As a UK citizen now living in Canada (where things are basically the same in cities), one thing struck me about the road system overall. The whole city-planning grid layout thing means that there are an *insane* number of 4-way stop-sign junctions. To me they are more of a concern than traffic lights just due to sheer density of them. You look on a map and think "great, it's a straight line, I'll be there in no time", but you have to stop and start so much and it seems so backwards (to me, at least). Takes more time, wears out your brakes, uses more fuel... Perhaps it's a call for mini-roundabouts, or maybe just more give-way signs (called "yield" signs in Canada). When I see the occasional one here, I'm taken aback to my home country and think "gee... why aren't there more of these here?!"

This may be a really dumb question, but I'll ask anyway. Can it be reasoned that the other parties on the receiving end (mostly pc/laptop manufacturers) are acting complicit? No one really would blame them for accepting lucrative deals like those mentioned, but they surely *must* have seen what's going on. I just wonder if they can (or need to) play the "but we had no idea!" card and pull it off.

On the other hand, it's a darn sight easier to just go after the common denominator and, in theory, the desired effect (discouraging the anti-competitive behaviour) should follow. Obviously that's unlikely to happen in practice, which is too bad.

That why I say "in a manner of speaking". Of course the kernel is less, when taken in isolation. But Ubuntu is "just" a desktop/notebook/server OS, an example of the Linux kernel at work. Linux on the other hand can be seen where Ubuntu is not, and provides for a much greater outreach than Ubuntu alone.

And for what it's worth, I use Ubuntu as my primary OS and would consider myself a fan.

I don't know for a fact, but I'd guess that a number of visitors will be people who have heard of "that linux thing" and punched in www.linux.com to find out more. While I think it's great that Ubuntu is great for having critical mass and gaining mainstream momentum, I also think it's in everyone's interest to explain, in simple terms, that Linux != Ubuntu, and that Linux is, in a manner of speaking, a whole lot more than Ubuntu.

it might be fun nonetheless to install something along these lines to one or more kids.

Ok, so the bbc article gives more info.

Looks like it was a secretary who responded to a phishing e-mail. Good to know we're all in safe hands...

I'd be interested to know how his account was broken into... particularly if he was bright enough to have a weak password and not keep it secret, or if he actually gave answers to secret questions. (I still find "secret" questions the most bizarre layer of security.)

Also, what kind of an image does a Hotmail address convey on a constituency?? Hardly sounds official and befitting a governmental website, to me at least.

I think what happens in practice is either workers just turn off their monitor at night (perhaps precisely *because* booting to a usable desktop can seem to take forever), or they turn on their pc and go and make a coffee or something. It's rare to see someone sitting there waiting for the thing to boot up with nothing better to do.

Of course some might like it as an excuse for not doing something for a few minutes... whoever said it was all bad? ;)