As the argument rages about this OS being safer than that OS with respect to nasties does anybody have any figures on how many viruses actually use windows as the directly attacked platform as opposed to using some third party program (Adobe & Java - looking at you) as the attack vector which then goes on to compromise the OS.

I suspect that 'modern' windows, say Versions 7 & 8, are actually very robust and the vast majority of the infections are due to third party applications.

I can see this as being a major flaw in 'phone and tablet OS'es where they request, and are inevitably given, permissions far in excess of those required for purely operational needs in the same manner as many windows programs have "needed" administrative permissions in the past and thus provided an easy foothold into the OS.

And the Lab was fined how much?

You all seem to have missed the obvious downside to all this. It means there is going to be a new series of "Pope idol" on TV.

E-machines

Is the E-machine brand the same one as I remember as the biggest load of incompatible hardware ever thrown into a box and passed off as a computer in the history of box shifting or am I doing it a disservice?

"The trademark application covers 10 classes of products including computers, jewellery, educational material, footwear, film streaming services and paper packaging for audio tapes."

I notice that you only name 6 classes of products, is one of the others for urine extraction plants?.

I work in an organisation where HR is obsessive compulsive about all things politically correct regardless of the stupidity of the situation.

Recently Brother, our main printer supplier, has started to ship printers made in black plastic rather than the more normal cream. When we first saw these we all had a good laugh about the calls we would get about problems with the "black brothers". It should be added that two of the people most mocking of the situation happen to be of West Indian descent. Given the comedy value we agreed that the first few support calls we got for these printers should be handled by these two guys just for the laugh. They were all in favour of this and promised to report back.

A couple of days later some HR droid phoned up to whinge about problems with his new black brother (we had primed the helpdesk to ask users of the new printers what colour they were). One of the lads is duly dispatched to HR, arrives in the open plan office and loudly announces "Who's got a problem with a black brother". Apparently the only noise was that of jaws colliding with desks. He then announces "So, your all allright with the black brothers then?". More silence. "Right I'll close the call then" and walks out.

For some reason they never called back to reopen the call.

If I remember correctly the stated aim was always to get the first Pi's out to hackers, tinkerers and enthusiasts, then, when the product has a higher level of maturity, release it for as a cased product for mass educational use. I always thought it should be considered in the same way as a Microsoft operating system, no sane person would use it in a liive / production situation until at least service pack one.

Having said that I have had non of the problems with USB stated above and quite happily run a SSD via USB on a powered hub as well as the normal gubbins like a keyboard, mouse, wireless dongle etc.

@csumpi

My normal Pi setup of Pi, power supply, keyboard, mouse, powered hub, wireless dongle, second hand laptop SATA drive and SD card came to about £70. Exactly which netbooks were you considering in this price range?

The third way

Of course the other way of doing things is to install a motorised dish and get your own decoder. Total cost for a full HD setup is about £250 (or less) and being as you can pick up satellites covering all over Europe (and the middle east + North Africa) it means you can watch most of Sky's premium rubbish on Free to air from somewhere else. RTL's F1 coverage is perfectly good and free. 10,000+ channels of shite should be enough for anybody to find something at least vaguely interesting.

Surface Pricing

To quote a famous ex tennis ball botherer....

"You cannot be serious!!!"

There is one film, which after waiting for it for what seemed an eternity, failed in such spectacular style even the greatest fan of the original material was driven to despair. The Hitch hikers Guide to the Galaxy must be the epitome of how not to make a film.

I know the Radio series, books and BBC were there first but it was quite a good game so I would consider its inclusion in this pile of turds should be a given.

I wonder if this will have the same effect as the original "Daley Thompson's Decathlon" and result in numerous broken joysticks and wrist strains........

Learning BASIC from books, so yesterday

Something which should be noted for those people of less than old fart status is that all these 8 bit machines shipped with excellent manuals to enable you to learn the particular variant of BASIC they employed.

When was the last time you bought a machine (or piece of mass market commercial software for that matter) that had a comprehensive, example driven manual?.

Of course for those really on the bleeding edge of learning BASIC programming you could lose the manual and watch the VHS instruction tape. An example for the Spectrum can be seen here - http://www.worldofspectrum.org/infoseekid.cgi?id=0013467 - beards and all.

Make them live with my ex.

Gutted about iPad Hungry Hippos....

being an April fool, I thought that, at last, there was a good reason to buy one.

"More than a quarter of Americans under the age of 30 get their information from various social media sites."

I read that as

"More than a quarter of Americans under the age of 30 get their information from vacuous social media sites."

Still think my way makes more sense.

You would have thought that...

with all the money Apple has it could afford to do its own market research.

"Their main downfall seems to have been massive assumptions about their brand awareness in the UK - yes, people who've lived in the US or are particularly switched on knew about Best Buy, but most of the population drove past the signage thinking "Best Buy? I've no idea what they sell"."

Anybody who has lived in the States or knows about Best Buy probably knows they are one of the few firms with a worse reputation for customer service than DSG.

Well thats all right then....

"Security requirements are being developed to minimise: (i) the likelihood of such an event taking place, and (ii) the impact should it occur. The development of these requirements has involved extensive consultation with other government departments and relevant agencies, as well as with industry."

So, were talking to ourselves and everybody knows the stellar record the government has with IT.

Were talking to the industry who has no vested interest in this at all and can be relied on to deny any and all problems .

Were talking to "relevant agencies" who we won't tell you who they are but will be making money from this.

So that's all right then......

What they need to do is talk to people like geohot and other selected white/greyhats or give these systems to the university's and say - "Right we are 100% confident these are secure and will give you £100K for every flaw you find. You have the right to publish if we don't fix the problem."

Either it will be a very expensive exercise which will lead to a much more secure system or a very cheap exercise which will validate a reasonably secure system. Whatever, I would trust what these sort of people say about the security rather than "government agencies" or "industry".

Welcome to the Wall St Asylum

Earning up massively.

Profits up massively.

From a company which sells non essential luxury goods in the middle of a world financial crises when most firms are happy to stay in the black.

Shares drop 6%.

Just which planet are these analysts on.

Given its financial performance I would rather have my money invested in Apple than any of the big money firms on Wall Street.

Who dat?

I always wondered what the "Z" list was.

couple more

I don't see a 3DS. PSP Go and not sure if this counts but no Vectrex either.

Also for those fans of Ashens there seems to be a distinct lack of POP stations and Dingoo's.

Real Life?

"Cybermen had to be the ultimate scare really, a humanoid form with no emotion."

Like say.... Parking Wardens, Council Officials, Tax Collectors, Bank Managers.......

Sky could learn from this

Makes more sense and is more accurate than the majority of the mainstream news reporting.

None really

"thetrainline.com will already sell you a ticket that exists as nothing more than an on-screen barcode for your phone."

So how many people are now walking round with ticket punch holes in there phone screen?

Unlimited downloads?

Well that blows every ISP contract out of the water.

It wont happen but it would be nice to see some honest advertising. Of course nobody will believe it after years of being lied to as consumers by just about every company out there.

You know where you stand with Basement Bob

"People will happily download homebrew from Basement Bob which could steal logins/credit card details, but code from the console maker is evil?"

At least with Basement Bob you know your probably getting a trojan.

No breach of trust

"We promise not to share your details with anyone else."

Perfectly true - It doesn't say anything about everybody else......

IR35

Anybody know if this is still being scrapped or are they keeping it ?.

Random other piccies

Some random piccies

www.zxsoftware.co.uk/bletchly/P6190001.JPG

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www.zxsoftware.co.uk/bletchly/P6190007.JPG

www.zxsoftware.co.uk/bletchly/P6190009.JPG

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www.zxsoftware.co.uk/bletchly/P6190024.JPG

BTW - the PBS speccy is a bog standard Spectrum Plus in a case - not uncommon - but any information on the company would be appreciated. You can get the same thing with a rubber keyboard if your feeling particularly masochistic.