We normally think of "the cops" when we hear the word, "police," yet it has broader meanings. For instance, land use planning is considered a "police power" delegated to states, municipalities, etc. How did this term develop?

As is usual for you, Geoff, that's a thoughtful question. I looked up the etymology in the OED, and it comes "perhaps" from the Old French (c1250) word, pollice, meaning "regulation of trades, etc., in a town." That sounds like the broader definition, and it might have become more specific from that? That's an amateur's analysis anyway.

And the origin of police from the Greek πολιτης (polītēs) 'citizen' < (polis) 'city'. (The -pore in Singapore is from the Sanskrit cognate puri.)

What about "politics?" Same source?

What about "politics?"

Yes.

z, are they different origins then?

Yes, "politics" and "police" are both from Greek "polis".

My Windows XP computer is infected with "Windows Police Pro" which pretends to be an anti-virus. I didn't click on it, but did click on the bubble that came up from my bar. It took over all functions. Cannot use command window. Cannot do anything at all. All attempts result in an error box popping up. I need to do spyware removal, but there are too many suggestions on (primarily) Yahoo answer websites----do not know which one to try. They say to stop the program by going to the Task Manager, but I tried and can't access it by any means. Everything is totally hijacked. Is installing Defender via flash drive the answer?
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This message has been edited. Last edited by: Benjamin06,

Benjamin,

I'm sorry to hear about your misfortune. I don't think this forum is the best place to post about problems with malware, though, as we aren't experts in the subject. I use a program called Spybot Search and Destroy if that's any help. I suggest you search for the exact name of the virus in an antivirus forum or similar.

Does the foregoing mean that Benjamin found this site by entering "police" into a search engine?

quote:

It took over all functions. Cannot use command window. Cannot do anything at all.

But presumably you can access the internet and post to this forum...

See my post elsewhere. I think the forum software is malfunctioning and crossposting from other boards.

How does it do it without registering on this site? zmj points out elsewhere that they all have names with appended numbers, but clearly not all such names are spam.

Computer/internet-ignorant Geoff

How does it do it without registering on this site?

Spambots are scripts which are able to register and post to these forums.

they all have names with appended numbers, but clearly not all such names are spam.

Of course not, but the suspicious posts all have user names like that. Part of it is that all login names (not necessarily what is being displayed) have to be unique.

Arnie is going to take a step that he'll post about in Community that we hope will help.

To expand on ZMJ's post there are also spybots which merely observe and gather data for marketing and other more nefarious purposes.
Benjamin06 needs to go to www.download.com and research Spybot (current version) and also AVG Free 9.0.
Police also has 2 subsidiary meanings--to do a cursory job ("We haven't time for a thorough cleanup so police the route") and to pick up detritus from a wide area (" Go police the parking lot for trash and cigarette butts."). Nothing whatsoever to do with what we regard as a traditional police officer's function.