You have a point, but I think it should be dealt with on a case-by-case basis. The Lay case involved someone dying soon after conviction, so the money could have been pulled back quickly. OTOH, if his family had managed to blow it all in a few weeks, perhaps with the aim of making it inaccessible, then I would have no sympathy with them anyway.

Someone coming for $100 after 20 years is possible but unlikely - an edge case.

Try to find it though.

You are new at this crime busines aren't you. Criminals tend to have no posessions. I was one of several involved in a fraudster being taken to court. Everything about him was in the style of a wealthy man - drove a up market car, had a big house in the best part of town etc. But it turned out he owned nothing . Everything you saw about him belonged to his wife, as she testified. The crime did not, it seemed, qualify for a jail sentence (as some guys here will be delighted to learn), so the guy walked free and unscathed.

The trouble with that is that it requires huge administration and monitoring. Where is this army of officials who are going to stand over these penitent offenders mowing lawns and sweeping streets, to ensure that they don't just bugger off home or, worse, back to their usual haunts and gang? Prison is efficient in that a small number of jailers can oversee a couple of magnitudes higher number of prisoners. Jeez, we are told that even that is expensive.

Yes, it is cheaper still just to tell an offender to go and sweep the streets, but unless he is monitored he will just laugh as soon as he gets round the corner, and all the way home too.

Actually, cons were once made to do useful work. Typically they were made to break up stones in quarries. But earnest activists declared that it was inhumane.

Paraphrasing that : "Most burglars who break down my door are not stopped by my door". Brilliant.

How do you know how many crimes are prevented by the threat of jail? You imply yourself that those not committing crimes are considering the risk. Despite considering myself a moderate person, I am sure that I would have committed a few "crimes" in my life if there were no risk of punishment, so I have taken the risk into account, and I am sure I am not alone.

It is not punishing his family. It is restoring them to the status they would have been in if the culprit had not committed his crime. Which is as it should be.

That is a newspaper article trying to wind up the readers. The article us utter crap; for example :-

I must say I don't get what the "almost laughable" joke is supposed to be. I am an ex-naval officer, and the navy, like any military, has all sorts of plans on paper for all sorts of scenarios. They are mostly hypothetical and done as staff excercises. Many would be politically sensitive. Of course there will be outline plans for the loss of Scottish bases, but to publish them right now would be pre-judging the referendum. Independence is not going to occur the day after the referendum, there will be a vast amount of sorting out to do in which closing a naval base will be a drop in the ocean.

The "fate of some of the most powerful weapons on Earth" is not at all uncertain. "Fate" is a strong word for moving some submarines along the coast - the journo makes it sound as is they might be given to al Qaeda. No doubt they will be moved to somewhere else on the English or Welsh coast. Milford Haven would be ideal, but that might be politically sensitive, being in Wales. Cumberland more likely. It won't be in a city like Portsmouth or Plymouth unless temporarily.

FTFA :- "Right now, the choice is clear. Britain must stop playing games and acknowledge or publish a backup plan" No need unless and until the referendum votes for independence. I don't see any games there. This is a journo wishing he had something to wroite about already.

How would that be ad-free? If you pay for a paper copy of the Daily Mail you get ads. Also, you are assuming I only use You-Tube, Slashdot. Reddit or the Daily Mail. I fact I use many different websites so without paying a fortune in ad-free subs I would see many ads.

Democracy is it? Where do I get to vote?

I think that the GP in his post as a whole was talking about the wider picture, not just whether a Webmaster was making money by click-throughs. The wider picture is whether people actually buy stuff even if they do click through.

None of that would be an issue if it were pre-installed like Windows usually is.

Linux will be pre-installed on most PCs when it is the Year of the Linux Desktop.

The Year of the Linux Desktop will be when Linux is pre-installed on most PCs.

As far as Joe Sixpack and Granny are concerned, browsing porn and cat videos (respectively) on Facebook, it will make f#@k-all difference to them.

Unfortunately they fail sometimes and need replacing. But I believe they will always be availble - look at the Hi-Fi world where heavyweight "professional" kit is still an industry despite iPods etc, and the SLR camera market where you can still buy a massive Hasselblad (>$20,000) despite everyone else having a phone camera. It baffles me why someone would want to use a laptop (or anything even more portable) when it stays in one place all the time. I am even thinking of screwing my (heavy IBM AT) keyboard and trackball to my desk because they slide a bit sometimes. I use something more portable only when I am travelling, or at home, occasionally, when using in another room.

What will change is that desktops will become "professional" kit. There will be no more of the bargains that we have got used to. I paid 1200GBP for my first desktop in c1995, the equivalent of maybe 3000GBP today. That was an enthusiast/professional price, and that is what it will return to.

I can beat that. Some parts of my desktop here are >20 years old, and the m'board is 8. Bits fail now and then and I replace piecemeal.

I entirely agree that Mint are idiots for using Ubuntu repositories. Ubuntu in turn is based on Debian, so why don't Mint (and certain other distros) use Debian repositories and cut out the (dodgy in this case) middle man?

I'm not mocking, but people's reaction depends on how you phrase your argument. Yours looked reasonable until the third paragraph, but turned into a flame itself after that. I am always complaining about certain Linux issues on more technical forums than this one, but I think I am nevertheless respected for making my points effectively. There is indeed a lot wrong with Linux (it's certainly not "gold"); but I use it because the alternatives are even worse IMHO.

Means the same thing. Only thing wrong is that he did not capitalise the "A" in Apple (nor you).

No, MS do not need to hold a gun or say anything.

Any hardware maker, unless they are very very specialised, will first write drivers for Windows simply because ~95% of their market is going to be Windows users. After that they might write drivers for Linux perhaps to pick up a few more sales (like that's why I buy HP printers) and/or just in case next year really does become the year of the Linux desktop.