@ the first AC.

The UK is slipping down the rankings quite rapidly - because most of the other big gaming nations (Canada, France, Japan and Korea or whatever) give tax breaks to the industry - they don't charge VAT on R&D for example. We wouldn't be the first, we'd just be joining the rest of the world...

"In 2008, 41 percent of software on the world’s PCs was obtained illegally or used without a license… That equates to more than $50bn in losses for the global software ecosystem"

1) Ecosystem? Really?

2) 41%; presumably a figure pulled from thin air?

3) $50bn in losses; see point 2.

I really must disagree with their working out of how much money was 'lost'. I mean, take photoshop, that's a few hundred quid. I would suggest rather a lot of kiddies playing with it can't afford it - if they couldn't crack it, would they buy it? No, they'd use something else. One cracked copy of something does NOT equal the cost of the software 'lost', that's just wrong.

Also, sticking with Photoshop as our example, if everyone who used it paid full price for it, surely Adobe couldn't justify such exorbitant prices any longer? I'm sure plenty of business up the cost of their software to compensate for this 'lost' revenue.

Please remember that Gordon Brown's constituency is in Scotland; our laws on this are rather different (yes, shock horror, PM's plans don't affect his own constituency).

I would proposition he would need a basic Discolsure if he were to be working with children, perhaps an enhanced Disclosure if he were to be left alone with vulnerable people.

In Scotland, you CAN get an individual Disclosure, for yourself (for the self-employed and the like), or you can get one through a parent organisation. Where you got the idea that these 'umbrella bodies' would charge a fortune, I don't know. But if they are a voluntary group, they certainly would not be charged.

Yet again, El Reg is trying to apply English law in Scotland. It won't work. CRB checks, the ISA - none of these apply North of the Border.

of the Government overstepping the mark. I do not like the Tories, at all, ever, but they are Her Majesty's Opposition, and should be protected in the fullest extent of the law when they are fulfilling their duties accordingly. These duties include holding the Government to account.

I'm not even going to waste energy discussing the uselessness of the Speaker.

I'm exceedingly happy that my Student Association is not a part of the NUS.

In the story.

"English Government" in the comment prior to mine.

When were such institutions established?

If people cannot get such basic facts right, how can we be trusted to believe anything else they say?

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Karl-Theodor_zu_Guttenberg

That wasn't too difficult now was it? :P

Went to http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/German_government then http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cabinet_of_Germany to see the full list of ministers, picked the one I want.

I'm not going to comment on the xenophobic comments or the blatent lies. Rather I will rise above the petty squabbling and comment on the article's points itself.

The problem with BBC Alba is that no one can see it. It's only on Sky and now FreeSat. How much of the Gaelic population can receive that? I live in a city where I can get 100meg FTTH broadband, but I still can't see this station.

The channel needs to be shown on Freeview, and Virgin.

I hate to rain on some incredibly silly folks' messages, but I just thought I should clear things up..

Norway isn't in the EU.

Opera is a Norwegian company.

Therefor, Opera isn't an EU company.

This is not an example of cronyism.

Furthermore, this is about being able to remove IE, and to prevent you *having* to use IE. It's not about bundling things in or not, like the WMP debate at all, Opera do not necessarily wish Windows to ship without IE. This is about MS forcing you to use IE for things like Windows Update.. And also about being able to remove IE from the system altogether.

If you so wish, you can remove Safari from OSX. From my machine, I can remove Safari, Chrome, FF, Opera, but not IE.

As for the Americans thinking the EU has the power to remove programs from machines already out there, just wtf? Your ignorance is frankly, astounding.

I think this can only be a good thing, if it goes ahead, as at least it will force people to think about what they're doing with their machine. And it will be amazing to see the vast increase in security of any Windows box post-IE.

If you had 75 techies, and now have 15 - how many did you lose?

At the school I went to, it was 60.