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* Posts by dan1980

2933 publicly visible posts • joined 5 Aug 2013

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Intelligence blunder: You wanna be Australia's spyboss? No problem, just walk right in

dan1980

On a semantic note, the author did say 'automatic' rather than 'automated'.

Perhaps holding onto the words rather than their implied meaning (a hazard of the medium) but it is common use to say that someone who commits a gross misconduct will be 'automatically' fired.

Even if Richard did mean what the posters above are suggesting he meant (and he very well may have!) then you are missing another option, which is that the user account - when created - was given a validity period matching the employment contract and, once that validity period expired, the account could no longer be used to access system resources.

Anyone familiar with Active Directory knows there is such an option, as there is in *nix. Most other systems - such as Web portals or Oracle databases can be scripted such that it checks the main user accounts periodically and disables/expires any logins that don't have a matching active account.

Regarding letting HR indirectly control the IT systems - it should never be up to IT to grant/deny/revoke access. We may do the work to apply the permissions but, where it is avoidable, we shouldn't be the ones to decide who and what.

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dan1980
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Re: What's the point?

@Hit Snooze

What's a 'shrimp'?

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IT blokes: would you say that lewd comment to a man? Then don't say it to a woman

dan1980
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Re: This article's about the minority

@Bakana

"Because, 9 times out of ten, they get a slap in the face . . . Sad but true, most women who slap don't hit nearly hard enough."

Advocating physical violence as a suitable response to an unwelcome - but purely verbal - advance?

That's right - it's only abuse and assault when a man hits a woman. This is somewhat off topic but, as all the anti-violence campaigns implore us, you have to speak up and say something to challenge the acceptance of violence.

It is not okay to hit someone just because you don't like something they say or do. And it is not okay to accept it, much less encourage it. Self defence is one thing but physically striking someone just because they asked you a question you felt was inappropriate or too forward is assault, plain and simple, and we - as a society - have to make sure this kind of casual acceptance of abuse is not tolerated or swept under the rug.

No, the sad thing here is that most men who get slapped don't press assault charges.

That aside, the other take-away is that the person you are talking about was going out and being upfront and self-confident. He was being himself and stating his offer plainly, if crudely. So nine of of ten women didn't appreciate that. So what? He ended up attracting those women who were evidently compatible with his way of thinking, which is hardly a bad thing.

I am pretty sure less than one in ten potential partners are compatible with me!

In some ways, your appraisal of this anecdote is sexist towards women; the idea that women can't appreciate a forthright offer of sex is a bit backwards. It's always been part of the repression of women that their sexuality was denied. Women are supposed to be passive and demur and hard to court. This forced 50s stereotype is continued in its more modern counterpart - calling women who do embrace their sexual side 'sluts', where no such label is applied to men.

I am not accusing you of that - not at all - just pointing out that there should be no reason to be surprised that a not-insignificant percentage of women were open to the idea of just having sex. We readily accept that many men would agree so why do we feel that women should respond differently?

What notion of the female sex underlies the assumption that 10/10 women should reject your friend's offer?

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dan1980
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Re: In fairness....

Scarily ignorant? Harsh.

I accept your criticism and it was probably worded inelegantly. Regardless, your counter argument is specious.

I sincerely hope I shall never be robbed and, it should go without saying, I certainly would very much prefer not to be murdered, should I be able to avoid it at all.

I do not, however, share a similar aversion to being flirted with. Maybe you, personally, hate being flirted with. Ever. That's fine - I am not telling you (or the author) that you have to react the way I do or enjoy the things I do. I would wager, however, that most adults flirt and enjoy being flirted with. That some of that flirting is misplaced, inappropriate, unwelcome, or 'creepy' is unfortunate but unavoidable.

Perhaps I am out-of-touch (I'm really not that old . . .) but these events are very much social situations. There is little in them that can't be learned through reading press releases or news/blog sites or white papers. One of the main reasons to go is to 'network' or, if you are less concerned with that, simply to meet people who are of common interests and to 'talk shop'. That is why alcohol is served - it's understood that it is a social event.

Of course, none of that makes it acceptable to be crude and disrespectful to others - you are at a social event with strangers and should behave as such, which is to say to be friendly, be yourself and act with courtesy and decency.

Based on your reply, perhaps we have a difference in our wording. When I said 'ogling', I was referring to the author's phrase: "creepily stare at me head-to-toe", not about touching someone or showing pictures of genitalia or telling people they are turned-on, which I agree is "It's creepy, repulsive, and nauseating", or at least it can be - I don't presume to dictate how others must respond but I'd rather not be subject to that behavior either.

I was picking up on the wording (perhaps I shouldn't have) that having your appearance appraised is creepy. Perhaps to some people it is - all the time and without exception. Fair enough. To many people, though, being appreciated for your looks can be flattering. It tends to cross into being classified as creepy when it is unwelcome and - as a generalisation (and I freely admit it is no more than that) - the more attractive the person doing the looking, the more welcome the look is.

I have seen it myself. I dare say we all have. I had a partner whose best friend was a rather attractive young lady. My partner served as support and so I was often along for the ride. My experience is subjective and relatively limited but to presume that people don't view flirting from attractive people more favourably than flirting from unattractive people for the sake of making a point is a bit silly.

I agree that "forcing something unwanted on another human being is the problem" but I was not describing anyone forcing anything on anyone else. The footnote I wrote (it was not worth elevating above that) said nothing of the sort.

To compare being looked at or flirted with to being murdered - as both equally unmitigated by the attractiveness of the other person - is ridiculous in the extreme

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dan1980
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Re: You'll Get The Respect You Deserve

@Don Jefe

"If you don't think you're broadcasting weakness, but you're still getting run over, then your concept of strength is faulty."

And here I was thinking that the whole point of civilisation was to rid ourselves of the idea that 'might makes right', which is what your whole post is saying - that you only deserve respect if you earn it.

Human rights is saying that just as a person, you have an innate right to be respected - to not be trodden on or debased or abused just because you can't defend yourself (however that might be). Saying that "that's the way the world works" may well be true but carries the message that you can't change the world so you must change yourself to fit it.

In some ways, that is honest, sound, advice. In other ways, it is perpetuating the problem that needs to be fixed.

Don, you are constantly saying that you need to go out and take what you want (for want of a more succinct way to put it) and that it is a hallmark of successful people that they don't make excuses and go out and rely on themselves to achieve their goals.

It is also, sadly, a hallmark of successful people that they seldom realise just how many factors outside their control went into that success. And no, I am not talking about being born into money (though that can obviously help). The makeup of who we are can be attributed to a large degree to our upbringing and any attempt to explain how someone 'succeeded' that ignores that aspect is bound to miss many of the factors.

So you commanded respect long before you were successful? Great. How did you learn to do that when others haven't? When you say that you are the most willful person in the room, the unavoidable implication is that EVERYONE ELSE in that room has not learned the skill you have.

So how did you get to that point?

How many times have we seen an interview with someone successful and they have recounted the story of how they started with nothing and so were determined to build a better life for themselves. That's a great human story. But there are plenty of people born with nothing who do not become multi-millionaires so no direct causality there. What then is the difference between someone who starts with nothing and gets everything and someone who starts with nothing and doesn't get that much further?

Is it something innate? If so, you can hardly blame any given person for not possessing whatever quality it is. Or is it something learned? If so, what were the circumstances that taught the lesson or provided the correct impetus to act a particular way? And can you blame someone else for not being subject to those same circumstances?

It's a very deep subject - why people have the personalities they do - and the answer is very likely that we are a complex mixture of genetics, upbringing and luck. It has been explored enough times in fiction where in some kind of parallel universe/alternate reality, one small change can end up leading us down vastly different paths. A chance meeting that did or did not happen, a missed phone call, the tragic death of a friend, an influential teacher in school, a compassionate or absent or abusive parent.

The list of things that might tip us one way or another is endless and to attempt to distill that into "[it] is something that comes from inside you" in unhelpful. You say that you have to believe in yourself. True enough - that is a key skill. But how does one start believing in oneself? Is it something you can just wake up and choose to do? Many people have tried to believe in themselves and failed so what is the secret? What allows one person to believe in themselves in the face of anything, where another becomes dismayed with setbacks? Superficially they might be in the same circumstance now but what in the past instilled in the 'successful' person the qualites that would lead them to refuse to be deterred and instead redouble their efforts?

Your post, whatever else its merits or otherwise, is akin to saying that the way to get more will power is to have the will power to go out be more willful. In other words, it's circular logic or a tautology: you will have respect when you command respect. Great, except the only way to judge whether someone 'commands respect' or not is to see if that person receives it.

The whole concept of the 'self-made-man' implies that anyone can succeed despite their start in life. This is an attractive proposition and a cursory look at various 'successful' people would confirm that they come from rich and poor, educated and uneducated, good homes and bad homes, etc...

The further implication is that whatever the circumstances you come from, there is some resource that any person can draw upon that will, once properly harnessed, allow them to reach their goals and succeed. What is never explained, however, is where this resource comes from and how to access it. It is just assumed to be there for everyone and so anyone not making something of themselves must be lazy or too busy blaming other people for their failures.

Maybe they are but the deeper question is why do those people blame others? What personality trait prompts that response rather than the more helpful 'pick yourself up and go again'?

So, circling back to respect, I might not respect someone's views or opinions on a topic until they have proven their knowledge of it but I do respect someone's right to live relatively unmolested unless they prove otherwise. Your post is nothing more than the denial of that right - saying that, as a human, you have no innate right to be respected but must instead prove that you should be respected first.

With great respect, bullshit.

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dan1980

"We have to overcome sexism, stereotypes . . ."

With the disclaimer that sexual harassment is not excusable, the take away from this article, beyond the obvious, is that males in IT are particularly sexist/creepy/touchy/inappropriate.

Males in IT already have to overcome the stereotypes of being vindictive and petty at work and awkward and socially-inept outside of it - of being little 'Napoleons' or 'Nazis', ruling our little empire and deriding all those we consider beneath us professionally to make up for being so low on the pecking order socially. We have bad dress sense and nerdy humour (often combined) and are scruffy and spend our free time reading sci-fi/fantasy novels, dressing up like elves/mutants/knights and reinstalling overnight builds of linux distributions while playing online games in dark rooms littered with cola cans.

So why not add "sexist" to the mix? We're all indifferent to criticism and don't pay attention to what other people think so another stereotype won't make much difference.

Now, the author is simply speaking from her own experience but one can't help feeling she is, herself, applying this stereotype to men in the IT industry.

After all, if her point was that all similar groupings - where there is a massive imbalance between men and women (in EITHER direction) - are subject to a percentage of individuals in the dominant group behaving without due consideration or respect for the minority group, then I think we could all agree that this is lamentably typical but would have to question why IT comes up for special note.

Again, the author is speaking from personal experience so I am not in any way doubting those experiences. Of course not.

However, negative experiences and proximity to them (whether they happen personally or to close friends/family) tend to have a far stronger effect than positive or neutral ones. Just think, after all, how many thousands of male IT workers were utterly decent? How many bad eggs does it take to warrant singling out one industry as abnormally populated with 'asses'?

The author does make a point that her experiences have been positive "for the most part". But I am not sure how to take that statement. Why then the article? In some ways, this statement has the ring of "some of my best friends are Muslims . . ." in that the author is making a negative generalisation about a group of people but disclaiming that with a fairly hollow throw-away line.

I suppose the headline: "Vast majority of IT bods are decent, normal folks who treat others with respect and civility" isn't really a very interesting one.

We know that some people are jerks. It's sad but true. We also know that some otherwise agreeable people become less some under the influence of alcohol. We also know that some people are IT workers. So guess what? Some IT workers turn into jerks when they've had a few drinks and some wake up as jerks. Is it the author's contention that IT is disproportionately populated with such people?

She certainly implies that it is a male phenomenon. If so, the higher the proportion of men in an industry or profession, the higher the proportion of such people. What that means is that, should our assertion prove correct, there is nothing specifically in IT that engenders this behavior and jerks are not not overrepresented in this profession.

"I make it a habit of going to conference parties with a group of men that I trust because I don’t want to go alone to a party full of inebriated, touchy-feely male strangers."

I believe that to be a fine strategy but hardly specific to IT. If you were in sales or recruitment (maybe you have been) then you would see similar same behavior. Hell, I've been volunteered for that service when some friends go out to clubs.

I would also ask the author to consider her headline:

"IT blokes: would you say that LEWD comment to a man? Then don't say it to a woman."

First, I very much have heard a male IT worker say that a technical presentation has aroused him. It's a rather crude way to convey excitement but there it is. I get it that it's not the same thing as telling a woman she is giving you a 'hard on' by talking tech but that is just a crude way of conveying the message that what is enticing is not your looks but your knowledge.

And anyway, are we to condemn flirting? Yes it can be unwelcome and yes, again, the example given was particularly unsubtle and confronting but I met a previous partner through an industry event and my parents met at a (non-IT) conference. I would not be here if they hadn't flirted* (inappropriately for all I know) at just such an event as you are describing. Likewise a cousin of mine and a friend, who met their partners after flirting at an 'after-party'. (One in insurance, another in events.)

Leaving that aside and getting back to the title of the article, I would ask the author if she would make similar generalisations about, say, a racial/ethnic/religious group? If not, then don't make it about an industry and don't make it about a gender group.

You're also making the serious mistake of lumping non-heterosexual IT males in here. And no, I am not being facetious. Actually, you're also making the mistake of thinking that everyone at an IT event is in 'IT'. Many of them - depending on the event - are in sales or are managers. Indeed, one reason I attend fewer events than I used to is that I found the technical content just wasn't there and very few presenters could answer direct, to-the-point, technical questions.

* - Talking about "creepy" guys eying you, one thing I have found is that the creepiness of someone ogling a woman tends to be inversely proportional the the attractiveness of the one doing the ogling.

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Obama's healthcare.gov savior says: 'No suits please, we're techies'

dan1980
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Re: Hey!

Like in sports, we definitely punch above our weight!

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dan1980
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Re: Direction from the White House?

Yeah, that phrase caught my eye. To me it seemed to be throwing the previous IT bods under the bus by saying that the government knew what it wanted and if IT just followed directions then everything would have been fine.

I suspect the 'direction' was: "Just make it work. Please."

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dan1980

Hey!

"Let's face it, the US government, like its British counterpart, doesn't have a good reputation with IT projects . . ."

What's with neglecting Australia? Our government(s) can cock up an IT project just as well as you chaps, thank you very much. (Even if we can't compete on scale.)

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NBN Co claims 96 mbps download speeds for FTTN trial

dan1980
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Unhappy

@RealFred

And, for only the second time ever, have a down vote. I have strong opinions (don't we all) and, consequently, get my share of downvotes. Most of the people seem to actually address my points when (if) they respond but, as you didn't, that earns you a down vote.

If you want to make a comment that blah, blah, Labor was worse, blah, blah, Rudd was worse, blah, blah, the SMH is worse - then do so by all means. But don't jump in with your whataboutery in reply to my comment as if it is in any way connected with the points I was making.

If you think that "it was no different with Labor/Rudd and Fairfax" is actually a counter-point to my argument then you either didn't read it (which is understandable; it was a rather drawn-out rant) or didn't understand it. I was, and am still, complaining about the almost across-the-board deficiency of the media in Australia when it comes to asking tough, well-informed and relevant questions of politicians and then pressing them for answers.

I singled out the Coalition because, well, they're in Government right now and, you know, they kind of appointed the NBN board. I talked about Newscorp because they are unarguably biased towards this current government so said government can be as tight-lipped as they want with the media as they know that the Daily Telegraph, Herald Sun, NT News, Courier Mail, Mercury, Advertiser, Sunday Times and The fucking Australian will present their polished turds to the public, possibly accompanied by some op-ed pieces from Murdoch's hand-chosen cadre of line toe-ers* about how lustrous and fragrant they are.

Actually, don't worry about the down-vote - I'm all ranted-out. (For now.)

* - Take Miranda Devine, whose appointment at Newscorp in 2010 coincided nicely with the concerted push by Uncle Rupert to get Abbott and the Coalition into Government. Likewise Andrew Bolt. Yes, he had a few columns in the Herald Sun but about 4-5 years ago he started getting not only more ink but wider circulation in the other Newscorp state papers.

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dan1980
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Megaphone

@RealFred

You seem to have implied partisanship in my comment where none existed. Murdoch's papers almost always support the incumbent at the start of their term. Often the idea is to see who they think will win and then back them, helping to push them over the line. They then call in their favours.

Newscorp backed Rudd strongly against Howard and was one-sided there as well, just as they the Sun has been in the UK, flipping from the Tories to Labour, to the Tories, to New Labour and back to the Tories.

My comment was not about the Liberals but about the standard of 'mainstream' reporting in this country, which just regurgitates whatever it gets. Fairfax papers are right in on it and my point about Newscorp was that, as they back this Government so strongly and have such wide coverage, the Government can quite happily ignore Fairfax as they know that Newscorp will print their stories the way the government wants.

Media outlets are petrified of their competitors having a story they don't so they run what they're given, even if it's nothing more than a piece of spin.

My comment had nothing AT ALL to do with Labor, nor with the NBN itself - it was about a story being picked up and carried verbatim without any investigative work being done. If I want to read/hear the Government's* carefully polished, self-congratulatory, fluff piece, I will go to their various websites, where at least I can gaze at a benevolent-faced MP in the masthead.

If all a journalist or news outlet does is slap down something I can find direct then it's not worth much to me. I want journos to ask the questions that I would ask if I could and this article supplies them - how far was it? what contention? etc...

Again, this has nothing to do with Labor and almost as little to do with the Coalition or even the NBN - it was a rant about the passivity of the media in this country, sitting like dogs** waiting for scraps off the table and lapping them up, rather than pressing these slick-suited, bullet-point repeating spin merchants for details. When they do ask, they might try once but, when they get the same answer back again, usually prefaced by a "let me just say this . . . ", they give up.

That's a sweeping comment - too sweeping - but really, when was the last time you saw a politician really pressed by an interviewer? I mean really - having their bullshit called and told they are hiding the truth or outright lying. You see it on the ABC on occasion - especially Lateline - but it is all to infrequent and those programs don't reach the majority anyway, who are content with colourful front pages with overblown, large-font headlines.

* - Whoever that is, also substitute big corporations, who release newspeak-ridden statements the papers reproduce in the same fashion.

** - I don't mean that quite the way it sounds - more that they posses the qualities one associates with a well-trained canine: obedience and loyalty. Which is great, except their loyalty is to the mouthpieces feeding them their homogenous, canned mystery meat - and they wolf it down. Instead, their loyalty should be to their readers/viewers and they should 'go in to bat' for them.

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dan1980

"Such outlets won't ask nasty technical questions . . . The Reg will. Stay tuned."

And we appreciate it; we just don't expect you to get any answers beyond directing you to existing press releases.

Such is the state of politics and, moreover, journalism in Australia - if only news outlets just stopped publishing and broadcasting government advertising as if it were news and instead insisted on asking their own questions and only publishing the material if the government was willing to provide real information.

Unfortunately, pre-prepared press kits like this are just so easy to regurgitate and it saves having to pay journalists and photographers/camera-operators.

Considering Newscorp will publish whatever sugar-coated 'story' this government gives them, the politicians can just sidestep or refuse to answer detailed questions from more thorough or well-informed journalists and presenters/reporters as they know their message will get out as intended and in a good light through Uncle Rupert's Australia-wide collection of tabloid-sized propaganda mouth-pieces.

They'll usually also take the further step of criticising the opposition, just to offer a balanced view. Fuck I hate the Daily Telegraph - if you must read it, start from the back and stop once you get to horse racing.

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Your Bitcoins aren't money – but it is barter, so we'll tax it, ta ... says Australia's taxman

dan1980

It's all good

I'm actually a little confused by the closing paragraph ("There's also some good news . . .") as I took the whole thing to be good news - from both sides.

If people are using something as an asset then it must be addressed by the taxation system to ensure fairness. On the other hand, if something like this is not taxed then its status is always in question, which is not good for those who are using it.

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dan1980
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Re: A fair cop

@Charles Manning

Of course. Isn't that one of the main purposes of fiat money?

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Get ready: The top-bracket young coders of the 2020s will be mostly girls

dan1980

"Men worried that they will no longer be able to fart and watch porn at work after the coming fem-tech revolution might take comfort in the fact that boys are currently doing better at A-Level."

That's also good news for journalists and opinion piece writers who may have been worried that they would no longer be able to make sweeping, sexist, generalisations about an entire industry.

Dodged a bullet there folks!

The the story, however . . .

First, let's put aside the fact that a slightly higher percentage of a much smaller number is not larger than a slightly smaller percentage of a much larger number, as has been pointed out, above.

Instead, let's assume that there really are more girls than boys getting an A in computing. For the headline to be true, there must be a causal connection between getting an A in computing and being a "top-bracket young coder". So far as I can see, no such connection has been provided. You might say that them getting an A makes them 'top-bracket' but, given the headline says "of the 2020s", this is timeline (6 years from now) implies that it is looking at these same students after they graduate secondary school and then university and begin their careers.

This is, of course, then negated at the end of the article with the quote provided above - that boys do better in their A-Levels.

Which brings up the question - what is the author trying to say with that headline? And why? It seems that more-and-more*, you have to read the sub-heading to actually get something approaching an accurate description.

* - With the exception of the usually excellent down-under bureau.

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'Leccy racer whacks petrols in Oz race

dan1980
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Re: That's nice.

@jake

Although everything that needs to be said probably already has been, I would like to add my own pennies.

The point I would make, primarily, is that this car is not designed to test or advance the science of battery energy density.

Petrol/diesel is a phenomenal fuel source from the point of view of energy density and internal combustion engines have been developed over many decades to take advantage of that energy to provide excellent performance.

Unfortunately, there are a few fairly downsides to it. It is also a limit resources that is not getting any more plentiful, much of what is left is to be found in countries whose ideologies do not accord with our western ones and, it is rather bad for the air quality*.

The ideal propulsion system for a vehicle should have the following properties:

  • Plentiful
  • Cheap
  • Good energy density
  • Good performance
  • Available for all nations and not able to be hoarded and exploited by a select few

While conventional fuel will always provide good energy density and thus good performance, it is steadily decreasing in availability and affordability.

Electric power - in whatever guise - one the other hand, is increasing in all these areas - it is increasing in performance, increasing in energy density, increasing in availability and increasing in affordability.

Different groups and different projects and companies are focusing on different areas. Sports car makers are proving that pure electric power can match and even exceed traditional power in certain applications and they are widening all the time. Researchers are developing new battery technologies to increases density, reduce cost, improve reliability, decrease weight - sometimes all at once.

To say, flat, that "energy density in batteries will never be useful for over-the-road transport" is not only stupendously short-sighted, it is largely missing the point.

As things stand, right now, electric vehicles and even hybrids are on average more expensive over the life of the car than a petrol/diesel car. As batteries become more efficient, more durable and cheaper (which is exactly what is happening) and petrol becomes more expensive (which is exactly what is happening), this equation slides towards electric power.

You may find that electric cars will actually be the saviour of 'traditional' fuels, preserving dwindling oil reserves for those applications that are harder to address with electric power as it stands - like air travel or heavy lorries. That seems pretty "useful" to me.

* - Whatever your position on 'global warming' or the environment in general, there is no denying that car exhaust is less than stellar for humans to breath in.

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dan1980
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Re: Impressive

Sounds perfect, then.

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Kate Bush: Don't make me HAVE CONTACT with your iPHONE

dan1980
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Re: Other phones are available

@MacroRodent

The Register was much the same in their recent article about Old Trafford banning 'iPads'.

I can see the economy in labelling a ball point pen a 'biro' or replacing 'search the Internet' with 'Google it' (even if I don't approve) but replacing 'tablet' with 'iPad' seems entirely without point.

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dan1980
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@Cliff

I appreciate the argument but the artists are getting paid for this so I'm somewhat less concerned for them. On the other hand, I'm paying for a ticket and those fuckers are a 'real real problem' for me!

I applaud Ms Bush's request and the polite wording of it. I would be even more impressed if she added that it ruins the experience for all the other people, who might just want to watch the show rather than someone's phone.

Waving around those fucking glowing rectangles is the the very definition of selfish - those doing it are inconveniencing and annoying everyone else and detracting from the experience for the sake of their own, individual, wants.

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Gigantic toothless 'DRAGONS' dominated Earth's early skies

dan1980
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Re: To fly, to serve?

Harsh, but funny.

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Uh, Obama? Did you miss a zero or two off Samsung's Chinese supplier 'fib' settlement?

dan1980
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Re: Limited by the law

Isn't it an out-of-court settlement and thus not a 'fine'? (And therefore the amount presumably can be set to whatever the parties agree to.)

I don't understand why it was settled though as $2.3m is not only nothing for Samsung - it's nothing for the Government as well. Surely the liabilities would be set far higher if this was decided in court? Imagine the Government wants to replace the phones - $2.3m would only cover a couple of thousand devices (depending on exactly what they provided).

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Call of Duty daddy considers launching own movie studio

dan1980

"But having their own entertainment studio instead of licensing titles to outsiders could put Activision more firmly in control of the quality of output."

And that will make them better, will it?

There are two big problems/hurdles with video-game adaptions.

The first is that games are a different beast to movies/TV shows/books in that there is a level of immersion that comes from actually being part of the story. Even if it's linear and constrained, there is still involvement. There is also the necessary action part of any game* - the controlling of an avatar of some sort or another. This need to perform actions, be it timing jumps correctly, finding keys, aiming weapons, solving puzzles, picking a lock or just moving a character around, provides something other than the story to engage the player.

In that way, one can still enjoy a game with a lack-lustre story. The need to perform actions or provide a challenge can also dictate then way a game unfolds - the pacing or difficulty or world mechanics. It could be a major plot-point as well that is justifiable because it makes the game more fun/thrilling/difficult or simply longer. Many of these plot points and mechanics would seem contrived or pointless in a movie.

Other times, the story can be intentionally convoluted or vague and barely explained at all, with the developers leaving it up to the player to fill in the blanks as they see fit or giving them the option of finding out more about the world by doing side quests or collecting things. That works because many people don't actually care about the story that much and, even with a vague or hard-to-understand story, a player is usually kept occupied by the action part of the game.

Sometimes the esoteric or bizarre nature of a video game story adds to the experience of a game but would be frustrating in a movie. I didn't understand the story of Final Fantasy VII much at all when I first played it but it still was amazing - just the general movement of it and the small interplays were enough to bowl me over and it was all a fantastical, surreal journey that I got completely engrossed in. As a movie it would be annoying and, frankly, silly.

The second problem is that so many games are based off movies in the first place!

Even if a game is not a specific tie-in, it's easy to see elements of, say, the Aliens series in many sci-fi games. (Halo being the main one.) This is one reason why I believe that most Aliens games have been so-so; the concepts have been aped and adapted so often that they are pretty much stock by now. This is the case right through as elements of popular movies are imported into video games. This might be a setting, like Assassin's Creed: Black Flag capitalising on the popularity of Pirates of the Caribbean or a stock type, like the hardened but honest police officer out for justice/revenge, as utilised in (amongst others) Max Payne. Other times it might be style, such as some horror games borrowing from Hitchcock or Lynch.

Of course, this comes back around with movies borrowing from gaming.

What you end up with is material that is not really unique in setting or style and with a story that won't necessarily work well in a non-interactive medium used as the basis for a movie. That's why there are so many ordinary and, more usually, bad, video game adaptions.

There are two ways for a VG movie to work.

One is to have a unique aspect that modifies the world or plot in some way beyond the norm. But, crucially, that aspect must work well in a movie and be used with at least some restraint. Prince of Persia is a good example. It's not a terribly original story or setting but the whole 'Sands of Time' bit provides a good hook. In the game, this gives it an interesting mechanic that not only made combat a bit more fun but also allowed the developers to create tricky puzzles and sequences that might have led to frustration without the rewind button. For all I know, the concept may even have been created to explain the mechanism rather than the other way around. In the movie, however, it was kept as the plot device but its impact in the moment-to-moment action was negligible.

The other way is to just take the general idea of the story and characters and throw out all the 'game' stuff, building an essentially new, adapted story. This might mean getting rid of some characters that don't serve a real purpose in the new format and deleting sections/levels of the game that don't translate well or don't advance the story. The problem there is that, as noted, many games have rather generic stories and are held up by the 'game' elements so removing that leaves you with a somewhat bland movie. Gears of War, for example has a passable story but the meat of the experience is the solid cover mechanics, good AI and tense firefights requiring strategy and skill. Take that out and it's not so impressive a package.

The biggest problem that VG movies face, however, is the need - or perceived need - to please the fans. That leads us to the inclusion of all manner of things that have helped push VG movies over the line to ridiculous.

Things like the BFG and first-person perspective in Doom, Jean Claude Van Damme's somersault kick in Street Fighter, 'bullet time' in Max Payne and, inexplicably, the health bars in Dead or Alive.

* - At least any that would be made into a movie.

1 0

The Return of BSOD: Does ANYONE trust Microsoft patches?

dan1980
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Re: Microsoft Valued Professional <> Microsoft rep / employee

Yep - no one disses the Diva.

0 0
dan1980
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@LDS

Exactly. This is, perhaps, an oversight in the way things were originally developed and this crash shows on of the reasons why it's so difficult to fix after the fact.

Developers use the code and libraries and so on as they are provided. Sometimes they use deliberately undocumented calls to enable functionality or improve speed or simply make their coding easier. Problem like this can occur - in part - when MS 'fix' something and it then breaks the way a third-party uses that feature/library/API.

It does seem as though - based on the widespread report of this issue - that MS really did mess this up. Using the excuse that you can't test for everything only really works if it's just a small number of people affected.

0 0
dan1980
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Re: Linux - more stable.

@JustNiz

"Its just that for whatever reason, most people choose to remain stubbornly ignorant of, or averse to, moving over to Linux, even though its MUCH more stable, secure, standards-compliant, powerful and logical in its operation than any Microsoft product."

Any story about Windows or MS inevitably diverts into comments about Windows vs Linux.

Linux is very customisable and exists in several different flavours, which can make for a lot of confusion and not very much portability, in terms of a 'normal' user just being able to pick it up. You have the distro, which will contain specific bits and then they have the window manager/desktop environment built on top. You can change that, which is nice but there is a downside in that if you have used (e.g.) Fedora at a previous job, you can't necessarily be confident you can use Fedora at a new job as it could be running a different desktop.

Likewise the repository managers and the packages available through them. Again, take Fedora, which uses RPM with a front-end of yum. On top of that you might use a GUI like yumex or Appcenter. Of course that's not the only front-end you can use and indeed, while RPM is used in other distros, those may use a different front-end, such as apt-rpm in PCLOS or URPMI and Rpmdrake in Mageia. And, of course, other distros may use a different package manager such as pdkg/APT, which itself can be used with multiple front-ends such as synaptic and aptitude.

And, even then, the packages available for a given distro may vary, even if they use the same desktop and package manager. Again, take Fedora, which doesn't allow you to download any non-FOSS packages through the manager. That sounds very righteous until you realise that 'non-FOSS packages' includes vendor drivers.

Now, that's fine because you can get around that by adding in the RPM Fusion repositories (plural) but, if you're running CentOS, you'll have to enable the Extra Packages for Enterprise Linux (EPEL) first, of course. After that you'll be able to download the wireless adapter driver, however.

All this variation makes the relatively simple question of 'how do I install the latest video card driver' somewhat more complex than it might otherwise be.

And that's just the basics.

What about in a business environments? Active Directory is a suite of tools that are unparalleled for what they do. Linux supporters will argue that AD is there to make up for inherent problems and deficiencies in the Windows world and that Linux is better by design as it is 'built as a multi-user operating system' and has security and stability baked-in. Maybe so, but the change from a Windows environment to a Linux environment requires a complete paradigm change - from how you buy computers and server, to how you build PCs and install applications, how you manage user accounts and configuration settings - it all has to be reworked.

Let me be very clear - I am not pro-Windows and I am not anti-Linux. I run both - at work and at home. I have been through Mandrake and Mandriva and Fedora and Ubuntu and Kubuntu and Arch and Puppy and PCLOS and SUSE and CentOS and Slackware and Mint several other miscellaneous ones like OpenELEC, gOS and Mythbuntu.

What I am saying is that there is no real single operating system called 'Linux'. There are instead hundreds of distributions and, even narrowing it down to the more popular ones you'll still be presented with a dozen or more, depending on which ones are being forked-off or falling in and out of favour. Out of that dozen distros, no two will function the same. Each will have a different combination of configuration tools and desktop and package manager and installed applications and you can change some of these yourself, such as installing Enlightenment or XFCE on Fedora.

Likewise you can install Ubuntu but, if you decide you don't like Unity, you can install KDE. Unfortunately, while it may look similar, this will result in a different OS than if you just installed Kubuntu from the start as you will have all the other libs and programs. This may be advantageous to you or it may result in a slower system. Again, the point is just the huge amount of variation.

I love the ability to customise Linux and chose something that fits your needs like a glove. This is why so many Linux users swap distros so much! That strength, however, is also a downside.

In the end, whatever the benefits in stability or security, Linux and Windows are built on different paradigms and to say that one is flat better than the other is patently ridiculous. The OS that best fits the way you want to work is where you should start.

8 0
dan1980
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Re: 20th century

@wdmot

A bugbear of mine as well. I explain it as meaning "many", whereas it is often seen used as though it meant "lot" (a myriad of X).

Given 'myriad' can sound a a little pretentious, I usually reserve it for conveying the idea that something is many and various. Thus, I generally only use it with classes of things. For example, I might say 'myriad animals' to mean that not only where there lots of animal, there was a great diversity of them too. I would not say 'myriad badgers' - for that I feel the simpler 'many' (or other constructions) to be preferable.

I approve of 'myriad combinations' - gives the impression of a bewildering array; too many to feasibly address.

2 0

Poll: Australians hate government data retention plan

dan1980
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Re: Metadata == Data

@KrisMac

This is EXACTLY the point I have been belabouring through all these comments sections.

Metadata is data that describes the data you are actually interested in. If the data you are storing and thus are interested in is browsing history then that becomes data at that point.

0 0

NSW to build federated ID management rig for staff, punters

dan1980

"If it sounds a bit scary for citizens' personal details to live in a SaaSy cloud, the kit and data will live in a NSW Government data centre in outer Sydney."

Sorry, that's supposed to make me feel better?

6 0

Rupert Murdoch says Google is worse than the NSA

dan1980
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Re: Murdoch?

For those in the UK, there was the support for Thatcher and the Tories, who in turn helped rush through his takeover of the Times, which then was used to support Thatcher all the more strongly, helping her to another election win. She then supported him through his fights with the unions, both politically and by promising strong police support, a link that has been pointed to as the starting point for the hacking scandals.

Thatcher later repaid Murdoch's continued support further by helping bring about the merger of BSB and Sky to make BSkyB.

His turn to support 'New Labour' and Tony Blair was to put pressure on him in regards to the impending cross-media ownership laws as well as regulations to restrict the predatory pricing he was employing to drive his competitors out of business. At least some of his ongoing unholy alliance with Blair is now well known thanks to the Leveson enquiry (which also brought out some of the Thatcher dealings) and they continued right up to Blair's resignation (and beyond).

After that he switched again, supporting the Conservatives, who were helping him with his bid to take full control of BSkyB - a move that only failed due to the eruption of the phone hacking scandal.

In Australia he played much the same game, jumping from Labor to Liberal as his needs dictated, supporting Whitlam then helping to bring him down. Supporting Hawke and Keating, who helped him takeover several local tabloids and thus attain dominance over the state-based presses but then backing Howard (again with cross-media ownership laws on the table). After that it was back to Labor for Rudd before the most recent and overt support of Abbott and the Coalition.

At each stage, he has bargained his support to earn more money - whether it was in helping smash the unions, getting huge subsidies on prime real estate (Fox Studios, say), enabling him to buy more than he should have been allowed to or to head off laws and regulations that would potentially collar his papers. Some believe that his support of Abbott and the coalition owed much to the scuppering of the NBN as he saw it as a threat to his cable television interests.

So that is Murdoch - someone whose only desire is for more money and power and who will opportunistically support whomever he has the most to gain from.

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dan1980
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Re: Murdoch?

@MrT

Actually, it won't be a change at all because he doesn't have a go at competitors, specifically.

Murdoch is one of those people who firmly and genuinely believe that it is his right to earn as much money as humanly possible. His newspapers therefore go after anyone and everyone that form a barrier to the pursuit of that money.

Murdoch's newspapers have always been notable for how utterly in sync they are in pushing whatever objective is handed down. Anyone in Australia during the last election cycle couldn't fail to notice it, with the numerous papers Newscorp owns relentlessly attacking Labor while praising the character of the Coalition.

He does the same thing in the UK, and the US of course though the near-blanket coverage he has here makes it particularly obscene.

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dan1980
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Re: @FuzzyTheBear

BTW - apologies for the "FAIL" icon - I truly didn't mean it and don't know what happened. Maybe an errant mouse-wheel flick or something.

I don't think your comment 'FAIL[s]', I just disagree.

0 0
dan1980
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FAIL

@FuzzyTheBear

While the the NSA may not directly sell their [information on] users, they most definitely pass it outside of their organisation and - worse - outside of the legal remit under which it was collected.

The NSA is collecting information they shouldn't be collecting, using it for purposes it wasn't intended for, disclosing it to agencies and (if the leaks are true) commercial entities that aren't supposed to see it, hiding it from the public and lying about it all to congress.

And you agree with Uncle Rupert that Google is worse than the NSA . . .

You've got to understand a fundamental difference, which is that Google scans your e-mails (and is up front about it) to better sell you advertising. The NSA scans your e-mails to find key words and phrases and then uses those as justification to compile phone records, car GPS data, full Internet browsing history, and will do so for your friends, family and co-workers as well. It might then choose to forward that information to the DEA or the IRS.

That's not conspiracy theory time - that's actually what's happening.

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dan1980

Murdoch is a cranky old coot who, whatever his achievements in life and business, is simply incapable of understanding - much less relating to - ordinary people.

This is the only mitigating factor; he is so out of touch that he seems genuinely not to realise just how poorly his conduct and opinions accord with those of the common folk.

19 1

This'll end well: US govt says car-to-car jibber-jabber will SAVE lives

dan1980

No.

Just no.

2 0

Google's so smart it's discovered SHARKS HAVE TEETH

dan1980
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@Pascal

That comment made my absent-minded error worth it.

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dan1980
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@ratfox

Doh! Of course it is! Sometimes it's hard to read what I have written through the red ranty mist that descends on me.

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dan1980

On one hand, it's poor journalism. On the other hand, it's just part of the PR clout of Google that they can get old news touted as technical wonders or have these breakthroughs attributed to them rather than those actually doing the work. (Whether they actively try to or not.)

Apple have similar PR wizardry with scores of journalists swooning over the most elementary changes.

The rise of Internet 'journalism' has put pressure on more traditional outlets to publish information as quickly as possible. In many cases, this leads to stories that are little more than regurgitations of press releases. We see it in politics as well as general business news but ever more so in 'tech' news.

In some ways, it can be seen as 'you get what you pay for'. People are not buying newspapers and don't want to pay for online subscriptions so newspapers don't have the money to hire as many journalists or do as much research or investigation. Whatever fills the paper quickest wins. On the other hand, we put the chicken before the egg and we can see that the move to getting our news from other sources is a reaction to the decrease in quality of the reporting.

The real problem is that companies and political parties now have an expectation that their words will be repeated verbatim and their messages broadcast to the public without question or criticism. Perhaps less so in the US where there is a greater breadth of news outlets, but certainly in Australia it is a toxic, closed, society of journalists willing to tow the line, and thus continue to receive the table scraps from the spin doctors while those willing to dig deeper and call out the bullshit are forever on the outer.

It's one thing the AFL (for example) have been called out on as they only give stories and interviews to those journalists willing to tell the AFL's version of events. This came out strongly in the recent (and on-going) doping saga as many journalists came forward saying that they were cut-off when they criticised the AFL or ran pieces that contradicted the official story.

Rant much . . .

8 1

Drunkards warned: If you can't walk in a straight line, don't shop online, you fool!

dan1980

I do not need online shopping to drain my bank account when I am drunk. It's usually the round of a dozen or more tequilas in the middle of an already-expensive night that does it.

6 0

Intel teams up with rap chap 50 Cent on heartbeat headphones

dan1980
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Re: head/hands

@Robert E A Harvey

Sadly, you are not representative of the market. If you were, then perhaps more would be spent on quality than on image.

But, image is worth spending money on and, whether we admit it or not, the vast majority of us spend our money with at least one eye to how we think something looks. From suits to cars to houses to luggage to jewellery to t-shirts and shoes. A $40 t-shirt is not, practically, any better than a $10 t-shirt but if I like the design on the $50 better I may get that instead. Why not headphones too?

Personally, I use earphones when out and about as they're just easier to store and less cumbersome to use and the compression of MP3s and general quality of portable sources just don't justify the hassle of a pair of cans. At least not since my MDRs were ruined on the train.

It's interesting that headphones are now a fashion item and I love my new 7506s for home use but prefer my ear buds for travel.

0 0

Detroit losing millions because it buys cheap batteries – report

dan1980
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Re: False economy is an ugly thing, Detroit.

The old saying that you have to spend money to make money can be a good guide.

When you're trying to cut costs, it's important to identify those things that bring in money and separate them from those things that do not. If you are strapped, financially, the last thing you want to do is risk your existing revenue streams.

Their original decision to purchase poor-quality meters is the core of the problem as it means they have to spend more money running them. Their next bad decision was to roll-out new batteries en masse without testing them first. All it would have taken was a selection of meters around the city to see how they went.

2 0

Microsoft cries UNINSTALL in the wake of Blue Screens of Death™

dan1980

There are two problems - the sheer number of bugs being found and the number of updates being released.

Testing updates is a time-consuming and potentially expensive task and there is always a trade-off between security, time and stability - a classic 'pick any two'.

While IT best practice might be to test every update first, the reality is that it is not business best practice across the board to provide sufficient resources (time, budget and staff) for IT to do such testing. Microsoft, has to realise this and make decisions accordingly because there are people for whom their computers are critical but cannot afford the kind of testing that Microsoft updates require.

Under consumer law in Australia, software is expressly stated to be a 'good', which means that there are liabilities which cannot be disclaimed. I understand the situation is less clear in the US and perhaps other countries. Goods must be of merchantable quality and damages arising from faults in the good can be recovered. Of course, a vendor may fix or replace at their discretion but, crucially, those fixes must themselves be of sufficient quality and a consumer or business can seek damages if problems arise because of those fixes.

OS software is necessarily much harder to pin down in terms of its purpose than, say, a piece of software used to calculate correct medication dosages or an aeronautical chart (both of which have been involved in wrongful death cases) but I think there are definitely grounds for a class action against MS when these kind of things happen. The difficulty is that there isn't much case law to guide it.

6 1

Why your mum was WRONG about whiffy tattooed people

dan1980

Tattoos?

Nice P.O.C. but surely some kind of skinsuit (or component pieces) would be best - like the 'UnderArmour' gear or equivalent.

The real question is whether this tech can be made cheap enough so that using it is cheaper than just buying batteries.

1 0

Spin doctors crack 'impossible' asteroid hurtling towards Earth

dan1980
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@James Pickett

It is almost certainly not the only asteroid headed our way but detecting asteroids coming near Earth is a notoriously tricky prospect and, even when we do identify one, it's not always with enough time to spare that we could do much, if anything, about it.

Of course, humanity has been lucky to this point but if we do find an asteroid sufficient to do serious damage far enough out to actually do something about it then we should at least use it as a good theoretical test case.

0 0
dan1980

Personally, I will take 'almost as deady' over 'deadly' any day.

12 0

Dolby Atmos is coming home and it sounds amazing

dan1980
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@jzlondon

Sometimes.

Other times the story is not really the main point, however, and the action is more important. Anyone who watches Michael Bay films might suggest that the size of the explosions are more important (at least to the director) than the quality of the dialogue. Perhaps you consider those inferior movies but they don't half earn well at the box office!

Of course sometimes stories can be told with the visuals or the sound as much as what is said or acted. A book must tell you that something creaked or that a gunshot was heard in the distance but a movie need only present the noise. The more descriptive that noise is, the better it tells the story, and the more you can tell a story by cinematography and sound design, the less explicit or expositional your characters have to be.

But I do agree with the general point.

1 0

LulzSec supergrass Sabu led attacks against Turkey – report

dan1980
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Re: dan1980 Britt Release

@Matt

I never implied I had "sympathy [for] their political dribblings".

My point is that branding them 'skiddies' is risky because it gives them a label and put them in a box that we then assume we understand. They are 'skiddies' so we only have to worry about them doing the kind of things that 'skiddies' do and don't have to protect ourselves from more advanced attacks.

We put things in boxes because it's a convenient shorthand for us but it leaves us vulnerable when someone does something 'outside the box' that we have put them into.

Many in 'The West', collectively, put Russia and Putin in a box of (as Obama put it) "a regional power", and not a serious geo-political threat. Even though some still maintain that label, it is become clear to most that putting Russia and Putin in that box seriously underestimated their long-term goals and the resolve they would pursue them with.

I am not saying anyone is underestimating RedHack, just that labelling a potental threat and putting it in a neat box is, while often practical in the short term, rarely great for security.

0 1
dan1980
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Re: Britt Release

@Mike VandeVelde

Well, it's kind of what they are - it's their ideology. They're not in it for profit or for the 'lulz'; their reason for being is to further their underlying Marxist-Leninist ideals. I'm not passing judgment on if those ideals are good, bad or indifferent, just that they are the ideals held by this group.

Some people believe them to be terrorists but I think we have all seen enough of that to reserve the term for those really deserving of it.

I actually object to Matt's use of the word 'skiddies' - one he throws about whenever there are stories like this. While I don't care if the epithet is insulting to the group, it is dismissive of them. As a rule, it's not a good idea to underestimate those you wish to stop.

@Lost all faith...

I believe the 'threat' was simply to explain that his children would be but into a foster care system. I suspect there may also have been a more detailed exploration of how the would likely move from one home to another and may end up across the other side of the country, where they would grow up without him.

0 1

Visual Studio Online goes titsup as Microsoft wrestles with database

dan1980
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Re: And as the march to subscription (online) services goes on...

"And if it breaks, what then?"

Exactly.

Now, that's not an argument against using a cloud service but a question you have to ask yourself (and seriously assess) before throwing your eggs in that particular basket.

It's quite possible, as @BlueGreen says, that the answer to that question for you is "not much", in which case the cloud is just fine for you.

The problem, however, is with people either not understanding the risks of cloud services or not seriously addressing them. Simply saying "I can do it cheaper on a cloud service" can be misleading because there are subtle but important differences in the 'it' you are doing.

As-A-Service offerings are useful but you have to understand the key word: 'SERVICE'. That means that you should have a service level agreement and you must understand what it says.

Azure (standard tier) has a 99.9% uptime - each month. That means up to ~45 mins of downtime are possible before the SLA is breached. The big caveats are:

  • That 45 minutes can be at the most crucial time for your business.
  • The recourse for breach of SLA is a discount on your bill, which may mean much, much, MUCH less financial compensation than lost revenue.
  • The 99.9% SLA is per-service.

That last one is important because it means that if you have, say, 3 services that all need to inter-operate to deliver your 'application' - e.g. a DB, a processing and a web server - then your potential downtime is TRIPLED, because each can be out for 45 mins and the loss of any one will take your application offline.

And so on.

You can increase the redundancy and therefore uptime, of course, by provisioning multiple VMs for the various services and make them geographically-distributed but even then, if you are working within a single provider then you run the risk of a service-wide outage. To mitigate against that, you can design your system to use multiple providers, but each of these steps increases the cost far beyond the 'I can host my application for £40/month'.

The point is that you have to know what you are getting and what it means for your business and anyone who either promotes or accepts the "I can do it for $X' argument" needs to be cautioned to take a deeper look.

11 0

SpiderOak says you'll know it's secure because a little bird told you

dan1980

6 months?

"Initially it thought refreshing it monthly would be a good idea, but then it decided that was too short a period, because it would likely take longer than a month to fight a warrant in court, where possible."

I can see the benefit in that reasoning but for it to be sound there is another, unmentioned, component, which is that SpiderOak needs to challenge/investigate/delay every warrant or NSL. I see no such promise on their website.

Further, the 6-month period has no logical justification.

If the due-date falls in the middle of that period of time they say they need to investigate warrants/NSLs then what do they do? If they choose to 'kill' the canary then there is no difference between a short and long update period - either way they are killing the canary before they are sure they have to.

If, however, they choose to update the canary, and thus give themselves more time to challenge or ascertain the validity of the warrant/NSL then the shorter update period becomes superior as they can more quickly change the status of the canary from 'alive' to 'dead' if things go south.

Moreover, the "killing a canary can quite possibly mean killing the business" consideration also dictates a shorter update period.

Why? Because, in the above scenario of the canary update falling in the middle of a legal investigation/challenge, they have to make a hard decision: do we "kill the business" based on a 'maybe' or do we wait and see. In making that decision, they would have to take consider the length of time they foresee the legal stuff taking and how that compares to the length of time until the next canary update and then weigh that against the possibility that the case will be resolved in their favour.

The longer the canary update period, the higher the risk to customers if they get that decision wrong.

With a 1-month update, they can more confidently update the canary, knowing they can kill it more quickly if the case takes a turn and it becomes likely they will have to comply.

6 0

Golden age of invention or hyped-up age of overblown marketing?

dan1980
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Re: Storage is nothing compared to the SaaS space

That's a bit Apple

My god! Multitasking? That's amazing! What?! You mean I can copy and paste text from here to here? Swoon! Shaped earphones? Whatever will they think of next?!

But most companies do that - advertising any new feature as though it were a breakthrough that will change the world as we know it. A touch screen tablet with a removable keyboard that you can use to run not only business programs but entertainment software as well, MS? I think I need a lie down . . .

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