Fox-hunting men

Looking at the pro-hunting demonstraters in Parliament Square, one was reminded of Oscar Wilde’s wonderful description of hunting as “the unspeakable in pursuit of the uneatable”.

Photo (c) Associated Press

Internet Explorer continues its slide

From Good Morning, Silicon Valley:

“Unblocked security problems in the ubiquitous Web browser have led IT professionals and even the U.S. Computer Emergency Readiness Team to recommend that users toss IE in favor of a more secure browser, and it appears more and more of us are taking their advice. Web analytics vendor WebSideStory reports that IE lost another 1.8 percent of the browser market over the past three months, falling to 93.7 percent. This is the second time IE’s market share has declined in recent months. It fell a percentage point between June and July in the wake of a parade of high-profile security issues – the first such decline ever recorded (see “Maybe you should rename it AIEEEEEEE!!!!!!”). Admittedly, these drops are slight, but they appear to be sustained, and they’re not without their beneficiaries, among them the Mozilla Foundation, which just recorded a record number of downloads for the preview version of Firefox 1.0.”

Skype

It’s terrific. I’ve had lots of difficulties getting Apple’s iChat A/V to work across firewalls etc., but Gerard and I had a Skype-powered UK-Netherlands conversation the other night which was flawless, and Quentin and I used it to today to talk through (and solve) a problem with Userland Radio’s flaky FTP uploading. (Well, Q did the solving; I did the talking.) He also lodged some money with Skype and called me on my mobile phone. This is VoIP done right. Skype could be Big.

Everything you wanted to know about Blogging…

… but were afraid to ask. Nice quirky, useful piece. Plus Dave Pollard’s tips on how to increase your chances of being read by someone.

Quentin’s back…

… from his Italian holiday. He brought back this lovely photograph.

If you think the Republicans couldn’t fiddle the US presidential election, think again

This watchdog site claims that the Diebold GEMS central tabulator contains a stunning security hole. “By entering a 2-digit code in a hidden location, a second set of votes is created. This set of votes can be changed, so that it no longer matches the correct votes. The voting system will then read the totals from the bogus vote set. It takes only seconds to change the votes, and to date not a single location in the U.S. has implemented security measures to fully mitigate the risks.”

The GPL is enforceable in law — German court ruling

The General Public License (GPL) — the ‘Magna Carta of the Open Source Software movement’ — has passed its first important legal test. A district court in Munich has made the world’s first ruling on it. The ruling has been greeted with enthusiastic and widespread applause among the free software community, as it enforces compliance with the GPL retrospectively on a piece of free software licensed under the GPL. Another company used the software in question without including the license — i.e. without passing on the GPL terms to users of the company’s software. Christian Ahlert from Oxford has written a terrific introduction to the case, and co-authored a translation of the judgment.

This is a Big Moment in the history of open source. The genius of the GPL is that it uses intellectual property law to enable the owners (creators) of software to license it to others under exceptionally generous terms. But up to now we didn’t have a legal judgment confirming the validity of the licensing scheme implicit in the GPL.

More advice from Newsnight viewers

How to live a long life, by Zoe French:

1. The Japanese eat very little fat and suffer fewer heart attacks than the Aussies, British or Americans.

2. Mexicans eat a lot of fat and suffer fewer heart attacks than the Aussies, British or Americans.

3. Africans drink very little red wine and suffer fewer heart attacks than the Aussies, British or Americans.

4. Italians drink large amounts of red wine and suffer fewer heart attacks than the Aussies, British or Americans.

5. Germans drink a lot of beer and eat lots of sausages and fats and suffer fewer heart attacks than the Aussies, British or Americans.

MEDICAL CONCLUSION:

Eat and drink what you like. Speaking English is apparently what kills you.

Rules for finding a mate

From an email sent by a Newsnight viewer to Jeremy Paxman:

1. It is important to find a man who works around the house, occasionally cooks and cleans, and who has a job.

2. It is important to find a man who makes you laugh.

3. It is important to find a man who is dependable and doesn’t lie.

4. It is important to find a man who worships your body.

5. It is vital that these four men never meet.

That Microsoft mobile phone joke…

… turns out to be a variant on a venerable theme. Dave Hill, whose memory, like that of the elephant, retains everything, sent me this — dated 1999!