Ha! Very good. I think you're making my point better than I did. If I ever decide to become an evil dictator, I'll recommend you for a job at my propaganda ministry, so you can share this sort of thing with a wider audience.

That would be a flaw in the plan, if the plan were to kill people. But it isn't. The plan is to turn them into passive supporters of the regime, unwilling to offer any resistance, and quite possibly unable to comprehend why resistance might be important.

Now you mention it, "the ravings of a drug warrior" actually is a pretty good description of Huxley's "Brave New World"...

As an evil dictator I would not particularly care which drugs people took, or what they believed about the safety of those drugs. From my perspective, the effect would be the same - the people who might otherwise have resisted my power would happily stay at home instead.

Not mutually exclusive. As an evil dictator, you can do both. Take away real liberties and real rights for "security", and simultaneously grant the freedom to take drugs. It will be easy to fool the people into thinking that they are getting a good deal here.

Hmm, seems to me that an oppressive government would probably start by legalising drugs. How better to control the population than by limiting their desire and ability to rise up in revolt? The best sort of slavery is voluntary. Why imprison the people, when you can get them to imprison themselves?

As an evil dictator, your first move should be to legalise as many drugs as you can get away with. This will win you a lot of popular support in the short term, and in the long term, the people who might have become well-educated and clever opposition leaders might instead end up as poorly-educated drug users with severe mental health problems. You may commence your evil laughter now.

Well, I thought I was a Peter Jackson fan, but I guess I'm not, since real fans don't criticise.

I don't recall getting bored during the book at all. But I was bored during the film. It really dragged on. It's not so much the plot development and the story - those are fine. It's the action sequences. They are repetitive and interminable. Some of them could be cut out completely, while others could be significantly shortened, and the film would be better for it. There is a tradition of "fan edits" that make bad films better, c.f. "The Phantom Menace", and "The Hobbit" is in dire need of that treatment.

"The Hobbit" needs a fan edit to bring it below the two hour mark. This should be easy for part 1, though the real editing challenge would be to do it for the entire trilogy. Tricky, but possible, because it's not a long book.

I much preferred the LotR approach of releasing shorter versions to theaters and then releasing long versions on DVD for dedicated fans.

No, that's not quite right. Let me refer you here:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Establishment

The BBC certainly is part of the Establishment. But it is not part of the government.

I mention this because it's an essential part of understanding how our power structure works. Authority and privilege does not flow downwards from government. There is something above government, something more powerful than it, something which ultimately gives the government the authority to government. This we call the Establishment. It's the word you were looking for. But I don't know if this helps the argument you were making.

The word you are looking for is "Establishment".

The Establishment includes both Houses of Parliament, the Cabinet and the Civil Service - collectively, these are the government.

But it also includes the monarchy, and all the major national institutions - hospitals, courts, police forces, national broadcasters, unions, national newspapers, universities... All of these hold some authority and influence over the nation, though this power may be informal and wielded indirectly. For instance, the BBC's main power is its ability to command public opinion.

Mr. Dawkins doesn't go around beheading people for having different beliefs.

No, instead he merely calls them "uneducated, ignorant, probably stupid, too". And: "You've only got to talk to people who call themselves creationists to realize they haven't the faintest idea what the evidence is, or indeed, what evolution is."

Now, I am personally aware of a number of highly educated and intelligent people who also happen to be creationists. Each one of them can explain exactly what evolution is, and what the evidence is for it. They're not convinced. They have good reasons... reasons which I personally have trouble with, but which I can nevertheless respect.

But Dawkins has no respect for their dissent. He will call them stupid simply because their interpretation of the world is different to his own - as if he is omniscient, and in possession of all the facts. Is this not the height of arrogance? Is it not, in fact, intellectual bigotry?

Windows 7 included backup is quite capable. It can make full system images (bare metal) as well as pretty much any other type of backup you desire, either on demand or on a schedule. Recovery can be done from within windows, or by booting from the windows install disk, choosing repair, and selecting the option to restore from backup. If you only do a full system backup, remember to make a new one every once in a while, as it can be tedious to have to apply a long series of updates to an out-of-date backup.

That is useful to know. My concern about the WIndows Backup software was that it would only backup documents and settings, not the system and applications, but maybe I just did not look hard enough at the features in the Windows 7 version.

Indeed, this should work, but I prefer to use commercial tools for this purpose because I am still wary of open-source tools for reading/writing NTFS, being a veteran from the time where the kernel warned you not to use the "write" feature on the NTFS driver or bad things would happen.

For backup software I would rather pay for a licence, since it is so important that the job is done right, and the FS is restored without any corruption. Furthermore, the commercial tools don't require a reboot for backing up. In fact they can back up a mounted filesystem through VSS while it's in use (thanks, Microsoft).

I maintain a machine much like the one to be used by your son. You are right to give up on trying to get these games working in Wine. Even if you succeed, the next patch might break it. It creates an unreasonable amount of recurring effort, which you can avoid entirely for the cost of an OEM Windows licence, which is really, really cheap in comparison. Sure, this is not what Stallman would say, but then he does not support PCs for a family.

Here are some suggestions:

1. Windows 7 on a new laptop.

2. Install Microsoft Security Essentials. It's free (beer). Don't bother with Norton.

3. Create a regular user account for your son. Ensure the account is not able to modify system files without asking for the admin password. This prevents most of the nasty things malware tries to do. WIndows security is actually really good these days.

4. Order a Blizzard authenticator to go with WoW. This excludes more nasty things that malware might do... just in case!

5. Back up the machine after you install the games but before you hand it over to your son. Use backup software that will generate a disk image like Macrium Reflect Free Edition. Restore this disk image from a live CD (Reflect can create one for you) if your son has any problems. You have to use a full disk image for Windows because restoring an install is not just a matter of copying the files and rerunning update-grub.

6. When working with Windows, use the same patience you have to use when working with an unfamiliar Linux distribution. Don't expect everything to be straightforward or logical, and be pleasantly surprised when it is. The only extra thing you need to beware of, but Linux users do not, is that there are scam sites which offer to "help" you with common problems, e.g. device driver issues, and serve up malware instead of help. Good practice is to research Windows problems on a Linux machine.

Yes, particularly as this hack circumvents the need to pay for international iPlayer, where you pay a monthly fee for access to iPlayer programmes.

Though don't tell LibreOffice you want "PDF A/1-a" format (i.e. embedded fonts) because if you do, it will generate a broken PDF that Acrobat Reader(!!) will not be able to open.

"There was an error processing a page. Invalid colorspace."

Maybe having fewer options makes it easier to test for this sort of thing. I bet Word's PDF exporter has been tested with Acrobat Reader...