Others such as Eli Lily or the UK Gov Dept of Pensions really don't need so many addresses

Someone in the UK government pointed that out recently - it turns out that "Dept of Pensions" allocation is actually used across most of the government as some sort of VPN extranet with various external contractors. Apparently, since they all use different RFC1918 blocks internally, they can't all be VPNed into any single RFC1918 block: they needed a globally-unique block for that purpose.

British Telecom uses the 30.0.0.0/8 block for managing all their customer modems - that block is actually allocated to the US DoD, but they don't allow external access to it anyway, so there's nothing to stop you using that block internally yourself as long as you don't need to communicate with any other networks using the same trick. Better than wasting an entire /8 of global address space just for internal administrative systems - or a /9, like Comcast grabbed back in 2010.

My inner geek - who cares about efficiency - would love to see all the legacy blocks revoked. I'm sure the DoD could use 10/8 instead of 30/8 quite easily for their non-routed block; the universities could easily fit in a /16 instead of a /8, or smaller with a bit of NAT. Still, we should be moving to IPv6 instead now: give each university and ISP a /48, or /32 for big complex networks needing multiple layers. I just have a nasty feeling we're in for a long time of CGNAT spreading instead - where we currently have ISPs that don't offer static IP addresses, in a few years they'll be refusing to issue anything other than a NATted 100.64/16 address.

Firefox is open-source, so technically it is your fault that its spell check is so bad. </logic-nazi> :-P

Well, as I'm a Mac person these days, I've swapped out those sorts of issues for the ones that Apple produce. ;) About the only thing I really miss from Windows is the certainty of knowing when the next lot of security updates are due - at the moment, they're so slack they make Adobe look on-the-ball.

...yeah, if I've gotten a slipstreamed install disc with SP3 on it, I could have saved myself a lot of time when I did the same experiment. *shrug*

Out of interest, which version of IE did it have after install completed? I see you were prompted to upgrade to IE8, but my memory is hazy on whether IE7 was ever included on later XP install discs.

I'm aware you can still get XP discs second-hand or ex-stock here in the UK - Amazon lists several versions, although some look suspiciously like they may be OEM versions that are tied to specific brand/model PCs. I'm not aware of any PC maker here in the UK offering an XP options, though - maybe Windows 7, for business systems and workstations.

I recently wiped my old (2003 vintage) laptop, which originally came with XP, and installed Linux Mint - considering the machine's specs, it works fairly well.

I've read about ReactOS, but given the slow pace of progress I regard it as curiosity rather than a viable alternative.

Seriously. I remember trying out the preview version on my then-XP-running PC back in 2009, and being blown away by a) how much easier it was to install and get going, b) how well it ran all my existing software, c) how it let me finally use all of the memory installed in my machine, d) how much better it was than Vista. I pre-ordered a copy soon after, and the rest is history. Now, on my Mac, I have my Windows 7 VM for running various applications I still use.

Installing Windows XP today is not nearly as fun as you might think, particularly if you've got a pre-SP2 copy. When I tried it, I had to manually install some patches just to get Windows Update working, then some more before I could install IE8, and some more before I could install MSE. And then all the patches to bring the whole lot up-to-date - that took hours and hours to finish. I'd only recommend trying it if you're installing onto a machine that you don't actually need to use for a good while.

As for the 'but it's tried and tested" argument for hanging onto XP, I would point to the number of flaws that are still being uncovered in the Windows codebase, many of which are also in XP. Yes, you can mitigate against some by hardening your system, running only as a standard user, etc. - but for most current XP installs that will probably mean extra aggravation caused by third-party software written back in the Bad Old Days that expects to run with full admin privileges.

The only excuse for continuing with XP, to my mind, other than sheer obstinacy, is where you've got systems that absolutely, positively require XP running on physical hardware - specialised hardware or software that won't work via a VM because they need direct access through physical ports. Such systems should be segregated from local networks and the Internet as much as possible.

I wonder when microsoft will get around to getting their vendors to stop accepting kickbacks for shitty adware on new systems.
This practice is one of the reasons why I still build my own desktop systems. Getting rid of the junk is a massive hassle, and restoration of the system from partition brings it all back.

I hate the usual crap that gets shovelled on too, but to be fair Microsoft have apparently been pushing against that for a few years now for exactly that reason. Of course, they need to tread carefully there for legal reasons: if they block, say, Dell bundling a limited-time version of Norton Anti-virus, Dell won't be happy (they lose the $5 or whatever kickback) and Symantec will probably lawyer up and come knocking, particularly with Microsoft offering their own AV product now. Remember all the fallout when they killed off Netscape, when they stopped IBM from bundling OS/2 as a dual-boot setup with Windows? We both know this is different, but Microsoft's lawyers are apparently paranoid about crossing that line again.
I'm told they also offer crapware-free machines in their own stores, which makes sense. I just wish they'd make OEMs ship a plain vanilla Windows install disk like they used to, no more "restore" BS - so anyone wanting a clean machine can just re-install.

Damn it /. - I logged in to post that message. WTF?!

NetCraft confirms it! ;)

...a Beowulf Cluster of Circular Refuges. Across all of the social networks. Covered in hot grits. ;)

The article does not make it clear that the satellite signals in question are those of ARINC's ACARS data system, developed in 1978.

Probably because ACARS was turned off hours earlier in the flight, back before the aircraft flew back over Malaysia! Had it been active, ACARS would have reported the aircraft's location, altitude, speed and other useful data, making finding it much easier; it was switched off with the other cockpit systems, though, leaving just the Inmarsat terminal's hourly "ping" active, so until the Doppler analysis, all they knew was the distance between the satellite and aircraft.

I come at this from a completely different viewpoint, having only recently dipped my toes into Linux - for me, a package manager is a relatively new concept. The nearest I've come to it previously has been with Apple's App Store, both for iOS and now OSX - plenty of choice, sometimes too much choice.

As far as manually installing apps goes, it usually boils down to double-clicking on the DMG file to mount it, then either running the installation package or dragging the app file to your Applications folder.

In theory, uninstalling apps is as simple as dragging the app file to the Trash. I say 'in theory' because apps do leave behind some detritus formed by using them - thankfully not to the same degree as Windows, but it is there. For suites of apps like Microsoft Office or Adobe Creative Cloud, there tends to be a lot more extra stuff deposited onto your system besides the apps themselves.

Sadly, updates do tend to be on a per-app basis, with the exception of those acquired through the App Store, which handles the update process.