It snowed in December in New South Wales, Australia in 2010. Southern hemisphere's summer.

What about Personalbrain? It is a multi level mind-mapping software, which is flexible enough to be used for a graphical tree of the family. Doesn't have the genealogy stuff built in but makes it easier to do funny and interesting anecdotes if you are trying to put together a living memory family history. 'course in that case you could also just use freemind for purely in OSS. Genealogy is hard and lengthy. 4 days to do it? eep.

(Lisp().)

http://faxmate.com.au/. You are tied (heh) to a email account, not a physical location. Good stuff. There should be something available for the rest of the world. Good luck.

You are still paying to watch the ads. I don't mind watching a preview or two, but sitting in the cinema and being told downloading is stealing is a bit hard to take.

Paying to be told the industry is dying, when the apparent evidence is to the contrary... /facepalm

Heh, seems we must do it differently here (Qld, Australia). You make it sound like you go to a bar to sing!? Bars are for drinking at.

Here you go to a bar for a quiet beer, watch some hotties dance and watch sport on the Bigscreen. Then some dickhead sets up a mic to the sound system, replaces the sport/video clips* with words and then encourage other dickheads to sing.

I don't know what *caffeinated* soap is. Another TV show that hasn't been imported to Australia?

It isn't the 'singing' people can reasonably object to; it is the 'in public' that the problem lies. Of course, often once the latter occurs, the former becomes objectionable too.

And you contributed/rebutted the argument how? I suppose gp was supposed to google/bing/whoop it?

Actually, it is reasonable to assume that the past reoccurring actions is a fair indication of the likelihood that it has happened again. That is why prosecution love to show to the jury that the defendant has done bad thing before, so probably did it this time. Now, that isn't enough to make a conviction, but it swings the bias in that way. Other evidence is then easier to believe.

The only logical fallacy that is made is to exclude a student from making an abysmally unintelligent decision as well.

I do grunt IT work at a school* and any laptops that are returned are not even checked to see if there is an OS on the computer. They are just wiped and prepped for the next user, ad infinitum.

We have been instructed that unless we are told by judicial authorities (i.e., above the principal) we are not to browse the data on the computer. Anything that would warrant our examination of the data would be handed over to the police to do anyway. If it has been returned and the user comes back asking for data, we are to report the computer has already been wiped, and why didn't they have a backup? (Politely and professionally.) We should not ever put ourselves in a legal position where we could accidentally have come across suspicious data. Whether your organisation owns the laptop or you are performing services on someones personal laptop^, that is the only way to behave ethically and professionally unless you are undertaking the action under advised investigations.

We only look at the user data when requested by the user, using their login. Technically, we should only be guiding the user to do what they are requesting with their data, but of course that is too slow...

So ethically it still remains there is something dodgy about the schools side of the story if it was 'accidentally found'. It may be legal, but I wouldn't want to work at that school; it would make me dirty.

*Australian, so maybe there are caveats.
^On someone personal laptop, a professional would take an image of the hdd/s to restore in a pinch. I mostly meet that standard.

That would be the internets blocking the view.

So do it the other way.

Install OpenOffice demonstrate the files aren't necessarily in Word and uninstall OO.org

Nah, while some kids will follow right up to the goody two shoes path* , there is just as often children who will follow all the way down to the bad to the bone at the end of the character continuum.

Take a look at my very scientific behaviour scale.

Goody Two Shoes

^point of annoyance

^roughly middle
most people about here

^hard work from here on in.

Bad to the Bone.

It isn't that people are inherently evil. I believe that it is easier to be bad and/or difficult without reason, at the very least it is easier to be selfish; it takes effort for most people to be exceptional, well behaved and a pleasure to be around*.

Hence, most efforts to turn children into the metaphorical angels only results in fairly good people. Hardly anyone actively tries to turn (their own) children in to their own definition of evil, because it generally doesn't take much effort.

Of course this only relates to behaviour, not to intentions. The scale doesn't measure the evilness of excessive subservience or other alleged character defaults that may result in an evil outcome. It does assume that people can be 'too good'# just as people can be too happy**

* Would nominating myself as an example of an exception be evil?
** Just thinking of every aerobics instructor I ever knew... *shudder*
# It is scientifically doubtful that their intentions align with their actions

Please ignore the following.

Tested this theory and it doesn't work. (Tested on wife and girlfriends; none reciprocated in any appreciable manner. 'Treat them mean keep them keen' works much better on a universal basis.