According to this Windows Defender was actually originally written in VB, and rewritten to use .net ( C++/CLI ) . That seems like actually the opposite of what you're saying, or do you mean it was rewritten again after that to use straight C++ ?

That's probably true. But we've seen several court verdicts (Piratebay, Limewire etc) that show the courts consider it's the intent that's important, which would give Google a much better chance in court than Isohunt and the like have.

Isohunt, TPB, Limewire run their business on providing access to copyrighted content, take that away and 99% of their users aren't interested anymore. Google providing access to torrent links is more like an accidental side-effect, and 99% of their users wouldn't even notice if all torrent links were removed from Google tomorrow. Perhaps Slashbots think that shouldn't make a difference, but the courts seem to think it does.

"Defective By design" is meant to refer solely to products intentionally crippled by DRM.

I think it's an effective slogan for that, and its meaning will be trivialized by calling what are intended to be positive changes or features "defective by design". Don't do the *AA's work for them!

Here in Thailand, a similar system works by phone users purchasing top-up cards at 7-11's, supermarkets or general stores. Once you've got the credit on your phone, you can make a payment by sending a specially formatted text message. The stores selling top-up cards are everywhere, and no credit cards or bank accounts are needed.

I reckon it should be this one - http://blogs.msdn.com/ie/archive/2009/08/10/engineering-pov-ie6.aspx

Not true AFAIK - although I can't find the exact reference offhand and haven't checked the code, I remember reading that this speed test is written to become gradually more demanding over time to keep pace with computers getting faster.

I don't think so. Google Analytics tracks many visitors to the same site, whereas this seems to be aimed at preventing tracking of the same visitor to many sites. In the MS blog it says it'll prevent the same cookie tracking you across more than 10 sites. I think the implication is that it's bad for Adsense, Doubleclick and the like as they can no longer track you through third-party cookies on dozens of sites and build up an advertising profile of you that way.

Good for privacy of course, but as so much of the web is ad-funded is this really going to be good for the web as a whole ? I guess we'll have to wait and see on that one.

I think it's interesting also that this is happening as Microsoft tries to become a bigger player in the internet ad business. They could use IE feature to their advantage here, as it'd be fairly easy for them to implement a scheme where all third-party cookies are limited, except for those of Microsoft and its "selected partners". Would we put it past them to do something along those lines ?