With the latest exploits talking about dormant BIOS exploits impossible to remove without a JTAG hardware programmer, or USB port reprogramming with direct access to your memory... I'm afraid the worse is yet to come. This kind of exploit is mostly OS agnostic (plug in the wrong USB device and get completely owned), directly on hardware, undetectable, etc... If the authors want to keep it dormant for long periods they can.

When the first bots started I wish the internet providers had taken steps to completely block the internet access to the clueless owners of owned Windows systems. Show them a captive page with a short explanation why, and a download of an antivirus. No internet access until then. But this should have been done over 15 years ago.

Not necessarily because by then you'll have a loan on an expensive house, a bunch of kids on the way and a greedy mistress.

Interestingly, in France we call them chauffeurs, as in heaters. Because they used to have to shovel coal under the steam engine long before they could start them. And taxi and truck drivers are still called this way. Etymology...

A former boss once told me: "Whenever you think of a clever programming trick: forget it !". At the time I thought it was a joke, but now with experience I see the wisdom of that.

"In the future, airplanes will be flown by a dog and a pilot. And the dog's job will be to make sure that if the pilot tries to touch any of the buttons, the dog bites him." -- Scott Adams (of Dilbert fame)

Looking at the latest event in France, I'm pretty sure that time is not very far ahead.

Go on the first line, press Ctrl-K (yes the line disappears because it's actually a cut), press Ctrl-K again on all the next lines you want to copy. When done press Ctrl-U to paste back your text. Move to when you want to paste, press Ctrl-U again. Done.

Thank god for that.

I enjoy your comics and like most of those you cite. Will check on the others.

I'm not sure using one of the most stupid and brutish sport in existence as an analogy on the subject of education really goes in the right direction...

Errr... it's usually quite simple: if you don't know something you are ignorant. If you do, then you aren't. It's not a relative concept.

Oh, you must be one of those 'idiots' I keep hearing about on the Internet. It's OK to be ignorant. It's not OK to wear your ignorance as a badge and hit others on the head with it.

I currently live in Europe and tried to get a Linux Laptop about 2 years ago. I tried several barebone sellers, but there were always problems: either they wouldn't ship to my country, or they'd force the local keyboard upon me, but I wanted a standard US qwerty. In the end, the ONLY seller of Linux laptops that had what I wanted was... Dell ! And that's what I got for home, work and wife. Works fine with Ubuntu.

Or what if your work actually FORBIDS you to reveal your password to anyone, under various penalties ? I'd like to see a high US official pass through customs and watch a random rent-a-cop get his password and copy all his files. Right, like this is gonna happen.

In Italy the elections last two days: sunday and monday, this way whether you are away on WE or need to work on monday, you don't have an excuse to not show at the booth. And incidentally it gives the mafia the entire night to stuff the ballot boxes...

Don't forget that Dell also sells Linux laptops, even if the options are really well hidden on their websites. We have plenty at work and I'm typing this one one. Though, as many have pointed out here, increasingly more colleagues use Macs.