Yep, combine OS/2 with the PS/2 architecture, which was essentially plug-n-play as we know it today, and you had an awesome system. Unfortunately IBM had so much internal strife at the time combined with pure greed that it never really had a chance.

Control of the reproductive habits of others is deeply engrained in the animal kingdom, and we are indeed animals. I've always said that inorder to understand human psychology one need only observe the behavior of non-humans. We simply do it in a somewhat more convoluted and complex way usually, but everything, including those things normally ascribed solely to humans, are ultimately governed by our animal nature.

"I used to think the time would come
When man would rise above the beast
I gave up thinking that way long ago
In conversation with a priest"
                                                                      - Tears for Fears

Yabut... sometimes those kids need a bit of a thumping to get their fat arses *into* gym class in the first place.

Indeed I had that in mind when I posted *grin*. Seriously, I think ADHD as a medical condition is a product of the current belief that *any* sort of discipline meted out to a child is somehow destructive and will destroy their self esteem.

*Sigh* indeed...

Indeed, I wonder how many supposedly ADHD kids just really need a good thumping to keep them focused.

What Hitler did was to basically tell the German people to stop feeling sorry for themselves and start working together instead of going at each others throats, the basic rhetoric of any third-rate motivational speaker. Unfortunately he did that by putting the blame for Germany's problems on the Jewish race and others they saw as impure. If I'd been there in your shoes I would have pointed out the fact that whilst having food on the table in those times may have been a good thing, it wouldn't have done much good if for some reason the Nazi regime arbitrarily decided that they themselves were impure or immoral and had to be summarily eliminated, say because they found out that somewhere in the distant past they had a Jewish ancestor.

Lets say those people somehow had survived being thrown into a death camp and were talking to you at that point - I think they'd have a slightly different viewpoint.

In summary, as much as they would have enjoyed their plentiful food and jobs, the overall outcome for humanity far outweighed any benefit the individual. Also keep in mind that Hitler was ultimately a destructive personality and in fact achieved his goal of revenge on his parents through the destruction of Germany itself.

That brings to mind the period in which AOHell opened the floodgates and let their user base access the Internet. Suddenly the Net was inundated with the internet equivalent of trailer trash (sometimes quite literally) who were clueless about its workings and etiquette. At least those who signed up through a regular Internet provider were *somewhat* clued in and more than likely slightly higher educated.

Note that not all AOL users of the time were that bad, but there were enough of them to cause havoc.

No, it's our fault for being *cheap* with our spending.

I think that if the servers were developed manufactured "closer to home" there would certainly be less chance of introducing malicious code. In China there is an incentive by both common criminals *and* the Chinese government to exploit the opportunity to diddle with the firmware.

That said, I have no information on where the firmware was developed, so if the naughty bits were injected by someone on the US development team I must sincerely apologize to the Chinese. Ahem.

You do raise a good point. *We* the consumer have demanded the cheap prices of the hardware we buy, thus squeezing the profit margins of companies like Dell. Thus Dell is forced to outsource their firmware development and manufacture to China with too little oversight, leaving greater opportunity for exploitation by those with malicious intent.

This brings up an idea that may well help mitigate ATM skimming at the very least, and that is to redesign ATM machines such that they conform to a very particular design that is very distinctive and is easily recognizable to the consumer. Once the customer becomes used to the design, any anomaly in the appearance would give the consumer pause before their transaction.

I recently found out why Apple may have decided to eschew replaceable batteries. It makes the case so much more robust to have as few connection points as possible; in my case I left my iPhone on the roof of a car and it flew off whilst the car was going full speed. Luckily someone found it and I got it back with only one or two recognizable scratches.

However if this had had a battery compartment I can guarantee that it would have been a mess.

Well either way we don't know the gender of any other child born to this person. If it's just a silly bit of wording intended to mess with our heads due to word order then it's all a bit pointless.

It's already there, you just have to use Windows for a while and it will kill itself...

I think this may also be meant to work the other way, to wit: Should an extreme cyber attack be detected on a particularly sensitive system in a facility vital to national security, the government would want to be able to cut off access to it immediately. At least that's one scenario I can envisage...