What's this? A sudden outbreak of common sense? That'll be fixed soon, and then everyone can go back to their soap operas and reality TV shows, safe from all this thinking nonsense.

Or, hopefully, this invasion of privacy and waste of money might be halted before it gets any worse!

... eh, what am I saying? The vast majority of this country just does not care, so long as they have their cheap booze and reality TV shows. Cynical, moi? Just a little...

wow... one of the most blatant trolls I've seen in a while.

in 3...

2...

1...

The Daily Fail.

I only ever read that thing when I want to be extremely p!ssed off, partly because of the epic amount of stupid within.

"What, you don't want to have to identify yourself? You want privacy? Anonymity? Bah, don't kid yourself."

-Anonymous Coward

Do I sense some irony here?

"Vendors can't be trusted to give a reliable precis of a product's capabilities"

"For every supplier with a good product or service, there is at least one more out to make a quick buck before customers find out"

Surely you can't be serious!

...

Either he's a bit slow on the uptake, or he's taking the p!ss.

</obligatory>

Try VLC (VideoLan Client). Plays pretty much anything you can throw at it.

Even DVDs with libdvdcss2. Available on pretty much every OS out there.

Linux, Mac OS, Windows

www.videolan.org

3.2GHz as stock. I wonder what you could overclock it to?

Muhaha!

Maybe, but at least they're visibly doing something about it.

Which has got to count for something.

I suppose that taking the servers offline mitigates the potential damage due to people downloading, possibly altered for malicious purposes, pieces of software.

I, for one, wouldn't like to be downloading an update to ssh that included a backdoor. Especially not if this backdoor gained any potential attacker a root shell. With the download servers offline, they can work of fixing whatever damage may have been caused without further risking end users.

...how long until the:

'you're all insignificant pieces of shit, crawl off into a corner and die' people got here.

And isn't it interesting that all of them seem to be posting anonymously (or under a screen name).

Terra, I was going to post a response, but then I realised something. You don't care, because I'm nobody.

(Hang on, if I'm nobody. And nobody's perfect. Does that mean I'm perfect?)

Have a nice day, go on. I dare ya.

Is amanfrommars starting to make sense or should I just be upping my medication again?

On a more serious note, DRM is a waste of time and money. Both for the media barons, and the end users.

I don't buy as many DVDs as I used to, because the 'anti-copying' measures they pack on the things stop me from watching them.

(Just because I want to watch them on a *nix box.)

But it's alright, because I can find software that breaks these anti-copying measures so that I can enjoy the film. DRM only harms the law abiding folk, it merely inconveniences everyone else for a short while.

I am a Linux user. I don't support locking people out for making decisions about what tool they want to use.

And I know that it is unlikely that Linux et al will ever get an iPlayer client.

Is this a big loss?

I very rarely watch TV now, and the only stuff I watch can quite easily be found on t'internet.

(Actually, I only watch TV for CSI and a few interesting documentaries.(In other words, never the Beeb. :p ))

Most of the stuff that is pumped out by the BBC is complete and utter dross. ('Panorama' and 'Doctor Who' for want of examples *dons asbestos longjohns*)

...you called it 'semi-coherent computing'. I can barely understand you.

Or is this the effect of having Mr. Jameson in the 'studio'?

sec0nd. I'm a GNU/Linux user, too!

Now that's over...

I think it's halarious that a development kit is detected as malware. Well, if the AV software was being entirely truthful, wouldn't it detect all the DRM crap as malware?

I am going to avoid Vista as long as possible, and if I'm gonna use windows I'll only use XP.

And who, in their right mind, would buy Vista?

want one...

OMG! They're running Solaris8 on a Gamecube.

T3H L337!!!!!!111one!11eleventyone!

Hmmm... I wonder if I can run *nix on my Amstrad PPC640?

640KB RAM, 16bit 8088 CPU (Yeah, I know I'm lucky.), crappy 9inch LCD monitor.

Now that was one helluva brick^w laptop.

My first computer was an Amstrad 464plus, 8bit glory... in a 16bit world.

PPC640 (16-bit) made ~1987. 464plus (8-bit) made 1990.

I wish it still worked... *sniff*

". If you can use only Linux on your desktop and not rip out your hair on a near daily basis (and still be in contact with the outside world).. that's just lovely and I'd love to meet you to learn the secrets. I tried it for 3 years and finally went back to windows."

I use only Linux on my desktop, I'm still in contact with the outside world (well, the parts of the outside world that are worth talking to).

I don't tear my hair out on a daily basis. It's actually easier and quicker for me.

Now, back on topic (as it were), the number of patches is nothing.

The most important think about a software patch is that the ones that fix the most dangerous problems are the patches send out the fastest.

Would you rather have that a patch to fix a potential exploit that allows a malicious cracker to take over your PC be kept waiting until a patch that solved a slightly mis-coloured font in a rarely used app. was released?

Thought not.

Anonymous: "Wonder what the response for Germany's MEP will be?"

"Nein! Dummer Kopf. Erhalten Sie einen f*cking Anhaltspunkt!"

Heh heh heh...

You make it, and they will come.

Kudos to the first person to run Linux on an iPhone.

I got one of these. At first I thought it was a blank email.

then I saw the attachment. ecard.exe. Oh come on...

do they really think I'm gonna be stupid enough to open it?

Obviously yes.

But there must be enough people stupid enough to run the thing to make it a worthwhile activity for the virus/malware/etc. people, otherwise they wouldn't do it.

"There are two things that are infinite, the universe, and human stupidity. And I'm not so sure of the former."

- Einstein.

No, don't get rid of the [shift] key.

I need that for my punctuation, get rid of the [Caps Lock] Key.

Who uses that thing anyway?

Back OT. I don't text that much (if at all.) anyway, so *maybe* this won't really bother me. (But then again...)

...how quickly these would get stolen if they were deployed?

I mean, they're not exactly going to be quick, so what (apart from the guy with the M16) is stopping you from picking up one of these toys^H^H^H^H devices and having a tinker?

Could you imagine the devastation if captured WiFi robots were rigged with explosives? (Yeah, I know they're not very big, so they're not likely to have much room (if any) inside. But these people are very inventive when it comes to IEDs*.)

* Improvised Explosive Devices

"travel the world in large, commercial plans"

While this may be nice, surely they've considered the fact that it's much easier to travel by plane, rather than by commercial plan.

Plans will only get you so far...

:D

The other £7.8m is for lining the pockets of everybody involved, IMNSHO.

I mean, come on. This country used to be great for it's engineering skills, what happened?

Oh, right...

the greedy unions, the corrupt governments selling them out, outsourcing, school not teaching proper skills (instead, concentrating on this 'committee' and 'teamwork' BS.)

Why built brilliant equipment when you can buy a piece of equipment from the yanks, at five times the original price.

GET WITH THE PROGRAM! Start by firing all those damned management staff, and hiring people who have a clue.

My tuppence, for your perusal. If I have offended anyone, stop being a soft pillock, and grow up.

"but am I right in assuming you can bung two, three or more sachets into the same glass of water to increase the strength?"

Yeah, so It'll kill you two or three times quicker. Evolution at work.

If you're stupid enough to try and drink that junk you deserve to die, just to keep the gene pool clean.

of Paris being taken back to jail.

Crying her eyes out, bottom lip stuck out.

Now that was funny.

Pompous, self-obsessed attention whore.

When the polish rubs off, all you're left with is a whining, whinging spoilt three-year-old brat.

Money doesn't mean you can get away with anything. They should learn that. And more judges should be fairer, and use more common sense.

Who *really* gives a damn about these people, anyway?

http://damn_yankees.theregister.co.uk ?

</trying to be funny>

Leave it as .co.uk

It means more exercise for my fingers, and it puts them yanks in their place.

*grumble* damn .com *moan* damn yankees *whinge* think they own the world *mumble* we'll show 'em *grumble*

We should be proud of being British, despite what Blair, Brown & Co. are trying to do.

== James Penketh ==

*Born in Britain. Will die in Britain, unless someone decides that Britain's gonna take the US back, then I'll be on the front lines.* :D

Our school has some software doing roughly the same thing

RM Tutor 3.

A class teacher can watch every screen simultaneously, or go remote desktop on the PC and close all the windows. Or shut the PC down remotely, log students off remotely, etc.

You can't boot from a disc, because they've passworded the BIOS (how long until I break it?) and you can't run any applications other than those in the start menu.

Attempting to do so says (badly paraphrased) "This application has been blocked by a software restriction policy. Please contact your system administrator"

And you can't change any settings (supposedly. On some of the PCs they've left the NVIDIA settings panel in the desktop context menu, so I've upped all the PCs to maximum resolution.) and you can't get to the command prompt.

Well, except on the NT4 PCs up in tech...

(After that incident they've kept a close eye on me.)

Oh, and I forgot to mention the web-sense blocking piece of rubbish. Blocks... well... everything. Used to block Microsoft.com under category Marijuana. Well, it would explain a lot.

Oh, and also the anti-virus, set up to scan all the network packets passing through on startup, pulling network speed to roughly 15Kbps, so logins take five minutes on a good day.

D Wayte: "Maybe nobody writes viruses for the Mac/Linux because they require so much effort???"

And quite probably because very few (read 'almost none') of the few Linux viruses that have been written can spread beyond what the infected user can write to (e.g. Their own files, network shares, etc...)

Such is the design of UNIX(tm) (which is what Linux, etc... is based on.).

And just upgraded to 2.0.0.4

but it won't worry me much. There is very little a virus can do on a *true* multi-user system that protects all the system from numpty users (e.g. me.)

And if it all starts getting too much, I'll just switch to lynx.

*Looks over desktop*

Wireshark

Look@Host

Look@Lan

Quake. (It's a network testing tool. Really.)

*looks over desk*

Knoppix CD, containing utilities for recovering deleted files.

Oh boy, am I glad I don't live in Germany. I would *so* get arrested and locked up. :D

How much of a prat are you going to look with that thing hanging off the side of your head?

Or is there a new law that says 'if Apple makes it, no matter how stupid it looks, it is instantly cool'?

Why does everyone have to rely so heavily on that lousy ActiveX rubbish?

How many times has something like this cropped up, and all because of ActiveX?

You have to remember that the post office used to lead the world in communications technology.

They introduced telegraph services in Britain in1870, and phone services in 1912. They used to be responsible for Britain's entire phone network until 1981, when BT was demerged from the Post Office.

And, didn't they also discover RADAR, while trying a shortwave radio thingamajig. (Technical term.)

This'll show those who were doubting him in the last episode.

"Ladies and Gentlemen, the five-fifteen from *mumble* is canceled due to the wrong type of leaves on the line. We apologise for any inconvenience this may cause."

"NYAAAAAAAAGH!!!!" *KA-BOOM*

...how many of them 40million (or however many) copies of Vista sold were OEM, and promptly wiped and had XP installed over them?