They're too busy harassing me.

The reason they don't have enough people to answer the phones is because they're busy ringing my answering machine while I'm at work every day an pestering me for payment -- despite the fact they've never sent me a Direct Debit form and I send them cheques fairly regularly.

When the company changed hands a few years ago they changed from a (relatively) efficient and reasonable loan provider to a third-rate debt collection agency.

The reason they are suing Linden:

They are suing "Linden Labs" because the T&Cs of Second Life state that anything you produce "in world" is your own and that you own the copyright -- they also state that they comply with the DMCA in this regard.

This is akin to paying a web hosting company to host you digital photography, protect your copyright, and allow you to sell access to it -- then finding that another customer managed to copy your photographs and is hosting them with the same company but giving them away. Since you are paying for copyright protection and hosting you ask the company to take down the infringing site, and they don't.

You may not like Second Life, or even see its appeal, but this has very little to do with the actual "game" and is about contracts, the DMCA, and copyright.

I'm always interested to know what the people who supposedly have "Real Lives" actually do that makes them so much more special than those who like to use Second Life -- do you all go straight from work to the gym, then do some charity work, then teach your kids quantum theory, make love to your beautiful partners then make some more notes in the margin of King Leah as you drift off to sleep?

I think you just watch TV with your other half, go on the odd bike ride, have a few drinks with mates in the pub and feel smug because you're not having conversations about politics, philosophy or art with people from across the world while playing around in a virtual environment.

Personally, I find people in Second Life more open minded and less judgemental than in real life -- meaning conversation is much more wide ranging and stimulating than most in real life. It also gives one the opportunity to communicate people with diverse social and political backgrounds from all over the world.

He should not have apologised.

And as for those accusing him of "dangerous driving" I think you mean "driving without due consideration" or some such law -- dangerous driving would be if he drove at them. While beeping the horn may cause them to fall off, it would be their own fault for riding without due care and attention.

I think what you are missing Alan Wray, Andy 79, et al is that these pricks were, apparently, deliberately taking up the whole carriageway thus making it hard for people to pass them -- while this may be perfectly legal it is twattish behaviour and typical of many cyclists "exercising their rights". Yes, you are legally allowed on the road and, yes, cars should give you as much room as they would another car but, in the real world, you're just being tedious, stubborn, pricks and causing other people annoyance because you can.

I wonder who sold us all in the first place?

Which government decided to dump the nation's "war chest" and get us all into debt?

I just wish the thieving waste of space would tell us who owns us now so I can learn the language if I need to.

Is it the same otherwise?

Is the sound quality still as good as it used to be(I hear good reports generally)?

Do you still need to install iTunes to use it at all?

Does it support any more Codecs?

Bollocks to the camera, is it a less restricted personal audio device?

I wish there was a choice.

If someone got their arses into gear at BT, or one of the other ADSL providers and put something other than 50 year oll bell wire between the exchange and my home I would't be with the incompetent fucks at Virgin.

Over 24 hours of complete network outage is just pathetic.

RE: Remarkable Unanimity

I think it must be a reflection of the open and shut nature of the case -- even us IP-sceptic commentards can see what Disney is doing is wrong.

RE: Move along, nothing to see here.

The flaws in OSX aren't exploited _at the moment_ because it's still largely used by trendy types who like their computers dumbed down -- once a few more real people start using them the flaws will be exploited quick enough.

@WTF

Are you suggesting that SMB is not used inside networks, or that no unauthorised code is ever executed within a corporate firewall?

On enterprise networks the only thing stopping "the bad guys" from taking over your servers is layered security -- that includes preventing the majority of user accounts having any kind of Admin access, meaning that any malware they execute can't "escape" their machine. If there's a hole in your server that allows non-admin accounts to execute arbitrary code on it you're in trouble -- some dope can try and run the latest freeware game doing the rounds and take down all your file and print servers.

To the "EU sceptic" haters:

I take it I'm a Daily Frail reading member of Combat 18 when I say this is typical Euro bullshit? I take it that "EU will make it mandatory" does not mean they dictate our laws?

If the UK is a country in its own right this does not concern us.

Doesn't surprise me.

I was about to comment something along the lines of "bollocks, if you read the page properly it's rarely a con" -- then I realised that, on a number of occasions, I have found that the product I want to order is more than the "headline" price and/or that "free 'First Class' shipping" turns into "free shipping if you'll wait a month". I then realised that my initial reaction was because I've just started to assume that there will be at least £5 added somewhere along the line when I'm shopping online and don't pay much attention to the exact price until the payment page.

@David W.

DoS attacks? Disgruntled employees?

Tough shit.

I hope Apple buyers love the jail their few hundred quid and expensive tariff bought them.

Meanwhile, the rest of us will continue to use our phones as we wish on cheaper contracts.

But they're are loads in the Quatermaster's stores.

Seriously, though, I swear I have seen rats approaching that size in the North of England.

@Richard Scratcher: So what do Yorkshire Terriers, which can be rat-sized, hunt in the wild?

Title?

RE: iPod

What on earth were you doing allowing USB mass storage devices _and_ autorun on an "Instrument" PC if it would likely cause problems?

@Dennis: Not sure about the rent or library fines, but Parking fines have an expiry date -- it was explained in the previous article regarding this fuckup.

RE: Intel love?

It's not the Linux community's fault that you can't be bothered to get two monitors working. I've had a dual monitor setup for some time now and can choose between one giant desktop, two separate ones (with separate task bars), or a graphical desktop and a console/ICEWM desktop -- far more choice and flexibility than Windows will allow.

Contract continuity.

Only a guess, but I'm expecting that existing contracts would be honoured but once renewal time comes up we'll (I'm with T too) have to start on a new contract and price plan.

@SimonC

I couldn't agree more. But, unfortunately, politicians still love to have young people kill and maim each other to further their agenda.

Battery life will decide it for me.

After moving to an E71 from power-hungry HTC WinMo devices I don't want to go back to charging every day.

I've been waiting for a Nokia tablet with a qwerty keyboard and Linux since the N800 came out.

Why not just use more RAM?

I don't know how Windows behaves but on my system almost all the RAM not being used by an application is used as disk cache anyhow -- how is this an improvement over having more RAM?

Looks like she was trying to be helpful.

While those who constantly use all caps and regularly send things in silly colours do annoy me -- the sentence quoted looks like it is important and helpful so, though her highlighting may have been a little extreme, it was done to help. Perhaps she should have sent it out in 9pt grey and told people to "read their fucking email" when their expenses weren't paid?

Though, admittedly, if I were her boss I'd have a quiet word about netiquette.

Still don't see waht all the fuss is about.

I've never understood this obsession with bells and whistles interfaces -- the first thing I do with Windows, KDE or Gnome is turn off any fancy transparency and wobbly effects. I also get rid of any additional task bars that take up real estate. Some things are also much easier and faster using the command line -- that is unless you're too stupid or too lazy to use it (that goes for Windows and Mac users too).

I agree with those who say what Linux needs is to work out of the box on more machines and with more devices. When I talk to people about using Linux that's all they're generally worried about and those that do get it working "out of the box" generally get to like it.

@deegee: You may not use the command line on Windows but enough of us admins do that MS have brought out a new command-line language for us to use called PowerShell. Scripts and the command line are the most efficient way to carry out tasks and Microsoft admits this too.

But they're not open source programmers any more...

...at least as far as file system routimes and anything programatically related. Anyone who has seen the MS code now faces the possibility of inadvertantly copying it.

I want one!

But I bet it costs the earth and a large amount of the moon. Would be good to have something less phone-like than Symbian that's not made by Microsoft though.

@Pete 2 -- Reading, and commenting on, El Reg while waiting for your mates in a pub isn't possible on a Desktop PC -- and taking a laptop with you everywhere is just a little annoying.

EH?

"It sees the EFiX as broadening Apple's market, helping sales of Leopard into the built-it-yourself gaming sector, hitherto almost exclusively the domain of Windows."

No, IANAG*, but I don't see why anyone seriously into games would bother with anything but Windows? Surely it would be an endless cycle of rebooting after every game to check your email/surf the web/whatever you do on a Mac?

*I Am Not A Gamer

Why the hell would you do this?

I know it's only a few nore lines of code but why? I know some Cockneys and they seem to understand the words their slang replaces.

I'm all for fun, and this would be fun for someone like google to do (I'v not checked) but using it on a cash machine is like putting a comedy face on your safe dial -- annoying and pointless, unless the safe is impenetrable. Spend your time on making them work and getting rid of bugs, you stupid twats!

The Wiki article looks familiar.

I'm sure I read a very similar explanation of these tests as a child of around 12 or 13. I've also been subject to this test but, if I recall correctly, both were either broken off early or ended up in a discussion of how the test was supposed to work (which is probably when I got to read about it).

Anyhow, either way these tests are not "secret" in any way and never were.

@Jim Morrow

Do you know more about this than is in the article?

The phrase "...because the government of the day never told the European Commission." reads to me as "the government have to tell the European commission about laws passed in certain areas or they don't stand".

I'm actually intrigued how it can be read any other way? What does that phrase mean?

Oh, and lumping together BNP supporters with those of us who believe in a state with complete control over its own laws just sounds ignorant and as knee jerk as the Daily Fail readers you (an I, actually) hate so much.

@Tom Chiverton

That's not what I meant. I was asking whether the 64bit virtualisation features worked if you used a 32bit operating system on a 64bit system. I thought I read in the documentation for VirtualBox or some such that a 64bit OS was required to take advantage of them -- but I suppose that may be just the one product.

As for the memory support -- having chosen 64bit hardware in case I ever need the memory it then follows that I will run a 64bit OS. Yes I could run 32bit, but why? What if I want the machine to see all my RAM?

Then to 64bit apps. Yes, I have 32bit libs installed but, occasionally, things stop working or have problems -- usually not much drama but just having the one set of libs would make things easier.

Why buy 64bit hardware, at more expense, without using an OS that can take advantage of it's memory and, following on from that? If I'm using a 64bit OS, why would I want 32bit libs installed?

Has anyone told Linus?

Or is he still under the illusion that Microsoft play fair?

RE: Here's a thought...

Exactly what I was thinking. This "Trade Association" or whatever the hell it is should no longer exist, everyone whose details were leaked should be compensated and those who are responsible for the data loss should be in prison.

There is absolutely no excuse for this and there is no reason these criminals should have been given any data in the first place.

What's so special about the BNP?

Do different laws apply when the BNP are the victims? Do normal people not matter as much as BNP members? These people are facing criminal charges yet every week some civil servant or other moron gives away huge amounts of information on the general population and gets away with it.

RE: Is there a need for a 64 bit browser?

If you're running a 64bit operating system then you should use 64bit applications -- 32 bit ones may not run as fast or may have problems. Similarly, if you have 64bit hardware you ought to use a 64bit OS or, potentially, you're not running things as fast as you could and you can't address all your memory correctly -- 64bit chips have some virtualisation functions built in too, not sure if these work under 32 bit OSs.

Surprising.

I'd be too embarrassed to go to a charity shop and admit to them that I bought some Dan Brown. I'm even more embarrassed that I bought 3 of his books just to confirm to myself that he was as shite as I thought.

No, this is not literary snobbery -- his work really is shit. He has very little command of what I assume is his native language and his work is reminiscent of the types of story which would earn a 'D' when handed in to my GCSE English teacher.

@alyn

You're forgetting the US and their insistence that someone who did the digital equivalent of walking into a house through and unlocked door get serious jail time as a terrorist -- they're also the ones who find it fun to let their prisoners enjoy something called "waterboarding". Or the UK where you can be jailed for picking mushrooms out of the ground and making tea with them -- they also like to jail you here if you're forgotten your password.

How is this different to the UK.

Surely anyone going against the UK's prohibition laws would expect to go to prison where, I'm sure, much violence occurs.

Taking issue with this seems very much like the toaster calling the kettle brushed aluminium.