Horse through Open Stable Door Horror

My new laptop runs Windows Vista. So what? Well, for starters, it isn’t as vulnerable as older operating systems to deliberate hacking, or users’ carelessness. Any bells ringing yet?

Here’s an opinion and nothing more (after all, I wouldn’t want to be on the wrong side of the Official Secrets Act): there is a strong possibility that desktop IT in Downing Street is based around Windows XP Service Pack 2, with Internet Explorer 6 as the browser of choice. And probably not the latest IE6 either.

And here’s another opinion: it might be a pain, but keeping up to date with the monthly Microsoft patch updates is, on balance, A Good Thing. I don’t have a comprehensive list to hand of everything from the past couple of years, but what I do know is that a whole raft of what are commonly termed “vulnerabilities” have been addressed during that period.

And finally ... the phrase “cut and paste” might sound innocuous, but a whole lot of information can be transferred from source to target in such operations.

Clang.