Opinion Piece

I was googling (as a verb) and came across a rather peculiar message at the bottom of Google's search results:

In response to a complaint we received under the US Digital Millennium Copyright Act, we have removed 1 result(s) from this page. If you wish, you may read the DMCA complaint that caused the removal(s) at ChillingEffects.org.

Interesting - never saw that before!

Following the link to Chilling Effects shows a copy of the complaint which has some interesting text in it.

Experts-Exchange makes a detailed itemisation of their registered Copyrights, none of which I find objectionable, however, the complaint then goes on to list several issues against the Defendant, the first and most egregious of which is:

a direct "copy and paste job" lifting the content of Plaintiff's question and answer forums and inserting them onto AllFAQ's website. AllFAQ's question and "Solutions" are verbatim to Experts-Exchange's questions and "Accepted Solutions;"

From this Experts Exchange is accusing allfaq.org of Copyright infringement against Experts Exchange owned Copyright.

At first glance, this might seem fully justified - but look at what they are claiming copyright on.  Experts Exchange are assuming copyright ownership of content that you, and I, and all their users create by asking and answering questions on their web site.

I looked at Experts Exchange's Terms of Use and could not find any agreement that users were assigning their rights and copyrights to Experts Exchange. The relevant paragraph is:

"5. Content License

EXPERTS EXCHANGE enables Members to post problems or questions, proposed solutions or answers, information, comments and other content ("Your Content") to its Site. When you post Your Content to the Site, you understand and agree that Your Content can be viewed and used by other Members who visit the Site with or without attribution.

You represent and warrant that you own or otherwise control all of the rights to Your Content and that use of Your Content by EXPERTS EXCHANGE and its affiliates will not infringe upon or violate the rights of any third party. Before you use EXPERTS EXCHANGE Services to post any information or content that is protected by intellectual property laws, you shall have acquired the legal right to do so from the owner or authorized licensee of such information or content.

By registering with EXPERTS EXCHANGE and posting Your Content on the Site, you hereby: (i) grant EXPERTS EXCHANGE a non-exclusive, perpetual, irrevocable, unrestricted, transferable, fully sub-licensable, worldwide, royalty-free license to use, distribute, display, reproduce, perform, modify, adapt, publish, translate and create derivative works from Your Content in any form, media or technology, whether now-known or hereafter developed; (ii) grant EXPERTS EXCHANGE and its affiliates and sub-licensees the right to use the Member Name that you submit with Your Content for purposes of attribution; (iii) authorize EXPERTS EXCHANGE to assert and prosecute claims against any third-party making any unauthorized use of Your Content, including any use that violates this User Agreement ("Third-Party Claims"); and (iv) appoint EXPERTS EXCHANGE as your attorney-in-fact for the purpose of asserting and prosecuting Third-Party Claims. If you do not wish to have Your Content attributed to you, then you must notify EXPERTS EXCHANGE at customer_service@experts-exchange.com.

Experts Exchange acknowledges that the copyright belongs to the author as "Your Content" and that by posting you are granting them extensive licenses to use that content. You are not assigning your copyright to Experts Exchange.

Now I am glad that their ToU does not attempt to wrest copyright ownership from its rightful owner, that is right and proper.

allfaq.org is demonstrably guilty of screen-scraping the Experts Exchange web site and I do not condone those actions at all. However, looking at what they copied - it was the Title, Question and Accepted Solution text - the copyright of 100% of that is with the original authors, and not Experts Exchange.

Thus, in my opinion, this complaint against allfaq.org is without merit and should be dismissed.

It would also appear that Experts Exchange has also abused the provisions of the DMCA in forcing Google to remove the content. Google should restore the links.

And finally, Experts Exchange should implement some technical measures to prevent automated scraping. Find better ways to improve your search ranking, and if your competition beats you don't ask your own members how to do better SEO; be told by them that you have no Copyright Claims on the content; and then proceed to file DMCA take down notices when you know you have no (copy)right.

Well, it looks like Vodafone UK royally messed up the timing of the HTC Desire OTA Update yesterday.  While most owners were eagerly expecting the announced Android 2.2 (FroYo) update that HTC have been pushing out, Vodafone decided to push out a 2.1-update1 which only provides Vodafone branding, apps, a few bugs, and even a couple of "adult" related bookmarks to everyone - and leaving them on Android 2.1 (Eclair).

Needless to say - Users are not happy at all. *Vodafone appears to have moved the thread here. [2010/08/06] Moved again to here (is Vodafone trying to hide the complaints?).

In work, we (coworkers and I) now have a total of 8 HTC Desires (out of 16 people) - even two iPhone users have converted! A few have been espousing the wonders of FroYo on their phone (some had rooted, and did it themselves, others had bought unbranded phones and got the stock HTC FroYo upgrade). I was jealous(ish) and wanted it myself.

Given Vodafone's actions yesterday, it was likely that the FroYo update from Vodafone was minimum several weeks away, if not 3 months (as was intimated on the Vodafone forum - end of October) - it was also noted that the Vodafone FroYo update would include the Vodafone 360 branding and software.

Thus, last night it was time to embark on the adventure of flashing my HTC Desire to a stock image direct from HTC. I reasoned that my goal should be to flash HTC's Android 2.1 (Eclair) image to the phone, and once there, the normal software update process should take me to 2.2.

And so it began...

I knew that I needed to create a gold card because the Vodafone image doesn't let you install non-Vodafone images. This I discovered as I tried to simply apply a stock 2.2 download and using boot recovery update.zip - all attempts met with a complaint of a "Fingerprint error".

I ended up at this page:
  [TUT]Complete upgrading guide(root, unroot, flashing ROM & updates)

and followed Post #3 which details a) How to make a Gold Card* . Ignore the rest of #3
and then Post #4 - the "unrooting" guide.

You then need to find a download of the correct stock HTC Bravo WWE image ROM - I chose the second WWE ROM from this link (140MB download):
  [ROM] Official HTC Desire RUU ROMS and OTA Update URLs
  RUU_Bravo_HTC_WWE_1.21.405.2_Radio_32.36.00.28U_4.06.00.02_2_release_126984_signed.exe

Proceed through the rest of Post #4 "How to Flash ROM" with the Goldcard inside your Desire, and plugged into your PC.

The phone will take 5-10 minutes to complete upgrading (or downgrading) to HTC Stock 2.1 image. When it reboots you will have to go through all the original setup sequences you did when you first unboxed your phone.

You can then perform a Software Update Check and you should find you have a Android 2.2 FroYo update (90Mb) waiting for you.  Proceed and let it do its thing.

Once done, welcome to FroYo.

All future updates will come direct from HTC - not from Vodafone, and you won't ever have the Vodafone 360 branding rubbish foisted upon you.


* My GoldCard creation had a bit of a hiccup, in that it turns out that the 4GB Samsung card which came with my Desire does not work as a Goldcard despite formatting and following the instructions to the letter.  Trying an old 1GB Sandisk I had resulted in a good goldcard.

Aside from the goldcard hiccup - this all went surprisingly smoothly and painlessly.

Good luck.

Disclaimer: If you try any of the above - it is all your responsibility. I take no responsibility should you brick or damage your phone.

After the recent scandal over BT using Phorm (see here and here) is it still possible that BT is still covertly collecting data profiling its user's internet usage?

I have, as part of my home BT Total Broadband package, a HUAWEI Mobile Connect 3G Modem.  This is a USB dongle that provides internet service.   I rarely use it, but because of the storms last night my internet connection has been very unstable, therefore I plugged it in today.

When I started the "BT Connection Manager" software, it informed me that there was an update to the service and would I like to download it? Yes, ok, and a couple of minutes later it began to install itself.  Then popped up the obligatory EULA which contained the paragraphs:

"Installation of this Software will automatically apply a unique identifier to the Software, this identifying feature will only be used in accordance with the BT privacy policy which can be found at www.bt.com.

This software automatically collects session and client parameter Information for all connections made via this Software. This information is automatically transmitted to BT at the start of each session where Internet access is available. This session information will only be used in accordance with the BT privacy policy which can be found at www.bt.com."

BTConnectionManagerEULA.txt

SWMBO asked me to order a book for her this morning, so being the tightwad that I am, I go hunting for the ISBN and the cheapest place to buy it.
Amazon has it for £17.24 and Waterstone's for £18.49 (but if I order through quidco, then I receive another 8% cashback, making Waterstone's cheaper).

Waterstone's need me to create an account, fair enough and state "Also, please be aware that passwords are case sensitive, and must be a minimum of seven characters long and at least one character must be numeric."  Again, all fairly standard.

So each time I try to enter a password which meets this criteria I'm hit with a javascript popup that claims: "Your new password must be at least 7 characters long and contain at least one digit."

"But it is!", I yell in frustration.

Using the Firefox "Web Developer" plugin I unhide the password boxes and see that my password doesn't have digits... wtf!   I enter the digits again and find there is another hidden rule:

<input name="newPassword" type="password"
id="fPassword" size="40" maxlength="16" value="" />

Yes, an upper limit of 16 characters on the password.

Right ok, make a password of 16 chars or under and move on...

Add name, postcode to the next form and it finds my address ok - click continue to (I presume) proceed to the CC entry form and voila!

Well not quite.

"There has been a problem processing this request
Please use the refresh button on your browser to try again.

Thank you."

A few refreshes later, it is apparent that Waterstone's has no intention of working, sod it, for 20p more I can have less hassle at Amazon.

From the BBC Magazine today is an article 7 questions on GCSE maths.

Can you spot the fail?

thinkbroadband, formerly ADSLGuide.org.uk, have setup a community site where UK sufferers of the lack of universal broadband can register their inability to obtain broadband (a not-spot) or where you are unable to obtain up to 2Mbps service (slow-spot).

The Northern Ireland map is here - if you currently suffer from a lack of, or poor broadband coverage (including satellite) please register your details on the site - by adding your postcode it will appear on the map and we can begin to get a true picture of the poor state of broadband in Northern Ireland.

Thanks.

Today, May 6 2009, marks the day that Borland, that once great master of all software development has finally recognised there was no other recourse but to up and sell itself off in order to survive.

Back when I was a teenager, in the early 80s and personal computing was coming to the fore - I, and many others, aspired to work for that great company Borland. It was the pinnacle of language development and development tools and we wanted to work there. However, based in Ireland it was never to be.

Also, once upon a time I happened to be working for a very promising young company with a fantastic product line called Segue Software, based in Boston, MA.  Segue also had its troubles but a new CEO saw its fortunes turn and it was climbing to success. This success was noticed by the aforementioned Borland as it tried to re-invent itself as an Application Lifecycle Management (ALM) company.  The same day it was announced that Borland was acquiring Segue, it also announced it was selling its developer tools division (that's Delphi, JBuilder, and later Delphi for PHP, 3rd Rail line of products).

This was such a bitter-sweet time for many.  I was overjoyed that I was going to work for Borland (childhood dream) - it didn't matter I wasn't going to work with the developer tools, working for "Borland" would just be cool.  Sadness also because our little 200-man company was being consumed by a 1200-man behemoth (relatively) and no-matter which way you looked at it, people were going to lose their jobs.  Pretty much the entire US East Coast staff (Segue Head Office) lost their jobs and the office was closed.  Product development labs and Technical Support survived, simply by virtue that it was the product and product skills that were purchased, not the G&A functions - they could go.

I 'lived the dream' for the next 2.5 years in the IT department. Despite being remote, I loved working with the rest of the Borland teams as I was intimately involved in the merging/migration of Segue's systems into Borland's. I also had the pleasure of working with several departments to architect and deploy several new platforms (such as product downloads and licensing via Intraware, and the companies Salesforce.com, SFDC, deployment).  I'll treasure the time I spent at Borland.

Of course there were several WTF moments. Most significantly, for me, was the company "hanging its hat" on BMS (Business Management Solutions) which ultimately proved to be a hatstand made of jello. Very few, outside of management and that product team, believed in it.  Another significant WTF for Borland was, If you plan to be the Application LIFECYCLE Management company - why divest yourself (for a paltry $27m) of two of the world's major AppDev toolsets (Delphi and JBuilder). You've just removed the feeder market and upsell opportunity into your ALM business. Finally, and internal WTF to get off my chest, on what planet does the IT department belong as a subdivision of the HR department?

Borland will live on in the hearts of many of us who knew what she used to be. I think I left Borland a better place than I found it (as long as you don't look at the stock price ;), and I made some good friends. At the end of the day, there isn't much more you can ask from your tenure.
It is sad that today if you ask a typical Software Engineer if they know who Borland is, they'll respond "Who?" which typifies the company's slide into obscurity.

I wish the best of luck to my former colleagues, who I'm sure, will be wondering what is to happen next. I also hope that the new owners, Micro Focus International (who?), have good fortune with their ALM drive. Perhaps the Borland name might live on as a brand for a suite of ALM products - who knows what they'll do.

In the immortal words of Dr. Seuss "Don't cry because it's over. Smile because it happened."

Only two hours after he was supposed to be asleep...

I've sat on this article for a number of years, hoping against hope that the Firefox development team would get off their elite self-indulgent asses and realise that, guess what? - the world doesn't work the way they think it should.

Don't get me wrong, I love Firefox. I use it daily for nearly all of my web browsing needs, but there is just one little problem - a massive little problem - and that is why I am writing this article.

Most articles on this subject tend to focus on the lack of IT department deployment and management tools for rolling out Firefox, but that isn't the issue. Really?
So what is it then?

The answer is very, very simple: Firefox does not work on a real-world company Intranet.  There, I said it. 

Really, it doesn't - the Firefox development team have decided that in their infinite security wisdom that links from one method (e.g. http://intranet) to a local method (e.g. file://server/expense_claim.xls) are so bad that they won't even put out a warning.

I feel it is bad enough that it doesn't work, but silently failing without any alert boxes, or an option saying "Yes, I know I'm risking my life, but really, do let me click this link" or putting file://intranet into the trusted domain is the root cause why Firefox will never be accepted as a corporate browser.

IT departments just do not want to deal with the questions "Why doesn't the link to the document work?".  The simplest answer for the IT department is "We only support Internet Explorer".

Any amount of Firefox protestations saying "Oh! but you shouldn't be running your Intranet like that." is not going to change the real-world Intranets, and ultimately it keeps pushing Firefox back from acceptance into the Corporate world.

Until the Firefox is able to be used the way that real users want to use it, IT departments will continue to push that reliable old line that we only support IE.

Welcome to the real world.

https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=84128
https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=122022

I took the kids to the St. Patrick's Day parade today in Downpatrick, Co. Down (in Ireland for the non-Irish based people), the "home" of St. Patrick.

The event itself is described by the organisers:

"ST PATRICK'S DAY CROSS-COMMUNITY CARNIVAL PARADE This cross-community event, the centre-piece of the festival, will be a spectacular cavalcade of floats, bands, people in fancy dress and lots of attractions! Parade theme: 'The Sun, the Moon and the Stars'. The parade will assemble on the Ardglass Road at 1.00pm and depart at 2.30pm for the town centre where it will arrive at approximately 2.50pm. Parade route: Ardglass Road, Edward Street, John Street, Irish Street and Market Street. The closing date for parade entries is Friday 27 February 2009. Organised by Down District Council."

Anyway, I took loads of photographs and put them all up over on my photo gallery:

http://photos.pgregg.com/v/Users/pgregg/stpatrick2009/

The kids enjoyed it greatly, though the funniest moment was a local Manchester United supporters club who went the entire route to boos and chants of " FOUR - ONE ! " (in reference to Liverpool beating Manu 4-1 at the weekend).

The parade had a huge variety of themes, only a few of them Irish.  Others included an American Flag waving troop from Florida, Salsa dancers, puppeteers on stilts, Spongebob (anything with Spongebob is a win), Chinese Dragons and drummers, through to kids dressed as Star Wars characters.