I have an iBook - I always liked the look of the thing when it came out and around 2005 when it was no longer the current model, I bought a grey&white 366mhz, 10gb HDD iBook and the matching curve-shaped bag via eBay

Its had intermittent periods of use as and when I needed an extra machine, and although now 14 years old, with RAM upgraded to 392mb, an aftermarket battery giving 7 hours on a charge and OSX 10.3.9 installed, it still works. HOWEVER - it has an original Apple Airport card (probably worth more than the laptop & bag put together...) and these dont work with WPA2 or with any 802.11n router - they just wont connect.

So its just become a curiosity on the shelf - a machine with only one USB port is hopelessly compromised by using an external Wifi adapter.

Too expensive! Got a pair of Laptop 2.5 SATA HDDs in big plastic cases fitted inside my Dell desktop. Minimal performance loss compared to a 3.5 inch drive but so much quieter. Removed the optical drive completely and use an external USB2 drive as and when needed

And an O.B.E for services to humanity

We get tornadoes, just not often. Perhaps a few dozen a year - in my life I've only seen one once (I was driving at night and it crossed the road from one side to the other 100 yards in front of me - scared the crap out of me).

As a result they are much discussed over cups of tea when they occur. The national obsession with cats has made this the news story of the year

especially so if you buy one of the many chinese phones sold as carrier-own handsets in Europe (most made by ZTE) - pretty good average spec, much faster than an N900, better screens, fairly minimal Android installs

Its genuinely inappropriate for a menu to cover the entire screen

I hope that means a proper menu with expanding options off it - not the 'fuck you' compromise in Windows 8.1 where a 'start button' brings up the supershitty touch interface

the real trick is to start chrome browser, start Fabrice Bellard's javascript x86 virtual machine in Chrome, start Chrome OS on the VM, start Chrome on Chrome OS, then once you've got an infinite software defined hardware loop running, just unplug the physical hardware and put it away

In case some people don't RTFA,

Emphasis mine. XP updates ARE ending, but MSE/Forefront will still get updated. XP will still be susceptible to any zero day until it gets detected by MSE--if it's even installed at all. This is a marginal increase in safety for XP post-EOL, at best. The apocalypse is still nigh.

My advice for fellow ITAs. Don't mention this to your boss at all if you're still trying to migrate. It's not really relevant to the threat posed by XP's end of support. If they get wind of it on their own, emphasize that XP itself is still going to be wide open. At best all MSE does is let you know you've been owned after the fact once MS gets around to updating the definitions. MSE already has a pretty poor record for detecting even older threats. It's better than nothing but you shouldn't be relying on it.

It's theoretically possible that they don't bother submitting requests unless they are highly confident it will be accepted. I don't believe that, but it's at least possible. We need to know more about the process and the types of requests--unfortunately that's difficult with a secret court.

Babel

Tracks, if he likes it HO-gauge

If proven true in court, this justifies a boycott of Oracle products by all us techies until Oracle produce an open salary audit proving no racial differentials between staff at the same locations. The allegation if true is disgraceful

Signature apps are what makes platforms. For an odd and interesting example, look up 'Torque App' - I wont provide a link as I'm not involved or any sort of freelance marketer - basically its an app that allows an Android smartphone or tablet to directly interact (via a US$10 bluetooth OBD2 adapter) with the ECUs of a running vehicle, allowing dynamic logging of hundreds of variables, live display of most of them, changing of vehicle settings on the fly, resetting of glitching systems, reading and clearing error codes, optimisation of fuel economy....

In the performance and economy/environmental motoring worlds as well as the home-based car repair fraternity this app has such a following it influences phone handset or tablet choice among whole forums. iPhone doesnt have a comparable app - well there's one but it requires a particular adapter that costs a lot, and doesnt do as much. Windows store also has a few apps but none of the have the following or the universal recognition, and some are reported as having problems with bluetooth adapters.

For me, what Windows store needs is the sorts of apps that are making waves already on mobile devices,not bastardised versions of Windows desktop apps. It may be too late.

Unfortunately Win8 and RT arent really compatible, they're barely even cross-compileable. Your developer would have to write / rewrite & maintain a separate RT version codebase of every app. Which has killed the main reason for Windows RT stone dead.