So they're pretty much saying that Thunderbird is feature-complete, and are only going to deal with bugfixes/stability issues? Fantastic! Works for me.

Don't forget, it has the ability to support addons, so anything not in the core can be added by third parties if you really want it. Otherwise, just leave it alone, it sends and receives email which is what an email client should do...

The main problem I have with Firefox is when you close it, then decide maybe 30 seconds later you need it open again (or click a link, or whatever) and it pops up a stupid 'Firefox is already running but not responding' box. Why does it take such an insane amount of time to cleanly exit? If it's compressing databases or defragging its history or reticulating splines then why on earth not do that during the hours of idle time I typically have the browser open during the day, rather than upon shutdown? And why do it every single time it closes? Modern apps shouldn't take 30+ seconds to close and go away... especially something as frequently spawned as a web browser...

Reminds me of CRobots...

Anyone here ever play CRobots? This story triggered recall of my college days (late '90's) where our computer science class competed to come up with the best algorithm for a simulated autonomous robot that could move, scan a certain direction, and fire a projectile. I think the later versions also added IFF and communication between friendly robots. Coding an autonomous swarm would be pretty fun... :)

Into the black hole it goes!

Make the cheques payable to "Hellenic Republic".

No such thing as a 'one minute fix'

@Pete2 as it should be, unless you're running a shop full of cowboys. There's no such thing as a 'one minute fix' when supporting production systems and environments. Whatever you change will always impact other teams, and because they're (presumably) more knowledgeable in their sphere that you are, they need to be allowed to provide an impact. In most cases that impact will be 'no problem' but when it is a problem, isn't it better to have caught it now, rather than suddenly finding your backups are failing because extending that tablespace meant it no longer fits onto one tape, or there was a staging area that also needed expanding that you weren't aware of...

Keep them drawn all the time?

Am I the only person to have detected a small problem in their plan? Don't most people close their curtains at night and open them again during the day? So the only time these solar-panel curtains will be exposed to the sun is at... night.

LOL

'LOL I've had a Polcol' would have made a much more fetching title. N00bs.

@sexoffender.gov.uk

Surely it would be more workable to just ban them from registering any other email addresses, and issue them a mandatory @sexoffender.gov.uk address? Such sites could then just ban sign ups from such a domain. :)

Backwards?

So... rather than fix whatever component browsers are using to render and execute this buggy Flash, the solution put forward appears instead to be to fix all the authoring tools so they can no longer produce it? Am I missing something, or is this logic sorta... backwards? Can't they just fix the Flash renderer so it doesn't load arbitary URLs?

No cheaper

I dropped into a Best Buy in the States a few weeks ago. For a format that's supposedly much cheaper to produce and that's desperately struggling for market share, it seemed like madness that there was no appreciable difference in price between HD DVD's and Blu-rays. The reason they sold so few is because they're no cheaper! Typical corporations - putting short term profit ahead of a longer term strategy of building market share by offering cheaper discs. It's cost them the war.

@Pum

A more accurate analogy would be plod getting a warrant and raiding your home, and not finding anything incriminating except an empty bedroom. Then demanding you tell him the magic word that would make that invisible stash of lovely incriminating evidence stored there appear. And locking you up for two years for failing to do so, because you must be lieing when you claim "There's nothing in there! It's just an empty room, honest!" How on earth are you supposed to prove you don't know something?

Title

The $5 million attorneys fees should be handed over as pre-paid call cards too. Seems only fair. Perhaps that way, the lawyers might push harder for an actual cash settlement next time...

1MW

Call me when they get it up to 1MW... I'll be waiting in my Cobra Mk III...

Core dumps

So the court has determined that TorrentSpy need to keep a record of transient data passing through the servers memory? Fine. Configure the servers to dump their entire core every second. Presumably then TorrentSpy will meet the terms of discovery by delivering a few hundred terabytes per day of binary core dumps to the plaintiff. It's their problem then, extracting the weblogs from it... }:>

Prices

What's the betting the prices will turn out to be $1000/£1000/€1000... :/