pap

You probably know my mate if you worked at Nintendo.

Good one, Whitey. Wish I'd thought of that.

To really screw them up, unlock the taskbar, drag it to the top of the screen and then set it to auto-hide

Ah, the head in the sand approach? Popular with ostriches, I believe. Thing is, you not knowing the details doesn't make you any safer. In fact, it could be argued that a lack of oversight leads to a lot of these problems in the first place. The 1953 coup in Iran is a great example.

I think I'm a plastic. I've been to every home game this season, but haven't yet developed the super-fan mentality that says I have to mock everyone that doesn't. Sorry.

So it's not skiving if the device is smaller? Interesting. In answer to your query, a few computer-related pranks you may wish to try should sir get the opportunity. 1) Social media stowaway. Got a smoker in the office that doesn't lock his screen when going out for a fag? Nip onto Facebook, end his relationship with his partner (assuming he has one - coders, right?) and announce something huge, like he's changing sex or joining the French Foreign Legion or whatever. 2) Iconic prank. Also requires access to screen. Take a screenshot of the person's desktop. Move all desktop icons into a folder somewhere. Set the screenshot you took as the person's backdrop. Enjoy hours of them clicking things that no longer work. 3) Coder special. Replace one or several semi-colons in source code with the Greek question mark. This looks exactly the same as a semi-colon, but will cause every compiler to scream blue murder. Your hapless programmers won't know what's hit them.

Not really. I'm a coder by trade. One of the things you see new developers do is shoddy fix work. Instead of delving into the specifics of the problem and solving root cause, they'll put a technical band aid on it. At some point, something else will go wrong and they'll put another plaster on top of that. Do that for a year on a project, and you'll end up with some broken, chaotic mess of fixes, with new fixes going in all the time to fix the fixes, the original problem utterly forgotten and misunderstood. It could be argued that the entire response to Islamic extremism has been a fix by inexperienced fixers that didn't really understand the problem, its context or its own nation's traditions. Torture would be one of these. George W Bush stated that they hate our values. What values? We abandon them as soon as they become inconvenient. Fúck, we'll forget history if it's inconvenient. Forget the centuries of Western meddling and imperialism, and just go with the common consensus that these people are born evil and just hate us. Any proper fix will involve recognition of the above and a complete rejection of principles that we say we no longer believe in. Sleep deprivation may be the thin end of the wedge, but it's still part of the wedge. It's still a fix, and just like all these other fixes, breaks something else in the implementation. Of course, that all needs political will that probably just isn't there. There seems to be an agenda against Islam which shows no sign of abating. Take a look at Whitey G's comments and consider how he might have been perceived if he'd made those comments about Jews instead. As stereotypical slurs, they're surely much worse than the "coin-grabbing" that Super Mario lost a life over, yet comments that denigrate Muslims as barbaric based on the actions of lawless extremists are fair comment, apparently.

Let's just say you're light on facts, and could have substantiated your Western logic point with a bit more than these noisemaker one-liners. If you got a point, make it and justify it, otherwise you'll look like some frightened bloke peddling fear of the other.

What is that then, oh wise one? Lecture us on Western logic. Is it like Gandhi's Western civilisation?

I think your opinion, that US torture has been a factor in IS recruitment (or indeed, any Islamic extremist organisation), is valid. Here's a nation that says it is the leader of the free world, going around and kidnapping citizens of other countries, taking them to an off-shore military base so that they can torture them. No due process or evidence required. It's a huge own goal in the Islam vs America propaganda Cup Final, and it's not the first, nor will it be the last. The mistake that others have made is assuming that you think it's the only factor. On the Westminster paedos thread, I suggested that we employ jury style selection for anyone on the committee, as the establishment had repeatedly shown it was incapable of investigating itself. hutch took this to mean that I was suggesting that we all form fúcking mobs and go around Paulsgrove style. Not really your fault that others lack the ability to read or apply a bit of common sense, but hey, it generates activity, so there's that.

I wasn't referring to you specifically, but if the cap fits. Please don't say things are my opinions when they aren't. I'm good enough at English not to need a ghostwriter, ta.

The closed-mindedness doesn't really bother me as much as you think it might, but I do get tired of the "me too" crowd. The whole point of posting here is so that you can share your views with others, yet we've an entire class of poster that chooses not to do this, in favour of asking redundant or inane questions when others actually have a go at expressing their opinions. A reactionary internet version of a parasite, basically.

Does your repertoire extend beyond "beggars belief" one-liners, hutch?

It's not really something you have to imagine. It has been widely reported. http://www.theguardian.com/world/2011/nov/16/fbi-entrapment-fake-terror-plots http://www.rollingstone.com/politics/news/how-fbi-entrapment-is-inventing-terrorists-and-letting-bad-guys-off-the-hook-20120515 http://chicagomonitor.com/2014/07/the-newburgh-sting-hbo-documentary-explores-issue-of-fbi-entrapment/ The world is an odd place right now, much as it was around a century ago. The war on terror is as much about Western imperialism and the failure of capitalism in a post Cold War globalised environment. Western nations have let the east become their factory, and in the main, we don't make stuff anymore. Of the stuff left that we do still make, military shít is high on that list. We go to war, and we create demand for all those industries which were looking down the barrel of perpetual world peace. The US is having another schizophrenic episode, much as it did during the Spanish American war. We had a powerful lobby in the late '90s militating for a new American Century (much like Teddy Roosevelt and his cohort of adventurers at the turn of the 20th century) which massively contradicts what the US is supposed to be, the defender of freedom and the leaders of democratised people. The chickenhawks got exactly what they wanted after 9/11 - justification for pre-emptive wars in countries they wanted to invade anyway against ill-defined enemies.

Different agency, but did you know that around half of the FBI's anti-terror successes are basically instances of entrapment? They radicalise someone, gee 'em up to do something, then nick 'em. Gotta justify that budget.

It's not gross American hatred. Some of the best people I've ever known are American. I get a warm welcome whenever I'm over. However, their government is probably the biggest threat to world peace on the planet. Important to distinguish the executive from the people, particularly in a game as rigged as the US' electoral system.

You mean that the agency that decided to engage in torture is telling us that its torture was justified? Fancy that! Discussion over, people. The ever-trustworthy CIA has said that it saves lives. If they say that it definitely hasn't caused consternation and motivated non-extremists to get involved, then you must believe that too.

Benjamin Franklin, 11th November 1755. Someone that understood freedom.

And do people respect your opinion? Those who would give up essential liberty, to purchase a little temporary safety, deserve neither liberty or safety.

I'm not sure it's a particularly modern problem. People have always been prey to propaganda; just look at the huge amount of men that enlisted for Horatio Kitchener's army back in 1914. That's a century ago. I think the difference these days is that with modern literacy, education and the wealth of information available instantly, people have all they need to think for themselves. They just tend not to.

Very few people seriously think.

They have sent one bloke to prison for it. Unfortunately, this was the bloke who blew the whistle on torture. http://abcnews.go.com/International/cia-operative-prison-punishment-whistleblowing-torture/story?id=27474359

Torture is not acceptable. It's a sad indictment of our age that some frightened little people think it is, especially since many of those people lived through a real terror campaign in the UK in the 1980s. The Americans seem to be plotting their future according to 1984, judging from their use of language. "Enhanced interrogation techniques"? Twáts.

I'd like to spend £200billion on welfare, not banks, buy-to-let landlords and sustaining an artificially high cost of living on the country's credit card. The welfare system would probably be a lot cheaper without the professional hangers-on. I'd also like to be able to say live in a country where people's basic needs are met, or at the very least, has a framework whereby people's needs can be met, such as a healthy job prospects and decent renumeration. We have neither.