The Lizard People are after your Linux distro

Braininess is not required, you say, to work out which lawyer is behind the hunt for filesharers at Davenport Lyons:

r.e. Games firm pursues 500 pinball 'pirates' through UK courts. I find it funny the partners didn't want to be named. Considering the partnet list for Davenport Lyons (http://www.davenportlyons.com/html/about_us/partners.html) only lists two who work in information technology/intellectual property it's quite clear who was speaking from there. It wouldn't take Einstein to work how who they are, what a load of pointless twoddle on their part.

Foo

'Letters sent to 500 file sharers in recent weeks recommended paying a £600 fine for sharing the £16.99 computer game on a peer-to-peer file sharing networks. Failure to pay would result in prosecution and potential court costs of "tens of thousands of pounds"'

That sounds an awful lot like extortion to me. Isn't there a term for using the courts to commit extortion? "Barratry," isn't that the word?

Morely

New Jersey gets on the safety bandwagon with a proposal to ban simultaneous texting and driving:

Boo.

Once again the Man is trying to ruin driving for the rest of us.

Part of the fun of playing "Driving" is surely the uncertainty of it all.

Will I make it to work this morning, or will some dick with a cell phone kill me?

For a long time now I've been convinced that politicians aren't aware that driving is a video game, with only one life but many cars. Here in Alaska we've known this for years, our weather makes for the absolute funnest version of "Driving" you can get outside of a console.

But besides all that, these guys are playing with fire. Natural selection will weed out most idiots, and we should do nothing that discourages them from being unselected for life.

Andy

Anyone that's actually driven in New Jersey knows that "rush hour" traffic tends to move at around 5mph, and it's perfectly safe to send a text, eat a bagel, and wash it down with a coffee all at the same time - you're not missing much happening on the road.

Jim

You seem to think that doing away with the less than technically minded would make the world a better place, at least when it comes to cars. But what fun would we all have then?

It would seem ridiculous that luddites would inhabit the web, but your letters section always seems to find them! The latest was from a person responding to the satnav article, saying that the EU ban on remote starters was a good thing. First of all, the EU has banned these? Is that why this isn't a factory option German cars that are otherwise rife with the latest technology?

Second of all, the author's objections are ludicrous. You can either install the remote starter only on automatics, which can't be started when in gear, so no problem, or insure the remote starter, when installed on a manual, won't operate unless the car is out of gear and the emergency brake is engaged. Surely in the 21st century mankind has the capability to do that. Anyway, true manuals will be almost completely replaced with computer controlled sequential manuals within a decade, and this problem would be avoided.

Perhaps they can add a "paranoid luddite" option for him that has the car shout "get away from this car, it is about to start and may jerk forward if its driver is an idiot and can't remember to take his car out of gear and engage the parking brake before leaving it!" for 15 seconds before starting, to allow children under the car looking for their ball time to escape to safety!

Doug

Which is all we've got time for today. Check back next week for more. ®