardcore geeks, to something which is perfectly capable of meeting most computing needs, if given the chance to.

I tried Linux 10 years ago and despite my Unix experience, it just wasn't the right fit for me, too much effort for no real benefit. At the time Windows XP arrived to market, Linux still wasn't quite there for my needs. A year later, it had improved enough to take over my desktop. Since then I've seen it evolve and improve with every release, yet without needing me to invest in all-new hardware to enjoy those improvements. Linux today is a much more polished product than it was in 2002, never mind 1997.

During that same time period after XP, Microsoft gave us a couple of service packs, lots of patches to solve security issues, and finally squeezed out Vista, several years late, hardware intensive and plagued with problems. They'll get those problems fixed, but unless they reinvent how they develop Windows, they can't hope to keep up with their competition.

Linux as the dominant desktop OS won't happen tomorrow, maybe it won't ever happen, but if it was as insignificant a threat to the Windows monopoly as some people seem to believe, why are Microsoft showing every sign of being very worried by the possibility that it could, in fact, take great big lumps out of their market share where it hurts the most, at a time when Windows may be more vulnerable to competition than it has ever been?

If they can't get the basic stuff right...

Seriously, this should be fairly straightforward stuff. You update the server software, change the server config, or alter the site code, you test it, fix any problems, repeat until not broken.

Not being able to get that right hardly speaks volumes for their overall competence and doesn't fill me with confidence that they have a secure web application.

This isn't just Facebook though, I've had a couple of occasions where a site will puke out its PHP code. Extra points for sourcecode where the database access credentials are exposed?

Because it's profitable

They spam because the costs are so ridiculously low that it almost can't fail to make money. If it didn't, they wouldn't bother. But that would require the tiny number of idiots who respond to spam to stop buying crap from spammers.

Now, if ISPs could somehow detect when a user clicks through from a spam to a spam site and buys something, and cut their service off immediately with no refund or recourse, people might learn that buying from spammers is Bad and Hurts The Internet. Maybe name and shame the buggers too, just for added effect.

Scary thought

I'm convinced that most people around here got their drivers licenses free inside a box of Cheerios. Any flying car that could ever go safely mass-market will have to fly itself without any user input whatsoever beyond "take me home, car".

But, I don't trust software to work right either (I've been a programmer for a long time, I know how bad software can be) so that doesn't leave many options for flying the thing.

The day an affordable flying car for the masses becomes a reality is the day I move home to a concrete underground bunker as far as possible from the majority of those masses...

Would if I could, Neal.

I can't speak for Patrick's situation, but the reason I still have dialup is because I DON'T HAVE ANY !&$%ING CHOICE!

So, Neal, much as I ache to join you in the 21st century, it's just not possible until those idiots at Verizon pull their act together, or HughesNet drop the price and increase the quality of their currently very expensive and crappy satellite service, or the FCC grow a set of balls and make broadband possible for everyone.

The US is a BIIIG place, and we don't all live in broadband-enabled areas, you condescending arse.

Seems fair enough to me

I'm a UK expat living in the US and have no problem with the idea of advertising-supported BBC content outside of the UK if it means I can get access to better quality news programming than the utterly useless, dumbed-down, celebrity-obsessed, ratings-chasing sensationalist horse crap that passes for "news" here (the latest laugh-a-minute is Inside Edition and their horror story about people being run over by those big electric carts at airports; I say if you wander into the path of a vehicle that goes BEEP-BEEP-BEEP and has flashing warning lights on it, then tough luck for being so inattentive, no news segment here, move along please).

It's not as if I haven't learned to ignore the advertising anyway, living in the States you pretty much have to...

Existing laws

The existing laws should indeed cover the act of not paying full attention to the road, but then again this is a country where it's not uncommon for people to be driving while attempting to talk on the phone, do their hair, eat a fast food breakfast and chug their coffee, all at the same time. Frankly it's a miracle that the roads aren't littered with wrecked vehicles and mangled human remains.

It only helps if the law is properly enforced anyway, and I have my doubts about that. Cops around here would rather lurk behind bridge supports waiting for someone to pass going 10 over the limit than go looking for those who are driving distractedly and posing a much greater threat to everyone else.

Yes, they did try to offer Linux, sort of...

...but I understand Microsoft did their old "you are the OEM, we are the daddy, and you will do as we bid" trick to put a stop to such radical ideas as offering other operating systems preloaded.

They don't necessarily need *better* customer support (well, OK, perhaps they do, but that's not Linux-specific)

They really just need to make sure the helldesk has some sort of clue about the product, even if that just amounts to updated scripts for them to read from.

Giving back to the community

You only have to provide source/give back to the community if you make alterations to existing GPL'ed code (unless I am very mistaken).

If Google use out-of-the-box Linux configurations but have their own separate software which runs on that, they can license their *own* code any way they please, or lock it in a vault under 20 feet of concrete, protected by hungry tigers and killer bees if that's what lights their candle! They'd only have to feed back any alterations they made to the GPL'ed bits of the system.

Seems like they give a lot to the community, look at Summer of Code for example.

What the crap?

OK Ashlee, you may want to check the controls on the DeLorean and try again, looks like you had them set for 1997 instead of 2007.

I've been using Linux as my preferred desktop OS since 2002 and had used it on the desktop in a previous employment since 2000. It took several attempts to get there, I'd given it a whirl as far back as 1998 and at the time I couldn't work out why in the world anyone would want to use it.

Within 3 or so years of my first try, it had reached a tipping point where it actually *could* do everything I wanted, using all the hardware I currently owned or planned to buy, without any major reliability issues. At which point I sidelined Windows (and nuked it entirely when I realized I hadn't booted into it once in 6 months). Now I use Windows in work and hate every second of it (yesterday XP decided to arbitrarily change my desktop theme back to the default settings; this is better than Linux *how*, exactly?), and wonder why in the world anyone would *choose* to use it for anything besides playing really expensive games.

The Linux desktop, drivers, applications, and overall quality have only improved since then, to the point where I'm quite confident my tech-unsavvy mother could use it if I did the install for her, or it came pre-installed on the system like Windows does (she couldn't install Windows herself, either).

Limited driver support? No problems here any time recently, from what I've seen and heard I'd have a harder time getting working drivers for Vista. Even wireless LAN card support, the bane of Linux users everywhere, is getting there (my 54b/g card works straight out of the box with the drivers in Ubuntu). If Grandma just plugs her desktop box into the cable modem, odds are near 100% that it will Just Work and won't be pWn3D LoLZ!!!!1!!one!!! inside 5 minutes either.

Multimedia? I wouldn't call it limited, though it doesn't help that you have to separately install the relevant packages. Easy enough in Ubuntu, but off-putting to a newbie I'm sure. Then again, now that I have it set up properly, I find multimedia gives me more constant low-order grief in Windows, and Banshee is far better for managing my iPod than iTunes is (oh how I love to hear my wife yell at iTunes for being stupid and slow...)

Power management? Oh, yes, it used to suck raw eggs, but since upgrading to Ubuntu Feisty, I now have a laptop which will hibernate just fine. It may even have worked before, I just hadn't tried it. By comparison my wife's XP laptop loses the plot after about 3 hibernate/awaken cycles, hardly dependable.

CPU SpeedStep control has worked since I moved to Ubuntu, ramps the speed down under idle and gives it the bejeezus when the CPU is under load. It really *did* Just Work, without my intervention to make it so.

Linux is improving all the time, deals like the Dell arrangement, and the recently-announced Lenovo one, can only help improve things yet further. Windows is...well, you got a problem-plagued Vista after a delay that makes even Debian look fleet-footed! Maybe you'll *have* a new version that doesn't suck so badly by 2020...

@ Jamie Carpenter, re: Ubuntu and root: no, you can't log in as root by default. That's intentional, and exactly the same way OS X does it. You log in as yourself and use "sudo <command>", then enter your normal user password, or else "sudo su -", your password and that gets you a root prompt. Apps which require root privileges when launched from the desktop menus (one of which I believe is a root terminal) will prompt for your user password and then run as root. Installs "just work" in Windows because most people will be running with admin privileges at all times. That's a Really Bad Thing when you're using an OS where stuff can be installed without your consent...

Also I tend to find that most normal people are baffled by *any* filesystem and will forget where they saved their files whatever the path looks like. I'd argue that "/home/paul/" is a hell of a lot clearer than "c:\Documents and Settings\Paul\My Documents\" any day of the week though.

Know thy enemy

Teaching establishments which won't discuss computer intrusion techniques are doing everyone, not just their computing students, a huge disservice. A problem will not simply go away because your prestigious college didn't put it on the curriculum.

Many of these graduates go on to write code for production systems, with no understanding of issues like SQL injection, cross-site scripting, buffer overflows, or any of the other basic tools of the cracker.

The end result? The same stupid mistakes over and over, insecure code and compromised systems.

As a web application developer, long-time coder and server administrator, who also has something of a hacker mentality, I knew well enough to find out what security issues might affect my work, and at least try to learn how to mitigate them. But how many of the people graduating with IT-related degrees got into computing because "the money is good" or "it's a growth industry", and how likely is it that such people will have the initiative or interest to learn anything beyond what their college spoon-fed them or what they accidentally pick up as they work?

Missing the point

Andrew wrote: "I fear I may be missing the point here, but to watch BBC Terrestrial Broadcasts I have to purchase a 625-Line PAL receiver. I can't watch on a US-made NTSC set, I can't watch on a French SECAM set, I certainly can't watch on my fridge or my vacuum cleaner. Yet no one finds this odd."

Last time I lived in the UK I wasn't required to pay a TV licence fee for my vacuum cleaner or fridge, and I expect you could wriggle out of paying one for a SECAM or NTSC set since it can't receive the BBC signals anyway.

Unless of course they changed that law since 2005...

CPC should have done better

The CPC was a very well-specced system with a great BASIC, arguably the best 8-bit of the era on all-round technical abilities, but suffered from typical Amstrad "cheap and cheerful" execution, from arriving to market two years after it's main rivals, the Spectrum and C64, and from having a lot of games which were straight Spectrum ports, which as a Speccy owner back in the day I found quite hilarious!

It wasn't the only 8-bit at the time with 80 character capability - the original BBC-B and Electron both could do 80-columns (though with about 21K out of 32K available used for the display, you couldn't "do" all that much really unless you used expansion ROMs for stuff like wordprocessing).

@Peter Kay: the Z88 wasn't an Amstrad machine, it was Sinclair (operating as Cambridge Computers, well after the Amstrad-Sinclair Research buyout).

Also, Felix Dennis published "Your Sinclair", *surely* he deserves a knighthood for that? ;-)

I'm not crazy...

...I'm just differently normal! d-:

I'm also utterly crap at most sports, particularly those involving hand-eye coordination. I guess the geek gene trumps the lefty one in that respect.

But I *can* read text that's upside down, mirrored or has the letter order reversed. Which freaks people out just a wee bit sometimes. And kind of sucks with those puzzle books where the answers are printed upside-down at the bottom of the page. Apparently this is a common skill among left-handers (da Vinci with his mirrored handwriting being a good example).

Anyway, I've got to scoot. There's an angry looking crowd of ignorant smelly yokels with pitchforks coming down the road...

Another unoriginal patent from Microsoft

"to retain the ability to crush, sue and generally stomp upon an application that might try to do this?"

Possible, but those very applications (Eudora in sponsored mode, and the ad-supported Opera of old) would surely constitute prior art if they ever tried to use this patent against anyone.

For that matter, after reading the abstract, they could be describing any number of adware applications that Windows tends to get infested with. Pleasing as it would be to see Microsoft use this patent to attack adware pushers, they, too, would be prior art.

Can't imagine why anyone in their right mind would want a "free" ad-supported version of any Microsoft product anyway. This is not 1995, there are alternatives which are genuinely free with no strings attached, and perfectly capable of being used by ordinary people if they're willing to give it a chance.

Besides, I wouldn't trust Microsoft to not screw up an implementation of this and leave it wide open to attack.

Suck it up, corporate whiners

Because y'all have failed to step up and provide anything better than basic service, if we get it at all, out where we are. We're a mere 15 miles out of town in two directions, not exactly a long distance compared to the size of the USA, but wireless service is patchy at best, and non-existent for all but Sprint, Verizon and US Cellular, last time I checked. And WTF is with having to pay (or use minutes, anyway) to receive calls? Finally seeing some improvement here, but really, WTF?

Similar story with land lines. In this land of capitalist free market forces, we have a choice between Verizon and....err....that's it. Again they've failed dismally to provide anything beyond basic POTS. Broadband? Yeah right, they'd have to invest some of their obscene profits into making that happen. How *dare* we impudent customers ask for some investment in improved services? We should be grateful to even have a phone, right?

Anything that can offer an alternative to this useless state of affairs can only be a good thing. Competition only drives innovation when you actually have direct competitors, after all.

Not exactly new

Pfft. I could have told you this almost 20 years ago, when as a teen I was first-person machine-gunning anything that moved in "Operation Wolf" to blow off some steam. :-)

I could also have told you that, despite what the anti-videogame scaremongers would have us believe, doing this did not make me want to aquire an Uzi, several thousand rounds of ammo and a dozen or so grenades and go do it for real.

MS to blame, but not the only ones at fault

Microsoft definitely hold some blame here. If newer versions of Office could competently display old Word documents, there'd be no need for the mad scientist virtual machine solution. (I wonder if they have to buy a licence from MS for every version of DOS/Windows/Office they need to use for this? ;-) )

MS chose to rework .DOC format for every new version of Office, forcing people to upgrade, and now they get to benefit from a bit of PR fluff about how they're making it possible to read old documents. Gotta love that lock-in.

But MS aren't solely to blame, they're just one of many peddlers of closed formats over the years, and this is a perfect example of why vendor-dependent formats are trouble waiting to happen. At least these days we have a couple of options which aren't tied to any one OS, software package or vendor and stand a good chance of being readable in the future. TNA need to be converting everything they can into such formats, starting now.

The hardware most certainly *can* be an issue. I may have a 3.5" floppy drive in my current system, but no standard PC floppy controller can read the Amiga's native disk format, so anything I didn't transfer when I *had* a working Amiga is now trapped on unreadable media. Luckily none of it is important enough to jump through hoops to recover, but TNA's archive is of significantly more importance to the national record than my A-level coursework is...

Driver aids

> taking away traction control and several other really cool pieces of equipment

And good bloody riddance to (at least some of) them.

I don't think F1 should be a field of identical cars, there are plenty of single-spec race series which satisfy the "best driver wins" criteria. F1 *is* as much about the technology of the cars as the driver's skill, but there's a point where a line has to be drawn, and the driver's skill level *should* be the deciding factor.

Driver aids like traction control and ABS have absolutely NO place in a race car of any class. It doesn't take much skill to accelerate or brake "on the edge" when you've got these technologies to stop you from spinning or locking the wheels, just jam your foot as hard as you can on the pedal at the appropriate moment and let the CPU do all the thinking. That's fine for the average person who just wants to get from A to B a couple of times a day without making an insurance claim, but the whole point is that the drivers who make it in F1 are *not* average; they're supposed to be the best of the best, and they get paid a hell of a lot of money to be better drivers than I, with my piece o'crap Taurus that has no traction control and dysfunctional ABS, should need to be.

Besides, with traction control you'd never have moments like Jean Alesi drifting sideways round a corner with one hand on the wheel and the other furiously waving a fist at the slower driver he'd just lapped. :-)

I second the salesmen comment

One of the biggest problems we faced in a previous job I held was sales staff telling customers that, "yes, we have that feature" even when said feature didn't exist and hadn't been discussed, and we were still struggling just to get core functionality to work, assuming the stupid thing would even compile.

Multiply that by the half-dozen or so possible clients, each of whom wanted a slightly different feature set.

Endless fun!

Because it isn't as open as the name would suggest

> They then create an open spec (which is actually much better -

> so lightweight compared to .doc)

Wrapping a blob of closed, proprietary, undocumented binary in XML tags and calling it "open" does not an open format make.

It could be the best, most lightweight document format ever devised, but if it has even _one_ significant undocumented byte, it's not "open", and calling it such is lying. (Nothing new for Microsoft there, then).

> and get it rubber stamped by an independant organisation

I think the term you were looking for is "rushed through without due process". If you'd actually been paying attention you might have noticed how suspiciously easy it seemed to be for them.

> MS get slated

And deservedly so. As per usual, they're trying to subvert the whole process of "standardization", rushing through something they call "open" which clearly isn't, and lobbying for their "standard" to be used when a better, and truly open alternative already exists. Then they'd subtly alter the "standard", just like they tried to do with Java.

Only a fool would trust Microsoft to "do the right thing" given their track record. Just ask 3Com founder Bill Metcalfe (who was told by a Microsoft exec that "You made a fatal error, you trusted us.").

Another post about misuse of the word 'hacker'

Call the shitbags who cheat in MMORPGs crackers, script kiddies or, best of all, cheating lowlifes, because that's exactly what they are.

But don't grace them with the title "hacker", for God's sake.

A hacker is someone who wants to understand how stuff works, take things apart, examine them, see what can be made better, and take some action to have those improvements incorporated into the system.

A true hacker in this context would break the system, figure out how to fix the hole, and try to get the people responsible to include the fix, making the system MORE secure for everyone. Exactly what about that is unethical? Unethical is a company being told there's a problem and refusing to do anything to fix it (which is why you end up with full-disclosure reports of security issues; it might be the only way to get an intransigent developer to actually *do something*).

The people who write and release these tools with the intention of cheating, or helping others to cheat, are "crackers", breaking the system for gain. They don't *want* things to be improved, that would stop them from doing what they do. A cracker has the same skillset as a hacker, sure, but the morals and ethics are entirely absent.

As for the end users who download this stuff and use it to cheat, they sure as hell aren't "hackers", or even "crackers". But there are an awful lot of them.

Keeping Windows free of malware

"After having installed an anti virus program on my pc on a year old installation of windows, i was surprised to find no virus' of any kind.

explain that"

You installed Windows a year ago, but you don't ever connect the computer to the internet and you install only pre-packaged commercial software?

That, or you're quite possibly the luckiest son of a b*tch to ever walk God's green earth, and I'd appreciate it if you'd send me 6 non-identical numbers (plus a, um...bonus number) between 1 and 49 please. Thanks!

Useful for web development, for those of us who care about compatibility anyway.

As a web developer who makes an effort to have sites work cross-browser, this offers the possibility of *removing* the need to have a Mac on hand for testing purposes.

Given the choice, my preferred environment is neither Windows or the Mac, but I need to have a Windows box around for IE testing anyway, so being able to run Safari on there too would be great.

I suppose I could always just use Konqueror as a Safari stunt double, but it's nice to know that a site works for the actual browser, not just it's near-relative. If I need one less computer to do that, all the better.

Why am I not surprised?

Really, people. If this "medical condition" was serious enough to warrant removing her from the Graybar Motel, she (as a repeat offender with an obvious contempt for the rule of law) should be in hospital with an armed guard or two on the door, not lounging it up in her palatial bloody mansion!

Fscking farce.

No .com please, we're British

You're a UK site, with a decidedly UK style.

Keep the .com, sure, but 301 it to the .co.uk address so that Googlebot doesn't get all stroppy about duplicate content.

Argh! My eyes! My eyes!

Brings a whole new meaning to Bart's catchphrase "eat my shorts".

Or maybe the little square in the middle might represent a biometric ID card, being held up for inspection by a citizen (represented by the bit in the bottom left - the angle where the "card" meets it is his hand) toward the spiky round-ish thing in the top right (the all-seeing eye of the surveillance camera on every lamp-post). The squiggles in the top left and bottom right are the mind-control beams that are no doubt being worked on by the Ministry of Freedom as we speak (to be installed as an upgrade to the "Oi! You! Yes, you, laddie! Stand still!" PA systems now employed).

And on a lighter note, mention of the BT "pan-piper" guy reminds me of the time I was a placement student there. We discovered that some unknown person had found the graphic file used for our fax gateway's page header, and had made a subtle couple of pixels, erm, "enhancement", to the trumpeter bloke.

I still wonder how many faxes went out with that letterhead.

MS BS

I call BS.

They know exactly what'll happen to those patents once they're subjected to scrutiny: invalidated, sidestepped entirely, or counter-attacked by one of the other corporates who have a vested interest in this.

Then where would they be? God forbid they might actually have to compete on merit and price instead of intimidating people into doing business with them.

That they won't reveal even one and come up with such a lame excuse for it should tell you everything you need to know about how valid most of these patents will turn out to be.

What next? "The dog ate our patents?"

Great, just what society needs

Oh that's just peachy, give the sheep a way to stay plugged in to their mindless entertainment anywhere and everywhere they go. Now they'll be able to ignore the world around them without having to call or text someone else, even in the unlikely event of being somewhere that doesn't already have at least half a dozen TVs beaming out at everyone and tuned to the lowest common denominator.

Social interaction? Is that like when you text your vote in for "<insert reality show here>"?

Don't even get me started on the plonkers who'll inevitably try to watch TV while eating their drive-thru fast food and weaving along the highway at 60mph...

It's a good time to switch

This is a good thing for all. There's no lock-out for those citizens who'd rather not use Microsoft products, and no lock-in for the document creators who have a wider choice of tools. (Which could *easily* include MS Office, if Microsoft weren't so scared of supporting a truly open format.)

As far as cost of switching goes, I'm led to believe that Office 2007's interface is significantly different to earlier versions. Which means retraining people how to use it. MS Technet even has an article which states "User education is required."

Granted, you'd have some retraining to move to OpenOffice or some other ODF-supporting alternative, but the interface is a lot closer to what your office suite users are already comfortable with, and at the end of it all you'd have escaped the MS Office trap and saved on licensing fees now and in the future.

Document exchange with less-enlightened organizations might be an initial problem, but different versions of MS Office tend to cause the same issues anyway.

As for the suggestion of standardizing around a Microsoft Office implementation of ODF, no way! Sorry but that's a Really Bad Idea. MS have plenty of form on this, where they try to subvert an open standard and twist it to their own benefit. Better to make sure the format is fully standardized and documented by a party that doesn't stand to gain or lose from it.

The difference this time around

Microsoft has always played the numbers game, in their financial reporting, and especially their "sales" figures. I don't even come close to believing Bill's figure of 40m.

The key difference with Vista is that *mainstream* media are being critical, pointing out the problems it's causing some people, and even worse, are running stories about OSX and Linux more often. Apple are also laying the boot into Windows with their "Hello I'm a Mac" ads. Microsoft haven't really had to deal with this level of open criticism before, not in front of an audience of "normal" people anyway.

The average Joe who doesn't read techie news sites used to be totally in the dark about Microsoft's issues, but is now more likely to be aware that Vista is turning out to be a problem child, and that there are alternatives (even if they wouldn't have a clue how to use or install them). Or more likely they're comfortable with XP, which they've had many years to get used to, warts and all, and really don't *want* to change.

Empty threats from a cornered bully

Notice how Microsoft are being very vague and won't specify what the actual infringements are? They know as soon as they identify the patents in question, thousands of highly-motivated, intelligent people would be all over them, looking for prior art and obviousness, and rendering them worthless in what I'd bet is a lot of cases.

That's before you even consider counter-claims from IBM, Sun, etc..

The fact that SteveB is waffling about it in "Fortune" instead of just calling the legal department and having them start litigation is proof enough that their threats are hollow, intended to scare people. In light of SCO's miserable failure to do that, you'd think even Ballmer would know better than to try.

I can't help but picture a once-feared playground bully, making threatening noises at the former victims who've now ganged up and have him cornered, in the hope that it'll somehow stop them from taking turns to kick his head in...

I fart in the general direction of your opt-ins.

All browsers should deal with well-formed HTML and CSS with a correct DOCTYPE in a predictable fashion. No opt-ins or other voodoo required to make it happen. That's why it's called a "standard" after all. Chris Wilson can take his "opt-in" flag and shove it up his arse for all I care, because I certainly won't be using it.

As Dale Richards mentioned, the best solution would be to assume you want full standards compliant mode, and if your code is broken *then* drop into a more lenient "tag soup" parser. It doesn't even need to be consistent, "adequate" would be enough.

That way, if you write well formed code, you should be able to rely on consistent cross-browser results. If the browser still mucks it up, then it should be the browser vendor's problem to fix it, not the web developer's.

Whereas, if you write crappy code, then it'll display, but it may not work well across browsers, or work the way you thought it would. That's not Microsoft's problem, or Mozilla's, it's YOUR problem.

The point is, someone who chooses to work to the standards should be rewarded by easy to maintain, predictable, cross-browser compatible pages, but Auntie Mabel won't be punished because she forgot a paragraph closing tag in the recipe for bread pudding that she posted on her homepage.

Opera manages to do this: it's the most standards-compliant browser available, yet it still manages to make some kind of sense out of the burning disasters that Frontpage and (eww) Word vomit into a .HTM file.

The reason I ended up in IT

The Speccy wasn't the computer which introduced me to programming (that honour goes to the Atari 800XL), but it was the first computer which we had in our home, and is where I *learned* to write code.

Couldn't get any of the games to load from my crufty old tape recorder at first, so I spent the first week going through the manual and playing around with the example programs instead.

A fortnight or so after we got it, my dad brought home issue 1 of a weekly magazine called "Input" and my life changed forever! (Outside? Pfft, what's that good for anyway? Must...write...code...)

My old Spectrum still works, though getting it to display anything viewable on the technology-repressed NTSC televisions here in the States is proving difficult.

Games...one word: "Elite"... erm, and "Chaos" (that's two words, you dimwit! Ed.)

Sad.

"Listen up cracker."

Oh, really...you claim not to be a racist, accuse me of being one, and then you roll out a good old fashioned anti-white racial jibe. And you don't even know *what* color my skin is...

I want to address one other thing you said. Other than that, we're done here; I have no respect for the words or opinions of a hypocrite, especially when 32 innocent people are lying in the medical examiners office not 20 miles from here.

"And to be real honest, I bet you would love to take my gun. Keep me in my place, huh."

If not having a firearm to hand makes you feel so downtrodden and insecure, then I have only pity for you.

The local news here in Roanoke is talking about acts of heroism. *Unarmed* people putting themselves in the path of this madman to save others from his bullets, laying their lives down to buy others enough time to jump out of a second story window to safety.

They didn't think "oh, I'd love to help out, but I had to leave my guns at home". No, they did what was right anyway, even though it meant certain death.

That's what I call true American spirit, the sort of guts to stand up for what's right in the face of a much better armed opponent.

As far as I'm concerned, you're welcome to keep your guns, it's your second amendment right after all, they've proved a lifesaver for you in the past, and anyway I really don't believe that gun control actually controls guns.

But you've proven yourself to be a rage-filled individual with a tendency to lash out furiously, without thinking or paying much attention to context, at anyone or anything who disagrees with you.

It seems to me that massacres like this one, or the one before it, or the one that will inevitably follow, are caused by people with exactly those characteristics, plus access to guns, plus whatever it is about this particular society that makes people here more prone to "going postal".