Forced onto Win7 because I wanted to actually use (rather than simply carry around) my full 8Gb of RAM. It is the same Windows as before, except all the icons are different and locations have changed. I guess that qualifies as "innovation".

The good thing is I virtualized my old XP machine. I simply pull that up when I need to get something done which (surprise) doesn't work on Win7.

Evergreen Flight Museum in McMinnville, OR is queuing up to get one of the shuttles. They already have the museum built & ready to go. Don't forget, Evergreen Aviation is heavily involved in the 747's used to transport the shuttle. I suspect their 'cost' of acquisition will be much lower than anyone else.

Evergreen was successful in landing (pun intended) the Spruce Goose as their first major display. I'll bet they have the moxie to land a shuttle as well.

Boeing absolutely does not practice stalls, dives, and other such nonsense on the first flight. Yes, it will all be part of the flight test program on the way to certification. However, it is not for today!

Today's highlight will be stowing the landing gear & retracting the flaps. Seriously.

The Reg can do better reporting than this.

As a industry veteran, I recently went through my home shop and cleaned out piles of old computers. Knowing about data security, I pulled all the hard drives out before taking the old junk to the local recycler. I could have sanitized each drive and then given them away. But the drives are so old the average USB key trumps them. They have no value in the used computer market and will be trashed anyway.

Yes, I have one of the hard drives sitting at my desk with a pair of .308 sized holes in it. A post-it note which says "Certified Data Destruction".

Point being... What the heck else should I do with this old crap? Using it for target practice is as good as anything. It's my gun, my property, my old hardware. Who cares if there are pieces of busted PCB stuck in the lawn?

How about the government gets the heck out of my living room! It is none of their darn business what TV I watch. If I want to pay for the electricity to run it, that is my choice.

Maybe I'll dig up a 1960's Zenith tube television and see how much power that uses.

Perhaps if a different orifice was chosen the noise would be greatly reduced.

Paris can elaborate....

In a previous life I used to work int he PC-based point-of-sale industry...for restaurants. You should have seen the old 286 machines running next to a chips fryer in the kitchen. I replaced them with shiny new 486 machines and the business owner had the stupidity to ask why the 5 year-old-never-cleaned hardware was failing. There were no motherboards inside, just sticky gray felt mats which smelled like rancid oil.

That product gives me indigestion just looking at it.

The BK burger gives me indigestion too.

Welcome back!

Anyone consider the implications for a small 'suitcase' nuke as the payload. Electromagnetic pulse to wipe out the world's infrastructure. Scary stuff.

Mine's the one with the attached tin-foil hoodie.

The whole lawsuit is a spoof. The plane is very stealthy. However, the CIA wants this lawsuit to go forward so our enemies believe the plane is really defective. Thus they will not worry about a plane sneaking past their radar facilities. In reality, the F22 is already behind enemy lines bombing the snot out of them.

After all, we screwed up with the B-2. They publicly canceled the contract. They should have secretly canceled the contract and told everyone that we made thousands of them. They are invisible on radar, so just try to prove us wrong!

Mine's the one with the attached tinfoil hat.

I was disappointed the day IBM decided to sell the Thinkpad line to Lenovo. I have been with the Thinkpad product line through 5 generations (600x, T2x, T3x, T4x, and finally T6x). The T6x laptops are literally falling apart - cracked cases and such. No, they are not in a severe environment, just normal everyday usage.

The old 600's, T20's & T30's were used in the exact same way. They never fell apart. It is very clear to us the Thinkpad product quality has fallen significantly. They are now just another brand and no longer the premium they once were.

We did an evaluation of competing products. Our next laptop purchase will be from a different brand.

I believe the core problem is Microsoft has stagnant innovation. 95% of what users do, they can do with Win98 & Office 97. There is no compelling reason to upgrade. Sure, the enterprise can brag about running the 'latest and greatest'. However at the end of the day that doesn't pay the bills - productivity does.

Find a way to make the enterprise more productive, and I guarantee the next OS/Office launch will be a smashing success.

Ash wrote:

"It's an IT website. IT is a sector dominated by men, stereotypically with either poor social skills, narcissistic tendencies bordering on Napoleon Complex, or outright misogynistic superiority.

Either Sarah failed to grasp that when she applied, or El Reg failed to asses her ability to handle it when hiring her. Either way, shucks. Guess there's an opening."

Naw. Sarah is a hottie. The slobbering geeks which run El Reg hired her based on looks alone. In quiet tones they whisper among themselves; "That's a girl, dude, haven't you seen one before?"

Sarah, will you please provide photographic proof of my conclusion? I would hate to default my vision of you to a bunch of downloaded images: Sarah_001.jpg, Sarah_002.jpg, Sarah_003.jpg, etc.....

For the past several years BOFH has been something to look forward to every Friday. Because of this year's move from weekly to monthly I had actually forgotten to look forward to hitting The Reg this Friday.

Going after a hardened target like this is way beyond the resources of some dweebie hacking Sarah Palin's Yahoo account. We are talking nation state level resources here.

There are numerous ways to go about this from a technical security standpoint. I won't even speculate on all the ways it could be done.

Here is the rub...

Would BHO even know his BB had been compromised? If a nation state is ballsy enough to go after this target, they sure are not going to publicize it. They will leech information and not tell anyone. Heck, if there was ever a crisis (think of the confusion in the first hours of 9/11), they could even use the compromised BB to insert *misinformation*. VERY scary!

I personally think it is irresponsible for BHO to continue using consumer grade communications. He has the best communication technology available to him and he needs to set down his BB until 1/20/13.

We bought five of those NetApp StoreVault appliances a year ago. The interface wasn't even finished - buttons & check boxes did nothing. This was acknowledged by their tech support who instructed us how to accomplish the task via the command line interface. To add insult to injury, once our initial 30-day support was up, we were no longer entitled to updates which would fix their incomplete product.

How much disk does the average enterprise buy every year?? Our needs have increased 50% year over year.

Let me tell you this..... Burn me once, shame on you. Burn me twice, shame on me. NetApp will NOT be getting an RFP the next time we go shopping.

Given this shoddy customer treatment and dismal product offerings, it does not surprise me they had a net loss and are restructuring.

Norton Anti-User 2009. Available in .357, .45, and full Enterprise class .50!!!

Hmmm.... This does have the beginnings of a good BOFH story.

...and replace "mosquitoes" with "Windows". It will make a lot more sense.

Oh come on here! This is just the same Microsoft Windows release cycle we have seen before:

"Early Adopters" to Microsoft are really the "Last Beta Testers". Why release a free beta when you can get schleps to pay for it?

BOFH, BOFH, BOFH. Where oh where is BOFH? My users are becoming complacent and I need some ideas for how to mitigate that.

... Anyone remember DIVX? Put out by Circuit City. This was the DVD watch the movie once, then throw the disc away format. If you watch it again, the player 'phones home' and your credit card is charged.

... As for Blu-Ray disc changers... I am befuddled why they are not in the market place. CD/DVD changers have been around for years. It is not like something new needs to be invented. Pull the DVD drive out, toss in a BD drive, and use the same changing mechanism.

Oh wait... They want the first adopters to pay a premium for a single disc BD drive today. Then they will roll out the changers tomorrow and get the early adopters to pay again.

Methinks Hollywood is in bed with product vendors. I too am avoiding the market until it becomes a commodity. Not enough reason to upgrade.

I was hoping Win7 would be a return to a decent OS and scrapping most of the Vista crap (aero, DRM, etc). What happens if Win7 is really Vista 2.0??

Will this be the catalyst which drives the industry to a non-Windows OS as the preferred standard? (No, I am not a Linux raver either). Heck, most productivity can be done on-line these days anyway. What is a client OS needed for? Most work can be done via a web browser on a free OS.

As posted to techweb: http://www.techweb.com/wire/story/TWB20010409S0012

The University of North Carolina has finally found a network server that, although missing for four years, hasn't missed a packet in all that time. Try as they might, university administrators couldn't find the server. Working with Novell Inc. (stock: NOVL), IT workers tracked it down by meticulously following cable until they literally ran into a wall. The server had been mistakenly sealed behind drywall by maintenance workers.

My coat is in the closet... Who the heck drywalled my closet closed?

...."Who ya gonna call??? GHOSTBUSTERS!"

Paris cuz she is from Hollywood and she also....

When he was younger, the BOFH did this a lot...

"Hi Sarah, I will be glad to check on where the current BOFH issue is. What is your user name?"

-Clickty clack clickty clack-

"Hmmm.... I cannot seem to find that user name in the system..."

-Clickty clack-

"Or even any files or emails with that user name..."

Looks like The Reg had some influence! Section 11.1 now reads:

"11.1 You retain copyright and any other rights you already hold in Content which you submit, post or display on or through, the Services."

Period. End. No further jargon.

Google "Hunt for 928". Heck of an entertaining story about finding a CIA spy plane which crashed in the Nevada desert.

Is it just me, or is there an inherent conflict of interest in this case?

Is the judicial / court's network part of overall city network which Child's was managing? If so, it would seem pretty darn easy to prove a mis-trial in a higher court as the judge would not be impartial to the proceedings.

NASA, and to a large extend the general populace, has lost its stones. During the ramp up to Apollo, we saw men who were willing to take the risk and hang it all on the line. Where are those men now?

Instead we have government bureaucracies who are intent on playing CYA with every decision they make. At this point in time, space travel is not a safe commodity. In our human history there were times when air & sea travel were equally unsafe. How many explorers set off to the New World and were lost to the pages of history? The rewards only come to those willing to take the risks.

Until we get some leadership with a couple brass ones, we will continue on as before. Bumbling along and trying to keep everyone safe. The real men are out there, they just choose not to get involved with the BS which takes the initiative out of everything.

On a final note... October 1957 was Sputnik. July 1969 was Apollo 11. Less than twelve years. What have we done of significance since 1996??

Paris, because she doesn't have any either.

The Constitution of the United States of America DOES NOT grant us any rights.

The Constitution of the United States of America GUARANTEES our rights.

As an individual I have the fundamental right to defend myself. This is not a right which is granted or conveyed by man. It is a God given right. The Constitution merely acknowledges that right and secures me from my government trying to take it away.

I am a citizen of the USA, not a subject of the Crown.

Win95 was revolutionary, but it wasn't smooth. Win98 built upon 95 and smoothed out its rough edges. WinME was simply an anomaly to try and get another round of $$$ out of the old code base.

Win2000 was a good enterprise OS, but it fell down for the consumer. WinXP built upon Win2000 and has been well received by the masses.

WinVista is shaping up to be another dog with fleas. Perhaps Windows 7 will be the flea collar which makes this code base usable.

As for my wish list...

- Scrap the umpteen different Vista versions. Keep It Simple Stupid - give me a home and a pro version.

- Scrap the heavy handed DRM. Let the free market decide that. If I do not have a HD DVD / Blueray drive on the machine, I should not be forced to run DRM code integrated into the OS. If the MPAA or RIAA don't like it, then too bad. They can withhold their releases from the offending formats - and we the consumers can decide if we want to buy their products or not.

- Scrap the fancy interfaces. Or, at least give me a real quick and easy way to convert everything to a "Classic Windows" theme. And I mean everything - not just the wallpaper.

- Build some real security into the OS. No more of this 'Are you sure you want to run an EXE' followed by a 'Are you really really sure' dialogue.

My $.02