But it's an iPad Mini 2. I suppose it's a good deal as a gift for grandma.

What is the value of being able to control your own OS?

Keep board games handy. Everyone can play and interact like a real family and your kids won't end up as pedos on 8chan.

These "hackers" just made Christmas a lot less Merry for many children that just got some nice new Christmas presents.

Screw 'em. Take a day off gaming. If they can't find something else fun to do besides play on their XboxOne or PS4 for one single Christmas Day, then you've been a shitty parent. Next thing you know they're gonna start talking about ethics in game journalism and SJWs and then you have to drown them.

Better they learn now that not all gratification is instant, and an online first-person shooter whenever you want it is not a basic human right.

You'll thank me later.

The kernel and friends manage hotplug devices quite nicely.
I take that to mean you want a clickity-click GUI, so you can see what the system has already detected and handled properly for you, and do things without needing to understand what you're doing. If that's what you're looking for, hardinfo is a well-known option. Your choice of graphical desktop environment probably has one it provides by default as well. Look under "System" or similar.

Offense arises because of difference

... further qualification is unnecessary.

As the UKIPper next to me in the operations department here amply demonstrates. Difference is to be abolished - all differences from the One True Person - him.

Needless to say, by disagreeing, I mark myself as an un-person.

A successful strategy for millennia. not.

Why on earth would you need to fly somewhere to apply a software update ???

Just as one hypothesis : air-gapped location. Materials go in (and the bill of lading etc are scanned with a bar code scanner), product goes out with a printed book of certification. Orders, plans and designs come in on hardware of considerable obscurity making it really difficult to get a virus into the system.

tldr version : Stuxnet ; NSA.

That hawk video is impressive. I know just the guy for the job, smart as heck and he works on machine vision and drones, but early proposals have to be done January 6th.

They didn't have the book I wanted:

http://athenae25.files.wordpre...

Like chicken fried steak, for starters....

*shrug* I'm sure you say plenty of stuff that would sound weird to me.

Did you read my message? I was referring to something JJ Abrams has said about his use of lens flares and the reason for them. I didn't say he was the first. My point about Babylon 5 wasn't about the quality or means of creation of the lens flare effects, but their result in terms of the overall atmosphere and sense of illusion. If you're looking for an argument, argue what I wrote. Otherwise it's just boring.

If you want malls, freeways, and fiber, live in town.
If you want wide open spaces, live out in the country.

If you insist on having a fiber line run two miles across your neighbors' pastures to reach you, the only interested customer on your road, you can get that too. That two miles of trenching and fiber work isn't going to be cheap - I've priced it.

Remember that Glasgow is also the place where if you botch a terror act on an airport you get a kicking from some guy whose cigarette break you disturbed. Even though you're already on fire.

> your description would paint Bush as a liberal. What with his pet project to fix Iraq, bailouts for failed corporate ventures

And indeed Bush Jr's approval rating among republicans was nearly as bad as Obama's among Democrats. Rush Limbaugh and Sean Hannity regularly took him to task. They much preferred the elder Bush, who made a clear decision to NOT invade Iraq. I myself criticized junior on national radio, based on the argument that he was not following conservative principles.