DUI is apparently like child pornography...

...simply repeating the "for the sake of the children" mantra makes almost any political action publicly acceptable.

In fact, most States that operate DUI sobriety checkpoints legally require that these checkpoints "must be publicly advertised prior to the date of the roadblock and clearly visible to approaching drivers". Courts in California (one of the prime markets for these "drink-driving apps") have established that "with respect to advertising, law enforcement websites, local newspapers, or news stations shall report the upcoming checkpoint about a week prior to its operation".

The point of the political pressure on Apple is that because these checkpoints are widely used as fishing expeditions for non-DUI offences, the "publicly advertised" requirement is inconvenient for law enforcement organisations and political groups with particular enforcement agendas (e.g. illegal immigration). Painting this as "anti-drink-driving" is simply an effective way to avoid public criticism.

It was just such an improvement

It's because XP was the first version of MS WIndows that was genuinely usable in a professional networked computing environment. (No, I refuse to give that honour to NT4, given its terrible hardware support and general unfriendliness.)

Sure, today XP seems awfully outdated next to modern Ubuntu or RedHat installations. But to be fair, it held up much better in comparison ten years ago. And it was just such a relief to those of us forced to use Windows...

"Set of weals"?

Floggings will continue until market share improves...

No... we don't TRUST Microsoft

Those of us who have been in the industry as long as Microsoft know full well that there is not a single product or service that Microsoft has acquired which they haven't crippled, gutted, or turned to absolute crap within 18 months. Not one! And while those of us who have (more or less) happily used Skype for years don't know exactly _what_ Microsoft will do to it, we know that it won't be good for anyone but (possibly) Microsoft stockholders.

@3rd party clients

Do you REALLY need to ask that question? How long have you been around the industry?

Innovate?

Regardless of whether Elop is a MS stooge or not, innovation is explicitly NOT part of his roadmap for the company. His charter is increasing market share and revenue, and he'll gut R&D if that's what it takes. It's hard to guess where Nokia will be in four years, but we can be pretty sure that the technical innovation that was once the hallmark of the company is now gone forever.

Re: Err...

You're missing the point.

This isn't about trying to hide your kiddy pr0n, it's about trying to avoid getting busted and having your life permanently ruined for something you didn't do. My point is that if you don't have the ability and inclination to secure your wifi extremely well, it might be safer to create plausible deniability.

Ah, so you MUST be guilty!

No reason to look for anyone else who might have used your wifi, as you've assured us that it's absolutely impregnable. Lock him up!

Seriously, though, this is a situation where "pretty good" security might very well be more dangerous than none. If you're not using WPA2 and "a password that makes people cry if you ask them to read it to you", you're probably at less risk (from this threat) if you just leave your wifi open.

GPLv2 contains some protections against software patents...

...namely a prohibition on adding patent royalties, and an implicit patent grant. But to make those protections explicit (for Linux, at least), the agreement also stipulates coverage by the OIN licence, e.g. http://www.openinventionnetwork.com/pat_license_agreement.php

Really?

Can you cite a SINGLE objective online article on the subject from one of the big news organisations -- the Beeb, say? One that, for instance, doesn't feel obliged to mention the tsunami-caused death toll in the same breath as the situation at Fukushima? I've pretty well given up on seeing a single piece of coverage in the mainstream media that isn't egregiously mis-reported.

Not at all

Nor is it true that "a little knowledge is a dangerous thing" (the other common misquotation). The very nature of the scientific endeavour is to make as much sense as possible out of incomplete and often apparently contradictory information.

In fact, Alexander Pope accurately noted that "A little _learning_ is a dangerous thing". This is a far different problem, and one that more accurately applies to the situation at hand.

[Interestingly, the same poem contains the better-known quotations “To err is human, to forgive divine” and “Fools rush in where angels fear to tread”. I leave the application of those to the scaremongering situation as an exercise to the interested reader...]

Way ahead of you...

This sort of suspicionless checkpoint is illegal in 10 states, is banned for policy reasons ("the risks outweigh the benefits") in two others, and is under legal challenge in many of the remaining 38.

Although the US Supreme Court carved out a narrow 4th Amendment exception for drink-driving checkpoints, in their decision they also noted that "the findings of the trial court, based on an extensive record and affirmed by the Michigan Court of Appeals, indicate that the net effect of sobriety checkpoints on traffic safety is infinitesimal and possibly negative."

The media attention generated by the senators is simply a volley in the ongoing legal battle to expand the power of police to conduct warrantless searches. This really has a lot more in common with the warrantless wiretapping controversy than with public safety.

Yep!

At various times I've received SecurID tokens from four different Fortune 500 firms, and every one of them has used the last four digits of the serial number as the PIN.

Drink-driving is only the justification

States that make heavy use of these checkpoints justify them on the (publicly palatable) basis of drink-driving enforcement. But law enforcement organisations like them because it gives them an opportunity to examine vehicles and their drivers and passengers for many, many other potential offences unrelated to drink-driving or public safety. In some states, for instance, these checkpoints are used more for immigration enforcement than for sobriety checks. At a checkpoint in one western state, for instance, I was ordered out of the car and cross-examined for 15 minutes for no other excuse than having a British accent. No, given the particular senators involved, I don't think that their opposition to these apps honestly has much to do with drink-driving...

Well, sorta...

Fundamentally they're social apps for sharing information about traffic congestion with other users. You can spot the checkpoints on Google Maps too, but Trapster and PhantomALERT provide a more convenient and reliable interface for organising and displaying that information.

And why not?

Monbiot is hardly the only "green power" proponent to weigh in in favour of nuclear energy. Methinks the "natural" enemies of modern nuclear power sources are those entities with a vested interest in fossil fuels, not people looking for clean energy.

Florian Müller is a lobbyist

And as such he is being PAID to advocate particular opinions. It's less important to discover WHO is paying him (he refuses to disclose that) than to simply STOP treating him as a news source! Regardless of whether you agree with his opinions or not, by definition he is NOT objective.

WHO is downvoting these thumbs-up to Lewis?

Are there that many El Reg readers with personal grudges against Lewis? It's hard to believe that so many IT "professionals" really feel that rational thought is a Bad Thing...

Wrong icon

De-mail's failure to provide end-to-end encryption calls for either the FAIL icon or the Black Helicopter, take your pick...

But Opera has proxy servers too!

And when Opera Turbo is enabled, the browser sends the request to the Opera servers, thus effectively bypassing the OSX local proxy used for parental controls. (Trust me, Opera Turbo has come in handy when working at certain customer sites!)

Just use your existing dynamo

I'm sure that the Nokia power conversion module will happily work with the output from your conventional high-efficiency hub dynamo. I'm more concerned about weatherproofing the phone!