It's the little things redux redux redux

It almost seems superfluous to suggest user interface improvements for XP, given how it's been replaced by Vista... No, wait. It hasn't. Never mind.

Problem: When you click on a desktop shortcut and the destination file has been moved, you get a message politely telling you that Windows has no idea what you're talking about, and would you like to delete the shortcut?

Now why the hell would I want to do that, if I've just asked to open that file or program?

What would be really useful (big ask for Microsoft, I know), is if the warning dialogue box included the path of the file, to give you some idea of where you (or, in this case, my network administrator) may have moved the fucker to, so that I can find it and restore a working shortcut.

Little children should not suffer. Rant-warning.

Here's my 30-second take on the Stolen Generation:

• Attempting to improve the living standards and future prospects of the very young: Good
• Removing children from their families and putting them in foster care as a last resort if their living conditions are abusive and/or abysmal: Good
• Using foster care as a whole-sale attempt to destroy an entire culture and language without first supporting that culture to grow and adapt to a changing world: Atrocious.

As you will no doubt see, the issue is a whole hell of a lot more complicated than that. If you can't see the complications, please move away from the keyboard.

And now that we have government investigations, a demand for an apology and compensation, and what appears to be a worrying tendency to use "the stolen generation" as a sort of holocaust-style catch-all attempt to induce guilt in mainstream Australia, we have this little scenario:

• Girl, aboriginal, less than 10, gets removed from her community because she's being sexually abused: Good
• Girl gets placed in foster care with a white family: If that's what was available, okay.
  
• Girl, aged about 10, gets removed from foster care and sent back to her community because leaving her with a white foster family would be tantamount to "a second stolen generation": WTF?
• Girl, aged 10, gets gang-raped in her community. FOR FUCK'S SAKE WHAT HAPPENED?

This beggars all belief. It really does.

Just to make the story complete, and to set this little girl up for just about the most miserable self-esteem and life anyone in this dubiously first-world country can have, the magistrate sentencing the pack of low-life throw-backs who raped her gave them light sentences, some of them even with no convictions recorded, because "she probably consented". Consent? THAT'S WHAT IT'S CALLED STATUTORY RAPE YOU BRAINLESS DING-BAT. The law should not care if she consented or if she just refused to express an opinion, she is under-age by federal law. Ergo, she can not legally provide consent. Oh yes, and the entire pack of rapists are pederasts.

I don't believe in punishment for punishment's sake, I really don't, but there are times when castration looks like being the only real option.

That magistrate's judgements are being reviewed. All of them. I can't bear to think what else may come to light now.

I can not tell you how much I want this

Steampunk laptop.

Too heavy and gorgeous to be portable, not even laptop, but I tell you I don't care.

Pleeease?