Isn't this like asking turkeys to vote for Christmas?

So the TSA aren't spreading fear, degrading people, and impinging on civil liberties? All we have to do is not travel by air. Got it. I'm glad we've managed to protect our freedoms os effectively - silly me.

Why is the pilot's union telling them to avoid the machines? (Honest question)

This woman should be applauded, her sticking up for the health of her children (those backscatter machine REALLY safe?) and their dignity (because "pat downs" are degrading). She was willing to get herself arrested to stand up for her children. We need more people like her.

Connect it to the Internet and use your Apple ID to download a fresh copy (it really is that simple).

Yeah, Apple have removed the floppy disk again... we'll adapt.

Yeah because every PC OEM includes reinstall media don't they? Oh, but they don't, they include a "reinstall partition" (which is no help if the drive is borked). I even saw a laptop (Acer I think) where you could only make one set of the reinstall media from the recovery partition! (Think about that for a while... yeah)

Apple are one of the few vendors who include a recovery DVD (currently), I think it highly likely they will continue to provide recovery media of some kind (I think it'll be a MacBook Air style USB thumb drive - no inside information here).

You can't copy a file across your network?! Seriously, think about it - you downloaded it, you're going to run it from the hard disk. Now how can you do that from another computer? Copy the file across the network perhaps?

I bet there will only USB thumb drive reinstall media - but personally I think that's better.

Or they boot from their existing media and use their Apple ID to re-download it (yes a huge hassle... but doable). Or probably more likely they take it to an Apple Store where a "genius" fixes it, and as part of that process they reload the OS... Just saying.

Err, for consumers it's better - installing from USB thumb drive is FAR faster... Sure, it costs a little more for Apple to supply it.

But here's an idea, when they do Mac OS X 10.8 it would be really easy to write that image over your install USB to keep it current.

Oh if there was ever a political movement to get behind it's this one! How many hours have been utterly wasted creating PowerPoint slides to be inflicted upon victims? How many times have I seen those damn "screen beans"? How often have we seen slides that seem to have "A Tale of Two Cities" on them, as some mindless monotone moron drones out some witless piffle?

Oh I hate PowerPoint... The crutch of the dull, the pointless, the vapid.

So I just need to move to Switzerland? Seems fair.

Ahh, but what frequency is your Wi-Fi? (Is it 802.11A, 802.11G or 802.11N?) Makes a HUGE difference.

But worse, the "web IT press" is actually worse... I miss PCW and Byte. Mind you, I miss the Amiga as well.

Anyway - I'm a "desktop" person, so I tend to just use an ethernet cable... I know, but I'm not carrying these monitors into the lounge, so why does it matter?

Look I totally agree with you. The system is a mess (I'm talking about the application - "SIMS") it is shocking that it simply doesn't work properly with Windows (because it really is working against Windows). I don't "blame" Microsoft at all for this. Pretty much EVERY UK school has the same setup. I can't change it, as I'm not the one looking after SIMS - it is frequently updated (mostly because stuff doesn't work properly, usually the updates break something else) again by the local authority, and wow they don't know what they're doing.

No matter what either of us think of it, this is the situation "on the ground". I have first hand experience of this, and seeing it installed is like watching someone wilfully break Windows security. The software just doesn't run otherwise. Users have to run it as administrator, up until very recently it didn't run in 64bit Windows (I know!) and UAC has to be switched off. It also makes Windows run VERY slowly. After the install, when the system reboots (yes the system has to reboot several times during install) the system is far slower than it was before the software was installed.

As I say, this is VERY common in UK schools (far in excess of 95% of schools run this stuff).

My point is there are a whole lot of Windows systems that HAVE to run in a way that anyone at Microsoft would probably weep at, to run legacy software. This "I'll just keep running it" attitude is endemic. It is one thing that just doesn't exist on the Mac - you simply can't, Apple take the legacy support away - quite quickly actually. It would be possible to improve Windows security a great deal faster, if they took a more "Apple approach" to legacy.

My point is legacy is the enemy of security.

When people complain that Windows Vista/7 won't run this or that bit of legacy software, and that they want better security - they are trying to argue both ends of the problem. You can't have your cake and eat it.