Crazy, isn't it?

Evidently, there is some unwritten law that states that Geolocation by IP address shall override any and all set preferences by the user on their device, and ignore any possibility that barring or redirecting the user makes no sense.

I get a version of this periodically on Spotify, where I'm informed that the particular album or single I'm looking at can't be played because it isn't licensed to my region. And of course there's the small matter of my being IP-blocked from Pandora Radio for the same reason.

I ran into a particularly nasty geolocation issue back in late 2012, when I was informed that I couldn't access my National Lottery account because they no longer believed that I was accessing it from the UK. Went back and forth between them and my ISP (VirginMedia), with each blaming the other for the problem.

I've also heard of situations where people have found the books on their Kindles vanishing because they're holidaying in an area where said books aren't licensed.

Glad to hear you survived! ^^;

Alerting you to login attempts from new locations or devices, and offer two-factor authentication, will slow down the hackers for a time.

But the answer, for most service providers, is to tell the user that it's their problem now.

Consider yourself lucky, then - SMS spam seems to be pretty common here in the UK. Even my parents occasionally get hit.

I've been fortunate so far - I don't have any fellow iPhone users that I regularly communicate with via said device. I've now turned off iMessage, so hopefully all texts should go out as SMS.

My personal bugbear with my iPhone is the number of steps required to block a number from Messages. As I use my mobile number as a contact for business, my number is public, and as a result I've started getting SMS spam and telemarketer calls. You would think that Apple, of all people, would make it easier to tell the iPhone "block this number from calling me again."

Ah, thanks.

[cryptic response]

Hooray! Congrats!

I've never had a CFL fail. I've been replacing incandescents with CFLs whenever a bulb burns out. My oldest CFL is 7 years old and my newest is a little under 1 year old.

Many of us are still living! Just a bit dispersed here and there.

Hello there! :)

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.