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Comment Re:Doubt its malware.. it's probably just a scam (Score 1) 329

When accounts payable gives the WTF call to the receiving dept and the receiving dept confirms delivery, many companies will assume the bill is legit and pay it.

No, accounts payable don't care that the goods have been delivered even if the supplier can show a valid PO. All they want to know is who authorised the PO so that someone with sufficient authority in that department can authorise the invoice for payment.

Comment Re:Government solution, of course (Score 2, Insightful) 703

The BBC is essentially an arm of the government.

...

It is much like the Obama healthcare "public" option. Publicly funded services will swamp privately funded ones and eventually the private ones will disappear. Yes, Fox News in the UK is threatened in this way by the BBC as insurance companies will be under Obamacare's public option.

There are two fallacies here, one is the public funding leads to government control and the other is the public and private funding can not coexist. The UK experience plainly shows the contrary.

Both the BBC and the NHS are publicly funded but they both have their own constitutions, charters and governing bodies which control them independently of the government of the day. The British might chose to elect a government that decides to override these protections. Similarly the US might chose to elect a government that on the one hand overrides the constitutional protections of the press, or on the other hand one that decides to create some form of public health care.

The idea that the NHS would drive out private practice in health care was the fear of many doctors when the service was set up, but over the sixty years of its existence this simply has not happened. Health care in the UK remains a mixture of private and public provision. There is co-operation between the two sectors.

The position in broadcasting is even stronger. While the BBC started as a state monopoly broadcaster this is no longer the case. Independent commercial radio and television stations have had a long existence in the terrestrial broadcasting and have expanded further with the onset of digital. Ironically Sky a Murdoch company was until the recent onset of Freesat the sole supplier of digital satellite broadcaster for the UK. Companies have set up profitable healthy businesses in this space despite the presence of the BBC.

Comment Re:Up the BBC (Score 1) 703

The BBC acts as a quality control (In both news and programming) so they can't get away with a Fox News style TV show.

We are privileged in the UK to be able to receive Fox News. I guess that is the price we pay for giving BSkyB control of the UK TV satellites. Perhaps if more people watched it support for the BBC would go up.

Comment Re:It isn't free (Score 1) 703

Yes you can un-subscribe, you just stop paying the license fee and if they ask why tell them you no longer have any equipment capable of receiving broadcast television. Easier to claim this if you remove any satellite or terrestrial antennae. You can event continue to use iPlayer with non-l;ive content. What you can not do is opt to pay only BSkyBs fee.

Comment Re:it's not free (Score 1) 703

I can read Murdoch's newspapers free online

You can at the moment but Murdoch senior has announced that he intends to charge for all his online news sites. Murdoch junior realises that this strategy will only be successful if other news sources follow along. This plainly won't happen with the BBC so their unwelcome completion needs to be eliminated by political means.

Comment Re:I believe almost every free software I use has. (Score 1) 241

"NO WARRANTY OR GUARANTEE IS IMPLIED. USE THIS SOFTWARE AT YOUR OWN RISK" or some combination of that. Even my home server says that every time I SSH into it.

There is no reason that a legislature cannot pass a law saying that this disclaimer is contrary to public policy and won't be respected in the courts.

Indeed. In Finland, just about all such disclaimers are totally worthless. In particular consumer rights are defined in law and can only be extended by warranties, never reduced by disclaimers. Some rights can't even be signed away.

and of course because of this all software sold in Finland is free of bugs.

Comment Re:This isn't a Robin Hood story (Score 1) 345

It's the nature of paintings that you have to be there to see them, a photograph of a painting printed on paper or canvas, or, even less, reproduced on a screen is not the same thing at all, no matter how skilful or creative the photographer. That said, if you want to see a reproduction of the one of the NPG paintings you can visit their web site. They are making this level of access (and prints from their photographs) available to anyone. Their complaint is that they don't want other people making this offer.

In a sane world the compromise of licensing medium resolution versions under a CC attribution license would meet both parties needs increasing access to the pictures and traffic and revenue to the NPG.

Comment Re:VeriSign Warranty Plan (Score 1) 208

Have you read this? It only covers people who have a Verisign issued certificate, and only against Verisign's errors, issuing a faulty certificate, incorrectly revoking a certificate or exposing Verisign's private keys. Don't see anywhere, that it would cover a consumer (or even a certificate owner) against a MITM attack like this.

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