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I would give VirtualBox a go. I have used both VMWare Fusion 2 and Parallels Desktop 5 (not 6) and they both do pretty much the same thing and VirtualBox has pretty much the same feature set as VMWare and Parallels. A for performance any difference in my experience has been negligible, but Parallels was better.

Well, there are so many thing that can be classes as offensive they were unlikely to get them all right off the bat. Also, the non blacklisted things like Klu Klux Klan and Nazi are understandable because they are historical things and many people have genuine reasons for searching for them.

If you want to go down the web route, I would suggest PHP. There is a wealth of information available for it and it helps if you later decide to move to C/C++ or Java. Also, Bash scripting can be extremely useful.

On Windows I use Notepad++ On OS X I use Coda with additional plugins to do syntax highlighting for C++, Bash etc.

Yes, the government would have a large bill for software licencing but that is because of the scale of the operation the government are running. Microsoft licensing isn't THAT expensive, yeah it costs a bit but in the general scheme of things its not much at all. I am sure even if we wanted to migrate to FOSS, the money just wouldn't be there to see it through. We are cutting massive amounts of money out of our budget so any money put towards something is coming out of the cuts of other departments. If I had to choose between Shutting down my local NHS hospital and Switching to FOSS, or just sticking with MS software and keeping my hospital, it would be the latter every time.

Its the argument between Helping the people who made it VERSUS I don't like what they are doing with it (in terms of Price, DRM etc). I download songs quite a bit illegally, not because I am too lazy to buy it or I find its too expensive, but because of the horrible DRM that comes with them. When I buy something, it becomes my property and I am free to do whatever I want with it (put it on my computer, my network, my phone, my mp3 player etc). The record companies haven't come round the idea of people owning things like that yet and still want to own the content even after you paid for it. Its a real shame for the artists, many of whom work very hard to produce quality content just for it to be ruined by greedy media companies.

An Intel Mac will happily boot any bootable media and will be displayed on the Boot options screen (Hold Option while booting). To Dual Boot anything other than Windows you will need something like rEFIt.

Have a look on Data.gov.uk, or more specifically COINS which contains public expenditure.

If in the beginning we went with Open Source software that would be fine. The issue now would be if that we switched to Open Source software, all the governmental staff would require retraining how to use it, which would probably cost much more than the software licenses the government currently buy for the software people already know how to use. However, moving to Open Source software on the backend would probably make sense because the you would only need to retrain the staff who operate it.

First off, before trying anything I would mount it on a Machine that isn't running Windows (Linux Live CD?) because the U3 software will reformat the drive if any more incorrect guesses are given, but this software only runs on Windows. Just to make sure anything else you try doesn't make it reformat the drive. :)

Yeah, I'd keep it as well. I have only ever used friends iPad's or the one at the Apple store, but I really liked it and it's easy to see what they designed it for. It could easily replace a netbook if all you use the netbook for is browsing/email/reading etc. I haven't been lucky enough to win one/acquire the adequate funds for one :(

My ISP wanted to charge me an extra £2 a month for a 50MB Mailbox with only POP3 and basic spam protection (also a "premium" spam protection service at an additional fee). No thanks, I can get more for free.

It was, but the British Daily Mail only just picked up on the story today.

I am currently studying for my HND in Computer Networking and Internet Technology. I also do a lot of Freelance web design and development work.

I would recommend the MacBook Pro range of Laptops, although not the normal MacBook range (you can get better for less). I have the 15" Core i7 MacBook Pro and am completely satisfied with it. I do a lot of coding, database management and gaming with it and the MacBook Pro deals with it all perfectly (even gaming gives me decent framerates). I also do a lot of course work and reports with it and I find the keyboard is very good and not cramped like a lot of laptop keyboards. The only caveat so far is the heat management which uses the bottom of the laptop as a massive heat sink, which on my desk doesn't work great and I find the laptop heats up quite quickly but a pencil under the back let the air flow and also made it easier to type on.

A £2 wrench from a DIY store is a more efficient way to get a password than a super computer :P

Won't really make a dent IMHO, it will be a small niche if anything. Do you think the general public will use or even know what a "Distributed, XMPP powered, self hosted Social Networking seed" is?

Another Problem with ATM's (atleast from NCR) is that they all come with the manufacturers diagnostic software. This may seems harmless... but the diagnostic software has a utility to log card numbers and pin numbers and not only that, but it can periodically email this log. In the testing labs, this functionality is very useful but imagine if someone actually got into an ATM's software, and set this up to email the numbers and pins to themselves.

Well, ATM's are getting more and more insecure. I worked in NCR briefly, and they just keep adding more and more stuff such as Wireless Cards and Internet Connections DIRECT into the same machine that handles the money processing. The software most ATM's run now is Windows (NT or XP) with no AV or Firewall and run old version of software. I smell a recipe for disaster.

Better do it quick, apparently apple are working of a fix for the PDF exploit that allows it to work. I did it on my iPhone 3G because I wanted multi-tasking as so far the phone is handling it fine, no reason for it not to be enabled on the iPhone 3G. Also, I like how you had to post "Droid Rules" as if you were going to be flamed for talking about the iPhone. As long as a post is of value and not slagging the other off I doubt you would get flamed (at least here anyway). Its like PC vs Mac vs Linux.

Well it seems the SCADA system running the US Nuke system has an old version of Apache running on port 8080... Does Metasploit have an ICBM payload? :P

After DieHard 4.0, I had quite a few people ask me if the whole "fire sale" concept was possible (because I'm the computer guy), they were expecting the "No, its just a film" and were quite surprised when I told them that its possible (although a little far-fetched) and that our nations infrastructures aren't as well protected as we should hope. The way things are set up at the moment is very high physical security but very lax virtual security. Its like guarding your front door while your back door is wide open. Many plants will be using SCADA (supervisory control and data acquisition) systems which were modern and secure in their day, but not any more. A lot of them still run Windows CE and Windows 3.1. Sure they will probably be firewalled, but it shouldn't be the only line of defence. If I was running the infrastructure, I would just take them off any sort of network completely and put them on their own, closed circuit network because that way you need to get through the physical security to access it. Sadly, I don't think there will be any action to resolve this issue until there is a major incident. Our governments use a wait-and-see attitude towards these kinds of threats and they have to realise that there are people out there who want to see our nations disrupted through any means.

I use Opera, although I am growingly unsatisfied with it. I would use Chrome, but by the time it opens Opera will have fixed its problems and it just works in such unexpected and unwanted ways. I would use Safari, but it just does not offer the tools I want in a browser. I would use Firefox, but I feel its too bulky and clunky (at least on OS X).

Well, after having a quick scan over the source of the pirate bay, nothing really jumps out as suspicious. There is actually less javascript that I would expect.

I found it rather odd reading this, because I have been around on the forums/IRC since I began watching (Series 1, Ep 2) and I remember a lot of the event and people mentioned in the piece but I have never collectively thought of them together like that. I can remember things like "Oh, BK is being a dick" or the closure of Dev.5 but never collectively as the history of Hak5. It definitely, with some polish, would make a Hollywood movie. Also, I am sad to see you retire from Administrator Moonlit, you always did a good job.