I agree with Prometheus being a big pile of poop, but Alien was superb - it had buckets of claustrophobia and tension. (Aliens was directed by James Cameron, so I assume that you meant Alien).

The credit card issuers do have some security in place - they confirm the identity of the card-holder with various questions. However, in this case, the credit card company weren't contacted and were obviously unable to confirm or deny the card-holder's identity.

As the bank didn't provide an override code and have no record of providing an override code, why should they accept liability?

I found the book kind of slow going at the beginning, but I really enjoyed the book-within-the-book recursion whereby there's a book written about an alternate reality where the Allies won World War II.

I often delete the relevant /etc/udev/rules.d/ files if I'm installing a virtual image as the changing MACs and UUIDs can be more complex to manage. Sometimes, you know that the machine will only ever have one disk and one network card.

You're right. Most of the updates I've done on a variety of Linux boxes have not caused any problems - even upgrading from different OS versions (e.g. Ubuntu 12.04 -> Ubuntu 14.04) have proceeded fine. There have been a few occasions where Grub has got confused or distribution upgrades have failed due to LD_LIBRARY_PATH being set etc. However, every OS has had issues with bugs and updates.

You shouldn't need to make a bootable USB as typically, you'd have the media that you originally installed the OS with (DVD or USB or network install). If not, then it's easy to borrow someone else's system long enough to download and burn another copy of it (unless you're in Windows OEM hell).

It's a shame you didn't persist as most boot/grub errors are generally quite easy to fix. Most of the time, you can boot from CD/usb stick and repair the grub install within about 5 minutes.

Still, if you don't want to use it, use something else. Choice and competition are good.

Huh? I've heard of commercial companies getting criticised for not giving back code changes even though they're making money from OSS, but I think you're very mistaken.

My experience is the opposite of yours with installing Windows/Linux. I've found that ghosting Windows installs requires that the hardware be virtually identical. Having a different disk controller, or switching between ATA and AHCI modes usually causes blue screens and failure to boot. Any modern Linux distro, however can quite happily run even by putting the installed hard disk into a completely different machine.

That actually sounds interesting as they'll need to get a machine to be able to repeatedly interpret polygraphs when the current usage depends entirely on the examiner's judgement (or guesses).

It should be relatively easy to fake a robotic polygraph - just clench your buttocks at the right time.

In general, though, aren't the speeds increasing rather than decreasing?

And, if it's put to the public as '100 spying incidents on members of opposition parties or a document format that is completely free and belongs to the people', then I imagine you'll get a different response.

I'm curious, you seem to have a strong pro-microsoft agenda here. Why is that? (or are you just getting a bit old and are afraid of new-fangled technology)?

Sorry, I might have been using too much irony for you. Do you not find it amusing that a person complaining that "privacy violation is complete bullshit" is posting that as an Anonymous Coward? They obviously do care about privacy whilst also decrying it.

I'm a big fan of Anonymous Cowards in general and I'm not attacking the messenger - it's just funny considering what was said. Personally, I do use a PS3 and I'm not concerned about what code is running on it largely because Sony is too incompetent to be truly evil. However, open BD code would be useful as I stream from Linux using PS3MediaServer.