Posts by The Travelling Dangleberries

Linux Mint 21.2 and Cinnamon 5.8 desktop take shape

Re: Cinnamon Mint is my Choice

"...upgrades are seamless so all is good."

I just upgraded a 2006 white macbook from 18.1 to 21.1. It took a few days including two full disc copies using dd but was remarkably easy. After having two complete failures to upgrade Ubuntu on ARM boards in the past I was a bit sceptical but seeing as the macbook's CD drive failed ages ago and it wouldn't boot from a live USB stick and a new install would have required installing rEFIt again I thought that the upgrade path was the best option. Installing on a later macbook does not work either due AFAIR to the limitations of the EFI implementation on the really early macbooks.

.

The macbook will be 21 years old by the time 21.1 stops receiving updates, assuming the hardware holds up. Mint Xfce zips along fine running off an SSD.

Ford seeks patent for cars that ditch you if payments missed

Re: Tell me you're middle-class without telling me etc etc

I usually don't like saying "I told you so" but in this case I will allow myself to feel smug.

https://forums.theregister.com/forum/all/2016/01/05/want_new_smartphone_laptop_tablet_no/#c_2737824

systemd 253: You're looking at the future of enterprise Linux boot processes

Re: This is perfect for a Friday story

"Don’t try to put every good features into just one project."

I haven't checked the systemd roadmap yet, but does anyone else know when systemd's eagerly awaited email client functionality will be implemented?

Musk bans private-plane-tracking @Elonjet on Twitter, threatens legal action

Re: I'm appalled

"The other is ElReg (amongst many others) milking the drama for a handful of ad dollars. "

Are there really ads on ElReg?

'What's the point of me being in my office, just because they want to see me in the office?'

I had a short stint on a large UK government project around the time that two skyscrapers in New York collapsed. The CEO of the company that had managed to convince the UK authorities of their ability to complete the aforementioned project within budget and by the deadline was one Dick Brown.

Dick had a penchant for sending out similar emails (albeit shorter and less coherent) to both permies and contractors working on the project. Serendipitously, (or possibly by default) Outlook was configured in such a way that everyone was identified in the format "surname comma forename" on emails they sent.

I am not sure what my colleagues made of these missives but I personally found it rather amusing when these "Brown, Dick" messages appeared in my inbox. Uplifting they certainly were, but probably not in the way that Dick intended.

The boss worked in a fishbowl, so office tricks were a treat

Re: Pranks and things

My father who was at Cambridge in the same period used to tell us the story of a friend's Austin 7 that was dismantled and reassembled in the owner's room while the owner was away for the weekend.

Keeping printers quiet broke disk drives, thanks to very fuzzy logic

Re: O Paris, Paris, wherefore art thou Paris?

The Norwegian word for "why" is "hvorfor".

Tesla owner gets key fob chip implanted in his hand

Tesla owner gets key fob chip implanted in his hand

So do Muskovites drive Muskvitches?

The App Gap and supply chains: Purism CEO on what's ahead for the Librem 5 USA

Re: Still waiting...

I wondered about delivery when I looked at the Librem 5 a couple of years ago. I ended up plumping for a PinePhone which was a fraction of the price. Running Mobian/Phosh most features work as they should albeit in a relaxed manner. It makes me smile a lot of the time using a "smartphone" running linux.

You would expect a qualified electrician to wire a building to spec, right? Trust... but verify

Re: The neutral doesn't join up with anything on the switch!

"What amused me was that it was now okay to use a standard light switch - as long as its outside the "wet area" whereas before it had to be a pull cord; given the average teenager doesn't dry their hands..."

Interesting! I didn't realise that the average teenager washed their hands after a visit to the toilet...

Anyway on the rare occasions I return to the UK I am reminded how much I don't miss those ruddy bathroom pull cord switches. Stumbling around in the dark of an unfamiliar AirBnB half awake with a full bladder I try to grab the cord so I can see what I am doing. I grab but miss and the cord is now not only difficult to see it is also waving around wildly.

I much prefer standard switches (preferably backlit) mounted on the outside of the bathroom next to the door, together with the bathroom fan switch. Each to his own I guess...

Supreme Court urged to halt 'unconstitutional' Texas content-no-moderation law

SPAM, SPAM SPAM SPAM!

"HB 20 also "prohibits email service providers from impeding the transmission of email messages based on content," as Abbott's press release explains."

I wonder how long it will take before they stop enforcing that clause.

Microsoft slides ads into Windows Insiders' File Explorer

Re: Killing off their own golden goose

"Although MS is pushing their Office 264 product..."

Ah, the uptime is getting worse by the day...

Planning for power cuts? That's strictly for the birds

Re: Stuff Happens

One crisp winter morning my Trabant expired a minute after leaving town with a boot full of groceries. As luck would have it this happened within coasting distance of a bus stop so I was able to get the car safely off the road. After checking that the fuel tap was open (it was) I popped the bonnet so I could check how much fuel was in the tank.

I unscrewed the filler cap and heard a sound like the one you get when you open a can of pop as air rushed into the tank. The fuel tank on a Trabant is vented through a tiny hole in the filler cap which on inspection was plugged by a tiny piece of ice.

As the fuel tank is mounted above the engine it is subjected to large temperature changes. In winter any condensation in the tank (after melting) will try to escape via the vent hole in the filler cap as the tank warms up. When you start driving cold air is forced under the bonnet and over the filler cap which can turn water in the vent hole back into ice.

I normally have a pin for adjusting windscreen washers stuck in the windscreen rubber on the inside of the driver's windscreen pillar. It turned out to be just the right tool for de-icing Trabant petrol cap vent holes.

Google's 'Be Evil' business transformation is complete: Time for the end game

Re: Wishful thinking

It took 8 years from the start of proceedings against AT&T to the break up actually being a fact. I don't know how many years of complaints and agitation preceeded the start of the legal process.

Anyway maybe as we turn the corner into 2030 we will be able to celebrate "the Alphabet" being broken up into its constituent letters.

Sometimes you have to hold onto your dreams...

Better the devil, you know...

I remember hearing from an acquaintance in the early 90's that the Greater Manchester Police finally had enough of the gang leaders responsible for drug sales in their area and decided to put a fair few of them behind bars. Trouble was, their organisations continued to flourish except with new leaders in place. Leaders that the police had no working relationships with, leaders who had grown up without the old school habits of their predecessors, leaders who were more unpredictable.

I have often observed that there are many more parallels between the bootleg era Mafia in the US and the large US based multinational corporations than with either of them and the ethics embodied in the ideas of WIlliam Morris and the enlightened Industrial Revolution company owners. Or in the business practices that follow the aims and principles of the co-operative movements that have made such a difference to people around the world.

Nothing is bad for Google. It might well get broken up a la AT&T, split into separate corporations that co-incidently continue to co-operate on projects of mutual benefit. The new Google might well have to get used to more oversight but it has money and lawyers so combating oversight will just be seen as a new cost of doing business, like office rental, company cars and staff.

On the other hand, not breaking up Google will have dire consequences for the rest of us folk and will stifle competition maybe forever more. Like the bootleg era Mafias it is never enough just to do business on a level playing field and compete fairly with the competition. Oh no, in order to maximise profits the competition have to be completely destroyed.

Apple's Safari browser runs the risk of becoming the new Internet Explorer – holding the web back for everyone

Re: A man after my own heart

33k6!!! By 'eck you were lucky! We 'ad te make doo wi' uh 14k4 modem and we 'ad to share t bandwidth wi' rest t village...

Client-side content scanning is an unworkable, insecure disaster for democracy

Re: minority report

Or a small drone carrying a payload of flying nanobots who in turn are each carrying a tiny (but sufficient) payload of ricin arriving at your home in the early hours of the morning.

Sleeping with your bedroom window open might not turn out to be as good for you as you thought.

Microsoft's problem child, Windows 11, is here. Will you run it? Can you run it? Do you even WANT to run it?

Re: Want to run it?

I recently installed Mint 19.1 XFCE on a pair of Eee PC 701s, one of which has whole 2GB of RAM in it. Web browsing is a bit relaxed and video chat is unusable but Mint works fine otherwise. Mozilla based browsers still run on this hardware and 19.1 will be supported for a couple more years.

Remind me again, why is it so hard for MS to support hardware a third of the age of my trusty netbook?

Higher tech prices ARE here to stay. It's Mr Farage's new Britain

Re: Brexit means brexit.

@H in The Hague

I'd generally agree with your comments about the Netherlands. Easy to get around on a bike (except against a stiff headwind) and easy to get to other countries. Easy to get hold of stuff and relatively easy to do business. If you come from the more northern reaches of the UK then you would probably notice the lack of any natural landscape as really there isn't any until you get down to the the Ardennes. Still, I have an affection for morning autumnal mists hanging over the polder landscape or storm clouds scudding across the low sky.

If I had to leave Norway then the Netherlands would be first choice for me. The UK will never be an option for me again there is no way I could hack living there any more. Maybe Canada if the Netherlands lurches further to the right but I doubt that North America could ever replace the cultural and linguistic diversity that is the EU.

Netflix flattens bug that allowed account p0wnage via voicemail

Re: Voicefail

Well yes, and no. The developers of the Netflix password reset function made an basic mistake. Their system was open to abuse as it assumed a default level of security somewhere else - a "somewhere else" over which they have absolutely no control over.

Microsoft tries, fails to crush 'gender bias' lawsuit brought by its own women engineers

Re: Always a one-sided story

"Sure, it could be true. But it could also be an issue of people who got it into their head that they 'deserve' a positive promotion and will now start blaming everything except themselves."

This is all fine until you start looking at how groups work and, in particular how covert or hidden bullying works. A new member of staff doesn't even need to have done anything wrong to be subject to covert bullying. Their only "mistake" is say to have been appointed to a team where the manager, irrespective as to how effective they are, happens to be managing a project that has internal political pressure on it and divided opinions as to the usefulness of the project. Those who dislike that project or that manager will tend to transfer those feelings onto anyone assigned to that team.

Sad to say it doesn't take much to get otherwise reasonable and social people to join in with such back biting. As it is covert the object of the attacks will struggle to work out what is actually going on. This type of situation will inevitably skew any peer review system against the person concerned without them knowing that anything is afoot. Even if that person is then placed in another team.

Sure, it can be down to whining women and gender politics but then again maybe that Trump - Billy Bush video indicates that maybe women have a point. There *are* plenty of ways to exclude women from the type of male bonding that takes place in all-male gatherings. Gatherings that can take place in work time when women on the team are not present. Gatherings that strengthen a male bias in a team by encouraging the airing of negative comments about women.

Snoop! stooge! Yahoo! handed! all! your! email! to! Uncle! Sam! – and! any! passing! hacker!

Re: Hmm... feeling nostalgic...

Same here.

More proof, as if we needed it, that you should not trust any cloud providers especially those based in the US of A.

Yahoo gone. It's high time I nuked my LinkedIn account too...

HP Ink COO: Sorry not sorry we bricked your otherwise totally fine printer cartridges

Sporkist comments

Actually, after many years of testing various utensils on long summer cycle tours I have to say that the titanium version of the original Light My Fire spork is IMHO a useful and usable piece of kit. Unlike the plastic versions, the "knife" edge can just cope with cutting open apples and slicing cheese, whilst the spoon can be used as both a spoon and to spread butter, marmite etc on bread. It also can be used as a cooking utensil as it doesn't melt if you leave it in the frying pan by accident. As it is made of titanium it is very durable, light and much harder to break by accident.

Admittedly a titanium spork is rather more expensive than its plastic siblings - a classic example of you get what you pay for.

The same goes for buying a cheap multi-functional printer made by a gouging multi-national corporation - you get what you pay for.

TV industry gets its own 'dieselgate' over 'leccy consumption tests

Re: It's not difficult.

Place television in a selection of homes which are connected to a mains electrical supply and are inhabited by people and where the aforementioned inhabitants watch television on a telly.

FTFY.

Although as IANAL I am sure I have missed out a few clauses that would make sure that the test conditions could not be misinterpreted.

VW Dieselgate engineer sings like a canary: Entire design team was in on it – not just a few bad apples, allegedly

Re: Disgusted

"A lot of the US actions were protectionist, e.g. the California ban on small two stroke motorcycles (imported) despite the tiny contribution they made to pollution."

Rather like my Trabant.

In my little rural valley we get temperature inversion layers in winter. The bottom of the valley fills up with wood smoke from the wood burning stoves despite many houses having heat pumps and electric heaters (using electricity from hydro electric power). The air quality is dire on occasion. The main road up the valley is full of heavy lorries in addition to other traffic and, at the weekends, people driving up from nearby cities to their huts in the hills. In the summer you can hear the sound of diesel engined tractors, diggers and dumpers and two stroke petrol chainsaws and bushwackers from early in the morning to late at night. Then there are other pollutants such as the smell of drying paint in the house painting season and barbeque smoke in the summer.

In comparison to that cocktail of emmisions, the Trabant 2-stroke engine (low NOx of course) which only smokes when cold is a mere spit in the ocean.

Although, having said that, my near neigbours who only see it in blue smoke mode, after starting from cold, might not agree.

Making us pay tax will DESTROY EUROPE, roars Apple's Tim Cook

Re: Corporation tax is the problem

There is a very simple solution. Replace the current method of calculating corporate tax. Corporate tax will now be levied as a fixed percentage of all sales/leases etc of goods and services in the country concerned. Then rename the tax to "Permission to Trade in the Market" tax as that, in effect is what corporate tax is.

It works like this : if Apple sell a million iThings in the UK it pays say 2% of of the gross value of all sales to the UK government. If Samsung sell a million sThings in Germany it pays 2% of of the gross value of all sale to the German government. If Huawei lease a million hThings in France it pays 2% of of the gross value of all these lease contracts to the French government.

Easy to calculate and an end to the discussion as to where profits are made.

No doubt this new regime will produce a flock of bleating complaints from the big corporations, but we let them bleat. The big corporations have proven themselves time and time again to be manipulative serial tax avoiders who show no concern for the citizens of the countries they operate in. So why should we cut them any slack now?

Yes, let them bleat, for we need roads, hospitals and schools for our children too.

Paper mountain, hidden Brexit: How'd you say immigration control would work?

"Central Manchester Redevelopment Plan"

Ah yes, I was lying in bed in my house a couple of miles from the Arndale Centre when it got remodeled. The whole house shook as the shock wave reached our bit of town. I didn't bother to go in and see the damage and shortly afterwards left the UK for the Netherlands. I have never been back to Manchester to see what it looks like now.

I would certainly miss that lovely wavy concrete canopy that used to adorn the M&S building and probably that odd tiled "inside out public convenience" look that the arse end of the Arndale used to have. The irony of the high and the low points of Mancunian architecture so close together. Yes, I would miss that.

I think I want to keep my old memories and illusions alive a little longer in this post-Brexit reality.

"The past is a foreign country; they do things differently there."

Das ist empörend: Microsoft slams umlaut for email depth charge

Re: Many more...

@Agent Tick

" ... languages ( French, Skandinavian lingos etc) are using diaeresis (two-dot letters) in their alphabet"

One of my colleagues discovered very recently that a O365/Microsoft Account does not accept the three Norwegian accented characters, æ,ø and å as valid letters in a password.

Sigh.

New UK trade deals would not compensate for loss of single market membership

Re: Really ....

@Dave 15

"Britain was an industrial powerhouse right through the 19th century totally dominating the world with the mass produced output from places like Birmingham, Sheffield, Manchester."

Sounds like you have never read "Love on the Dole", or "The Road to Wigan Pier" or any factual contemporary historical reports of living and working conditions for workers in such "industrial powerhouses". People who scraped by every week on a pittance living in towns with environmental conditions that were worse than the worst you will find in China today.

Britain's industrial revolution was run on the gross exploitation of workers, employed with contracts that could leave you out of a job at the end of each day, with little or no attention paid to the health, safety and well being of the employed. With no regard to the devastating environmental impact of a coal based heavy industrial economy. Wealth created on the backs of child labour and the exploitation of families.

That Brexiteers think that this is something to return to in the 21st century to make Britain "great" again only goes to show how tenuous their grasp on reality really is.

Mind you, it looks like the UK is already on the way back to that "great" period in our history. Zero hour contract anyone?

Re: Also, the reverse would apply

@AC

"IKEA is Swedish, you numpty."

Actually it's generally regarded as a Dutch company. Although given its complex multinational corporate structure you'd be forgiven for thinking it was based somewhere else such as Luxemborg or Lichtenstein.

Re: @Tom7

"But I like your attitude! I mean, what do experts know about their field of expertise anyway? Amirite...?"

This skepticism about experts could actually turn into a great money saver for Brexitland and present opportunities for economic growth. Think about it, soon the country will only need 48% of the current number of dentists. After all, what do dentists know about teeth?

We can reduce the NHS budget to 48% of current levels as the 52% of Leavers will no longer be willing to trust doctors and other medical staff. After all, what do they know about health?

People can stop buying expensive European cars as well. Sure, Chinese built ones have a reputation for being somewhat less safe in crash situation but hey, what right have the experts in the EURO NCAP teams to stop people buying perfectly good cars?

At the same time there will be massive growth in the markets for DIY tooth repair kits and health diagnostic toolkits, books titled "Remove your own appendix in half an hour" and "Road side trauma surgery for beginners" and other important things like DIY airbag kits for cars.

Yes the future is looking so bright I need two pairs of sunglasses.

PS I am no expert about economic matters, so I must be right, right?

Software snafu let EU citizens get referendum vote, says Electoral Commission

Re: I paid my taxes, my partner and children are British ...

Well to a point... You need to be both British and have been on the electoral register in the last fifteen years. Which is quite a neat way of disenfranchising British citizens who have taken advantage of the freedom of movement that the EU encourages.

Apparently there are around three million of us in the non-British parts of Europe. Which could have made a difference if the result was close. Someone clearly considered this quite carefully when drafting the rules for the referendum.

Firefox features will land out of cycle and Mozilla's cool with that

Re: Alternatives to FF and Chrome?

Obligatory SeaMonkey plug. http://www.seamonkey-project.org/

Not only a useable browser with a "normal" user interface but also a useable Mail client.

Tech biz bosses tell El Reg a Brexit will lead to a UK Techxit

Re: Brits who live in other parts of the EU...

@ Bronek Kozicki

"Perhaps that explains less bureaucracy."

No, it is mainly that the rules have been "harmonised" over the years. After five years in the Netherlands I was told I did not need to register any more at the foreigners department of the local police. Norway otherwise is the most intensely bureaucratic country I have lived in, it trumps even The Netherlands in that respect.

Whilst being outside the EU allows Norway room for manoeuvre in terms of farm subsidies the rights of free movement of workers are pretty much the same as in EU countries. Norway is a Schengen country for starters. You have a right to come here for a period of three months to look for work. If you find it then you can stay. Suffice it to say Norway is not free from the "bloody Johnny Foreigner taking our..." debate. It is raging nicely here too.

Norway implements pretty much every EU directive that comes its way (the only one I can think of that they didn't implement was the Data Retention directive (RIP)). This actually causes problems in the cattle dairy farming sector. EU regulations for milking new parlours combined with Norwegian building regulations and hence building costs mean that it is not economic for smaller farms to build new facilities. They would never get a meaningful return on their investment. Many dairy farmers choose to shut up shop or move into other types of farming.

So I doubt that EEA membership would change much for the UK. Apart from that it would make a packet for the postal services and Customs and Excise. Everything you order from EU countries would be liable for import duties/VAT etc plus the obligatory service charge from the postal company. That would make everyone happy wouldn't it...

Re: Brits who live in other parts of the EU...

I won't get a vote, I have been off the electoral register for too long. The right to vote on such issues should be governed by the passport you hold, not by your status on the electoral register.

As for interests being harmed, will Brexit make it easier to resolve child custody cases across UK/EU borders? Will it make it easier for you to access pension entitlements that you have built up in the various countries you have lived in? How about getting your British Masters Degree validated in the EU country you where you are looking for a job? If you as a Brit suffer a job related injury will you still retain your right to get sick pay from the German authorities? If you are assaulted in Norway will you still have rights to a payout from the victim support agency? How about getting emergency healthcare in France while on holiday when you need it? As a British family living in Britain both adults working, how will your life be improved if you can be sacked for refusing to work more than 48 hours a week?

As for net immigration to the UK, does this mean that unemployment has gone up by 2-3 million in the last ten years or so or have a couple of those 2-3 million new arrivals actually found paying jobs?

Brits who live in other parts of the EU...

Too many of my dear countrymen seem to forget that there are people with British passports who, by dint of EU rules have been able to migrate to other EU and EEA countries. In nearly 20 years of living "on the continent" I have seen the administrative demands on internal EU migrants drop from having to re-register with the police once every three months/six months/once a year (The Netherlands) to registering with the local police once, a few years ago when I first moved to Norway.

No-one on the "Out" camp seems to give a toss that new and unusual bureaucratic contortions might be foisted on people like me as a result of a "Brexit". The only bright point is that I am married to someone who has a non-British EU passport which might make things a little easier in the worst of the worst case scenarios.

Obama puts down his encrypted phone long enough to tell us: Knock it off with the encryption

"So Barack, here's the deal. The negatives can be yours for a small fee.."

One of the good old USofA's shady TLAs must have dug up some serious dirt on Barry!

Linux lads lambast sorry state of Skype service

Re: Try...

Great if you could point me to a working TOX client that will run MacOSX Snow Leopard.

At the moment Skype works for my OS agnostic family, different users use various versions/flavours of Windows, MacOSX, Linux and Android. I don't know of any IM/Video chat client that supports all of these platforms and works when you install it.

Among the alternatives I have tried, Ekiga (could not get it to connect reliably on the same home network that Skype ran fine on), Jitsi, I like it the fact that the UI is consistent over platforms makes support much easier - this is important as it means all the menus on my Linux version of Jitsi are in the same place as Jitsi running on the OS of my elderly relatives computers. Jitsi with video chat is not a resource hog and runs fine on a Linux EEEPC 701. On the down side, a while back they cut support for older versions of MacOSX and then put it back. Then video chat (XMPP network) on the version for Snow Leopard did not work the last time I tried it. Google Hangouts require you to have a Google account (not all of the people I chat with have that), Pidgin seems to work fine but I am the only one using that as a way into Google Talk. TOX, I could not get it to run under MacOSX Snow Leopard the last time I tried it.

Besides the problems of trying to get all your contacts to switch to another IM platform, there are a range of other problems trying to run multiple chat messengers on the same machine. MacOSX seems to be unable to share a webcam between different programs that need it (reboot to start using Jitsi instead of Skype for instance) - maybe newer versions of MacOSX have solved that problem.

I think the only way forwards is to make sure that all widely available protocols (such as the ones that Skype uses) are open sourced and properly documented. Start with protocols that have a user base of 100,000 users or more. This would allow any IM/video chat client project (whether open or closed source, commercial or hobby) to implement connectivity to all of the major networks, thus allowing us to choose the client we want to use and support.

Linux Mint forums hacked: All users urged to reset passwords

Not the only problem

This thread http://lwn.net/Articles/676664/ is interesting and suggests that the website hacks are a symptom of the way that the LinuxMint team approach development and security.

Let Europeans sue America for slurping their data – US Senate

Re: Feed Our Lawyers

"And under whose jurisdiction does this fall? If europeans must file suit in an american court, presided over by american judges, interpreting an american law ... well, let's just say my expectations of a fair trial are pretty dim."

Funnily enough, that is the kind of thing my rather right wing fellow students at university used to say of Russia in the times of the good old CCCP.

“Be careful how you choose your enemy, for you will come to resemble him. The moment you adapt your enemy's methods your enemy has won."

(Michael Ventura's take on a much older sentiment.)

Remember Netbooks? Windows 10 makes them good again!

Re: Pah!

LinuxMint 13 XFCE works fine here on both my 701 and 901 EeePCs. I tried EasyPeasy before settling on EeeBuntu for a while until development stopped, then ran Xubuntu for a year or so until I got fed up of it not behaving as it should. I still have the original Xandros OS on the internal SSD on the 701 with the hacked desktop GUI. I fire it up every now and again to smile and remember the taste of freedom that ASUS gave me with that crippled version of Linux.

I once encountered a much more modern netbook with Windows 7 on it. Despite lots more RAM than my 701 and a much faster CPU the GUI and most other things were slower than on my 701 with Linux on it. That's progress for you.

I cannot see why I would want to install any version of Windows when modern distros such as LinuxMint install and work so well OOB.

We're going to use your toothbrush to snoop on you, says US spy boss

Re: Tough call

I'd forgotten about "winnets" completely. That's perhaps the only disadvantage of living away from the UK, you lose the finer points of your mother tongue.

AdBlock Plus, websites draft peace deal so ads can bypass blockade

Re: Is someone under the impression...

Re Element Hiding Helper

This functionality is built into uBlock Origin as standard and works just fine.

UK Home Sec's defence of bulk spying: We 'found' a paedo (we already knew about)

Re: I don't see what the problem is.

Your chances of losing your life/being injured in a motor vehicle accident in the next 12 months are much higher than your chances of being killed/maimed by a terrorist attack.

Your happy family home is more likely to be disrupted and irrevocably changed by the loss of your job and house during the next financial crash than by the actions of a (known) paedofile.

Sorry, what was your point again?

Facebook tells Belgian government its use of English invalidates privacy case

Re: For once, I agree with FaceBook.

So they will have to show the name "GezichtBoek" for the Flemish speakers of Belgium and something else for the French speakers.

As an organisation in Belgium you really don't want to annoy either language group in Belgium by persistently presenting them with the "wrong" version of your website. So that will present an interesting technical challenge for FaceBook if they are not allowed to set cookies in a user's browser.

The old adage "Be careful when you wish for something" springs to mind...

Microsoft: We’ve taken down the botnets. Europol: Would Sir like a kill switch, too?

Skype auto translation

"Hello Sir, I am workering with Microsoft support for you..."

There you go, it works a treat!

Swivel on this: German boffins build nanoscale screwing engine for sluggish sperm

Re: Bad Bad Bad

@Big John

"I myself have bad eyes, which normally would be weeded out of the gene pool. Lucky me!"

Not necessarily. The problem with the re-interpretation of Darwinism is that it has been explained the wrong way round. Natural selection involves the extinction of the "weakest" rather than the "survival of the fittest".