Such "contracts" hold little to no water in the UK, which is why Trading Standards is involved - this hotel is going to get buttfucked from here to Singapore by quite a few government bodies over this, and quite probably lose their merchant status for accepting cards.

Have you seem the list of CA root certs in a normal browser install these days? Its in the dozens, if not hundreds. A signed cert by any one of those is equally good for any site, unless you are also checking known signatures...

If we can do this in a 250 employee company (and have done it since we had more than a handful of users), anyone can do it. And what, precisely, do you need in way of resources - select a subset of computers, roll out the patch, if nothing bad has happened after a working day, roll the patch out to the next batch and so on.

If you are "rolling the dice" then you are a fucking pathetic sysadmin and should be banned from being responsible for patching anything.

If you roll out your patches the moment they come in, you are a retard - what ever happened to testing them in a subset of your organisation before releasing them to the general population, or do you enjoy running around like a headless chicken when theres a compatibility conflict?

Hehe, so in this case a Slashdotter thinks you should be able to get details without a court order, but when the RIAA or MPAA wants details its a completely different situation...

So you need to solve the issue of electricity, internet access, education to read and write, education to read and write English, and the inapplicability of most modern hints and tips to subsistence farming that goes on in most of sub Saharan Africa, and also local crops.

In most cases, the local farmers know how to get the most out of their land, that isn't the problem - its that getting the most out of their land does fuck all for them, it won't raise them out of poverty, just like it didn't raise their parents out of poverty.

And in most of Africa, it isn't the local officials which stand in the way of these sort of things, its the locals themselves - I have extensive experience of Uganda, Namibia, Botswana and other countries, and in pretty much all cases its the locals which reject real means of raising themselves out of poverty because they haven't changed their mind set about what is important. One of our friends is a qualified nurse, and all of his siblings have been through similar education, while his father cannot read or write, cannot speak English, and still lives in a mountain village with no running water, no electricity, and a several hour drive to a tarmac road. So how did he do it? He sold his land. Was it easy? No, the rest of the villagers derided him for selling his ancestral land and no one would buy the land off him for three years. But now he has seven educated children, and a comfortable retirement ahead of him, while he has already outlasted Ugandas average life expectancy...

In another case, my wife treated a man who had been put through university - be came to the hospital with a growth. Except he came far too late - he had had the local village "doctor" treat it for years, only coming when it started bleeding. Cancer, spread to the bone - he died later that night. Wasted money.

Its not technology, education, medicine, or farming hints and tips that is needed, its a fucking huge epiphany by the locals.

And Microsoft should support 3-4 year old phones... why exactly?

What the fuck are you talking about? Windows 8 runs just as good as Windows 7 on hardware released pre-Windows 8. Haven't noticed any issues at all on any of my systems that ran Windows 7 prior to Windows 8.

Stop spouting bullshit.

And what is the "protected area"?

I'm in the UK - thats how public liability works here. You can sue anyone you want over anything, but as a business you are required to have that liability covered, while as an individual you are not.

I can already cook and make meals for my friends, why do I need various licenses and inspections to open a restaurant for someone other than a friend / family member?

My home has perfectly fine accident damage for when I invite friends and family over, so why do I need public liability insurance if I then choose to run a business from it that involved people coming over?

Hint - when you aren't doing something for profit, that is taken into account in liability cases. The moment you intend to make a profit from the action, your liability changes and so you need additional insurance to cover it. When running a business in both your own and my examples, the standard that you are held to changes dramatically, even when there is a comparable non-business version of your actions.

So how do we know you aren't a paid AMD shill rubbishing Nvidia for higher sales?

Of course it has limits, they dont have to give everything away for free.

I take it you missed the large Windows offering on AWS then...?

Actually it is free if you want VS integration - Ximarin announced today they were making their Starter offering, which is free, better and also making it integrate with VS like their higher paid offerings.