Posts by Andrew 19 publicly visible posts • joined 19 Aug 2008
Sadly the policies are as effective as the muppets running the shop. I got hit with Winerack's challenge 21 a couple of months back.
It should be flattering, considering I'm pushing 30, but it turned into a complete piss take. Normally it's simple, tell them you're over 21 and they don't ask for ID. The idiot on the counter decided that she needed to see ID becuse I might be 21, so I duly produced a my paper driving license (issued before any of this new-fangled plastic stuff). She refused to accept it because it didn't have a photo. (Despite proving that I was over 21). To make things that bit worse, I happened to be there with my Dad, and she told him that he could buy it for me. I pointed out that this would be illegal, as she thought I was underage, so I'd be obliged to report her for it. That proved too much for her to understand, alhtough the woman standing behind me thought it was hillarious (before telling her that she didn't have any ID and walking out).
I figured I'd take it up with their head office, but all they said was the manager's decision is final and refused to look at clarifying the policy.
And people wondered why Labour were so keen on abolishing trial by jury. They're lucky they're being tried in the UK. Seeing as US airlines and passengers might have been targeted, surely they should be getting a fair hearing in front of a military tribunal in the USA, obviously via small dark rooms in Egypt where they can discuss the confession they forgot to sign... [/sarcasm]
Can't help wondering how many of the confiscated items get disposed of carefully at home by highly trained security staff.
Never seen the jacket with the lucozade bottle in the pocket before in my life gov.
Leave the definitions vague enough, and you can hit anybody and anything with it.
I can't see Brown doing anything about this - one tiny undemocratic change of leadership and the puritans are in through the back door (now there's an image).
Looks like we can kiss goodbye to freedom of expression while we're on...
Paris - if you have to ask you don't need to know...
An EULA is like any other pseudo-legal document. Some parts of it will be legally binding, others won't be. For instance, extreme sports companies often have a disclaimer for liability over death and serious injury. In reality it's unenforceable, regardless of whether you've agreed to it.
I'd imagine Psytar's claim will firstly be that Apple is monopolistic (it's arguable - they're preventing you running their software on anything but their hardware, and can set prices accordingly. You could make a similar argument about Itunes). I'm not that clued up on US competition law, but on the surface they'd actually have a reasonable claim there.
Secondly, they'll almost certainly argue that even if they're not anti-competitive, the EULA is unenforceable.
It'd definitely be interesting to head Apple arguing that they're not anti-competitive, given the circumstances...
I've been dual booting XP and Vista for over a year now. Once you get it to stop nagging, there's nothing wrong with Vista on a reasonable spec machine. It's no slower than XP, and actually more stable for me. Not to mention the relief of a GUI that doesn't look like it was made by Fisher Price.
I can see why it's not taken off outside the home market though. We're only just migrating from 2K to XP at work, and the oh so complicated new GUI nearly caused a mutiny. I definitely can't see them chucking around the kind of money to get the hardware up to Vista standards when XP does everything they want.
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