Linux OSes promote themselves on their security but they're against one of the things that is designed to circumvent stuff like infected bootloaders because they'll have to do a little bit of additional certifying of their OS bootloader?

It depends on whether your country has implemented the EU directive or not. We haven't here in the UK and we don't want to as our Sale of Goods Act rules are stronger than the EU directive in many ways. There is no such thing as a fixed guarantee - goods should last for a reasonably expected lifetime.

Of course you were....

There speaks someone too young to remember Windows 3.x. Compared to DOS/Windows 3.1x, Win9x was an absolute dream. Before Windows 95 there was no such thing as plug'n'play hardware. Certainly most of the people now building and upgrading PCs would not be doing it if things were the way they used to be because you had to know about IRQs, DMA and hardware memory addresses, what was already in use in the machine and how to manually configure system files to use the hardware. You were also limited to how much you could put in a machine because there was no such thing as IRQ sharing.

I don't see many college students typing up their homework on their iPhone.

SCC isn't law. It is a set of rules for the school.

I am actually from the East Riding. This was Hull Social Services, not the East Ridings. Hull is a separate local authority.

...apart from the spell checker you're using.

Looks at GCHQ listening post 20 miles away.....Yes, yes they are.

Average Joe isn't frightened at all, certainly not to this extent. Unfortunately there are morons in the civil service who need to justify their jobs and departments at Whitehall that need to protect their budgets so make cleverly worded proposals to members of the Cabinet who then propose such nonsense in the name of the "war on terror". I'm still trying to work out who we have to fear now the Islamic Fundalmentalist Bin Laden is no longer here and the gobshyte clerics such as Abu Hamsa and his mate Qtada are regarded as a bit of a joke by Average Joe.

Judging on how much time and money Apple are spending trying to block the sale of the Samsung Galaxy S2 it must be one hell of a good phone. One could almost deduce that Apple think its actually better than their iPhone 4S with the amount of attention they're giving it. Might be worth looking at the Galaxy S2......

No they're not. My Netgear DGND3300 allows me to set up two wifi networks with one being a guest. Each has its own SSID, security key and I can choose to allow the guest wifi network access to the primary wifi and wired.

I can set up a guest wifi network on my router that has a separate WEP/WPA key and does not allow access to the other wired/wifi network unless I specifically say it can. Its a Netgear DGND3300v2 if thats any help...

This is just getting stupid beyond the point of belief. Next they'll be trying to patent using a battery to power the phone.

What they don't realise though is that shit like this puts people off. Certainly my 3 year old MBP is about ready for replacement whilst it still has some resale value and I am seriously considering whether to give my money to these asshats. Plenty of corporate grade laptops with the same quality for the same money and I'm as happy running Linux as I am OS X.

Are sales of TV an accurate guide anymore? If someone has a computer, they can get a tuner for it assuming it doesn't have one already so does that make sales of TV a good indicator? And then there are those in the age range who will have had a TV when they lived at home with their parents and take it with them when they move out.