Not only have they linked to the bloody DEC website in a news story about how they won’t promote DEC’s appeal — and thus are promoting DEC’s appeal — they’ve now been schooled by Tony Benn, whose cachet has risen even further since yesterday. Spare three minutes and watch Tony absolutely stomp all over Maxine Mawhinney on BBC News.

[via Graham Linehan]

It is good for Microsoft, as it gives them an “in” into both the FOSS community and corporate arenas, and it’s good for Novell, as it helps them solidify their role in the enterprise Linux market. An associated patent agreement, where Novell pay licensing fees Microsoft for specific patents, and Microsoft agree not to litigate on those patents, is just a cherry on the cake, although cynics may suggest that the patent part is the meat of the deal. I’m unconvinced. The patent deal is to keep shareholders happy; the collaboration deal is to keep customers happy. And isn’t that what FOSS operating in a corporate environment is all about?

• File-sharing ‘darknet’ unveiled
  “A “darknet” service that allows users to share music files anonymously on the web has been launched in Sweden”, squeals the first paragraph. The problem is, that the service — Relakks — costs €5, or 49 swedish krona per month. How can something be anonymous when you have to pay for it? However, the critical part is that it isn’t a “darknet”. Wikipedia currently defines darknet as “a private virtual network where users only connect to people they trust”. Relakks is a PPTP VPN service which allows all your Internet traffic to be sent via a PPTP server in Sweden, where you will appear to all intents and purposes for IP lookups. This isn’t a darknet, this is a proxy service. Eeshk.
• Blogs buzz on Dell battery recall
  Stop me if I’m wrong, but of the sites they mention — The Inquirer, The Register, Slashdot, Ars Technica and Engadget — only one, Engadget, is by definition a “blog”. I’m pretty certain Slashdot would refute the blog label, and The Inquirer, Ars and el reg are news outlets. Is the BBC trying to belittle online tech news sites by calling them “blogs”, and in the process attempting to lead naive readers to see the Beeb as one of the only authoritative news sites? Thanks to sporkle for that one
• Smash hit for internet chav guide
  Decapitalizing “Internet” (it’s the Internet, not an internet) aside, this is a story about two girls from Somerset who got 30,000 hits on their YouTube-submitted video called “How to Be a Perfect Chav”. A quick flick onto YouTube reveals videos about a cat crapping into a toilet (~ 646,000 hits), a dog humping a cat (~ 260,000 hits), someone making pancakes (~ 299,000 hits), and Gizmodo showing off the new Sony Mylo (~ 820,000 hits). Really, 30,000 hits is a drop in the bucket – many popular YouTube submissions have millions of hits, some even only a week or two after being uploaded.

Come on, BBC, do yer job.

Let me rephrase, as that comes across as I don’t like or respect the guy. He made Clerks and Mallrats, two movies I love. He’s a maverick independent film-maker. He’s best buds with Tarantino and Rodriguez. He talks openly yet eloquently about his productions, his life and his friendships. But here’s the rub: he made Jersey Girl and he consistently whores his wares across all his company’s websites in such a fashion to make said sites almost unreadable. Maybe I’m just jealous — teeth-grindingly, shaking-fist-wildly-in-the-air jealous — but for a guy with such clue, he seems to fumble the ball more often than most in recent years. This galls me, because as I said, it’s not that I don’t like or don’t respect him.

I’m struggling to find a point here. Perhaps I just need to get these two minor points off my chest: people will buy Kevin’s stuff regardless of how heavily or lightly it’s pimped on his websites, and Jersey Girl really, really licked balls. Seeing another Smith production making its way towards the cinema merely returns those emotions to mind and gives me the chills that the Jersey Girl Effect could happen again: great cast + shit script = shit movie.

viewaskew.com reports that Kevin will be in the UK in August to promote Clerks 2′s likely end-of-August release date over here, and with the first leg of the trip being in Edinburgh, that seems to co-incide with the Fringe (or more specifically the Edinburgh International Film Festival). I may just have to wander across and ask these very questions in a less vulgar manner. “Oi, Smith, you’re a dick: explain” may not be received too well in person!

The website says the games shipped with the console may change due to availability.

That’s because the games, never mind the console, aren’t even available for public sale yet. The BBC, yet again, disappoints me in their video games coverage. Why don’t they leave it to professionals such as EDGE or 1UP.com?

Bollocks, utter bollocks.

However, an interesting comment in the article is:

BT said in its first three weeks its new system, which bars access to particular sites, registered nearly 250,000 attempts to view web pages containing images of child pornography.

[...]

A BT spokesman added: “It could be that one dedicated pervert is making hundreds of attempts to get on websites each day.”

I never thought I’d hear the phrase “one dedicated pervert” anywhere, much less in a BBC News article!