Goes beyond awesomeness into a whole new realm of jaw-dropping brilliance

One for the Reg's tame lawyer. Have we broken the new obscenity laws by even looking at this vital health information? If so, I can't wait for the trial.

(And is that Lewis inside the scuba outfit - the face mask was so steamed up it was hard to tell)

British Imperial Spaceways

Might as well follow a long and honourable tradition and paint the whole of the solar system pink.

@ seanj

'Populist measures take effect before the election, like the "bingo tax cut" '

Oh he's cleverer than that - he whacked up the tax on bingo AT THE LAST BUDGET. The 'cut' actually still means bingo players will be paying more money than a year ago, but the tabloids will give him a break because it looks like Darling cares about their readers.

As for public sector workers - didn't you get the memo? The public sector is the great class enemy. In the last couple of weeks politicians have come to believe that the bankers who got us into this mess are a vital part of the Great British economy and we mustn't be too beastly to them otherwise they might leave the country. Teachers on the other hand...

So if you're in the public sector you're going to get hammered by whoever's in charge because even if you're a cardiac ward nurse you're politically indistinguishable from an Islington Council seasonal diversity empowerment officer. The Tories know you won't vote for them and Labour know that too.

eBook pricing

'S&S and Hachette, to be sure, are motivated primarily by the fact that ebooks command much lower prices than hardcovers'

Guess they haven't looked in the Waterstone's store where eBooks are regularly more than the same hardback from either Waterstones or Amazon. The companies claim this is because eBooks attract VAT, but I reckon it's called 'blatant profiteering' in anyone else's language.

UK vs. France and Germany

The UK's economy is about the same size as France's; a little smaller than Germany's. It's hard to directly compare taxes but levels across business and personal taxation are pretty much in the same ballpark.

If you go to either of those countries, public services work, the education systems aren't in permanent crisis, the roads aren't crumbling and you can pretty much guarantee your train or bus will turn up.

So what are they doing right that Britain isn't?

Reduce public borrowing

We can flog the Israelis a shiny new biometric panorwellcon since it looks like the next government won't be needing it.

Have a magical day

Swindon and Walt Disney World have a lot in common - I wouldn't want to be seen dead in either of them.

Not Liverpool then

Where Diplodocus would have been left burned out propped up on bricks.

I really, really hope there will be some CCTV of a dinosaur sneaking out under the cover of darkness.

Spookily...

...is it just me, or does the Psion 5 look more futuristic than that unpronounceable thing?

Even as an atheist I'm shocked and appalled by this imagery

It's sacrilege in this day and age to have such horrifyingly bad Photoshopping going on round her feet.

The who? The what?

'The machines will be run like Sky or TiVo boxes, under remote control from outside the home - users will have no control over them.'

Can't speak for Sky boxes, but TiVo is completely under user control. The only connection to other computers is the daily phone call and you can switch that off if you want.

“The London 2012 logo depicts the figure 2012 and nothing else.”

Well that passed me by. Am I unusual in never recognising those objects as numbers?

I'd love to know if this logo was ever considered by focus groups before being unveiled to a slack-jawed in disbelief public by the arbiters of artistic fashion - Tessa (I'm married to a crook) Jowell and Sebastian (I was almost strangled once by William Hague) Coe.

And sorry LOCOG, once you see Bill Clinton and Lisa Simpson in the logo, you can't see anything else.

@ Individual #6/42

Re: faulty Time Capsules

Did you have one of the original ones which has died a death - and if so, did they replace it with one of the new models?

'Cos if so, I think I might try that with my Apple Store who've been promising me a replacement Mark I TC for nearly 2 weeks now, but singularly failing to get their fingers out.

@ h4rm0ny

'So here's to Strasbourg. I will personally reverse by previous cynicism about the EU and celebrate them if they actually save him from extradition. I hope they do.'

You're getting your European courts mixed up.

An complaint of any violation of human rights legislation (the UK's Human Rights Act is a watered-down version of the European Convention of Human Rights) would be heard by to the European Court of Human Rights in Strasbourg. The ECHR is authorised by the 47 nation Council of Europe and nothing to do with the European Union.

Judgments of the ECHR are NOT automatically binding on member states - the judges can issue an advisory ruling which member states are obliged to consider to see if their domestic law is accordance with their obligations under the Convention.

Aspects of EC Law (no it's not called EU Law) are resolved by the European Union's court which is called the European Court of Justice and sits in Luxembourg. Most of its business is interpretation of aspects of the various EU treaties. For the record, judgments of the ECJ are binding on members of the EU.

And won't somebody think...

...of all those children who have been sexually molested by a dolphin?

Woohoo! Shit!

Awesome, my TiVo series 1 is still going strong but it could really do with HD support and twin tuners.

But what a pisser that the new TiVo is going to be tied to Virgin's crappy cable service which I can't get.

Let's hope TiVo tie up with a Freeview box manufacturer and put their awesome software in a useful box.

9 nanograms?

So in ball-park numbers around 1/100,000th the mass of a grain of sugar.

It makes me wonder if that sort of quantity found on any suspect is a reasonable grounds for suspicion or could be achieved through nothing more than chance contamination. I wonder what the figure would be if you pulled someone off the street.

One for Vulture 1 surely?

Come on, let's send Lester to Mars!

Too many Areses

We have Ares I the huge manned rocket, Ares V the stupidly big rocket and now ARES the plane - this is a recipe for confusion.

I'm with Tom_ above - ARSES please.

Thank god for the EU

The supposedly communistic undemocratic demagogue seems to be the only thing looking out for the individual these days.

Let's hope a serious slapping is heading towards the UK.

Preferably complete with a real slapping for Mandelson.

@ Steve Coffman

Helium's not the only lifting gas. Some weather balloons use ammonia although it has a lower lift. And there's no reason why hydrogen couldn't be used in this case provided the operators only recruited non-smokers.

Crappy customer service from Waterstones - beware!

Beware of duff eBooks even from legitimate sellers. Waterstones offer China Mieville's 'Perdido Street Station' for the Sony eBook Reader, but the book has been completely ruined by the morons who did the conversion - there are whole sections of the book in the wrong order, typos and weird characters aplenty and whole blocks of text have been repeated throughout the document.

I alerted Waterstones to the fact they're selling a version of the book the author couldn't possibly want people to see. What does Britain's leading bookseller have to say on the issue? Well let's have a look at their mission statement:

'Waterstone's mission is to be the leading Bookseller on the High Street and online providing customers the widest choice, great value and expert advice from a team passionate about Bookselling. Waterstone's aims to interest and excite its customers and continually inspire people to read and engage in books.'

So you'd expect an 'oh dear, we're really sorry, here's a corrected version of the book. Thanks for letting us know.' (You know, like they would if you found a paper book which had been incorrectly printed or was barely legible). Well to spare you the illiterate emails I got from customer services; they couldn't care less. They've got your money and they're not going to give it back without a fight.

Don't expect to get a quick refund on duff eBook purchases. Retailers assume you're a pirate from the start and you have to fight to get your money back, Amazon even considers eBook purchases to be final.

Instead, if an eBook is shite or if you can't get one thanks to DRM or stupid policies about only selling books in certain countries; write to the author and let them know their work is being ruined by their publishers or that their income is suffering.

You might not get a refund, but you'd be surprised how sympathetic writers are about customers getting what they want and what they paid for. You might even make a new friend.

@ The First Dave

'How much do you think DARPA are expecting for a lousy half-mil? That's barely enough to buy a full-sized hellfire at retail prices.'

As that great sage Opus the Penguin once said 'Physicists need Porsches too!'

If something does come through...

...it'd better have tentacles or I want my money back.

'What action the Tories would take on the issue is not clear.'

No, that's easy.

'Tell us what to do Rupert.'

because Mandelson doesn't really have enough powers does he?

And why does word that the powers are unlikely to be used *NOT* set my mind at rest? I seem to have heard similar comforting words before - usually just before those powers are used.

@ Bassey

'it still has to be singed off by the Monarch before it becomes enshrined in law. No Monarch would ever sign such a law and would immediately disband any government that attempted to pass such a law.'

I think you're being overly optimistic there. The sovereign has the option to withhold Royal Assent, but it is generally acknowledged this will never happen to a government-sponsored bill. The last time withholding assent was even considered was when George V wanted to veto Home Rule for Ireland. He took legal advice and was told he should not do so unless the security of the nation was threatened by the passage of the bill. That advice holds.

The sovereign appoints Lords Commissioners who state Royal Assent on their behalf. Most of the time they don't even get involved with the process, instead; convention states the sovereign takes advice of their ministers - if they say grant assent, it is granted.

All of which is good reason to ask the Americans if we can have a use of their Constitution. There are far fewer conventions and assumptions and a damn sight more transparency.

Sorry forgot

There's only way to cope in places like this. When someone wishes you to 'Have a Magical Day!'* or breaks into a perfectly choreographed 'spontaneous' dance, the socially correct response is:

'Fuckity Bye!'

* I so wish I was making that up.

Iceland...

Just a point of order.

The average Icelander is pretty much as honest as they come, hence the country's high rating. But the dozen or so of them that ran the banks and managed to bankrupt one of the World's richest countries must be in a league of their own.

Yeah it's wrong to hack someone's account...

...but part of me can't help but think that anything that makes the life of this grubby little fascist (he described himself as such) a bit harder can't be bad. Irving has made a nice little income from Holocaust denial.

As for free speech, that really is a tough one. After all Irving has variously claimed that Hitler knew nothing about the Holocaust, that the Allies faked the story, that there were no gas chambers, that there was no organised extermination and so on and on... His stories have been disproven in academic journals, books, papers, even in court and yet he still rattles round the far-right circuit spilling his venom. I can't begin to imagine how much distress he causes to survivors and relatives of the dead. But yes, he should be allowed to speak - and as soon as he steps over the line, then he should be dragged in front of a court and bankrupted all over again.

One thing that's easy to do would be to stop calling him a historian. Court judgements say he has faked and exaggerated his evidence. So perhaps the next time he turns up in print or on television they can just call him 'David Irving: Nazi fantasist'?

Using NASA tech

Just two points.

The tiles on the Shuttle might well be heat-proof but they're insanely fragile. You can scratch one with your fingernail, hell they're even dented by raindrops. So there's no way they'd survive having a plane drop on them.

To answer Pyros point above. No, there's small flexible felt pads under each tile, but they're there to allow the aluminium skin of the Shuttle to expand and contract without popping the tiles.

And Nomen Publicus's question about the water dumped on the Shuttle pad during launch. That's not there for heat protection, it's a sound deadening system preventing shockwaves bouncing off the concrete apron and tearing the rocket apart.

Can someone come and invade us?

Because I don't think we're making it as an independent grown-up country.

So do we have any takers?

Large(ish) archipelago (GSOH) conveniently located off of the Western Coast of Europe would like to meet professional empire. Somewhat neglected for the last century but would make an excellent second territory. This competitively-priced country comes complete with fully-fitted drizzle, threadbare transport network and a decorative German monarchy. The landmass* is available to the highest bidder in possession of a half-baked system of government.

*offer does not include the Republic of Ireland. Northern Ireland negotiable.

2000 lucky Mancunians

This is BRILLIANT. If you're a shyster selling duff tech to an illiterate government.

Come the next New Labour government they'll be able to spin that there's been a public trial in one of Britain's largest cities and they've only had 2000 complaints!

Silly question...

...but wouldn't the Brits have fixed this problem long ago when they had to deal with Harriers performing vertical landings on their pocket-sized carriers?

Either that or the US Navy can fit a giant oven glove* on the landing pad.

*They can put a camouflage pattern on it if the usual daisies aren't sufficiently Oooh-rah for the Marines.

"to the extend that Tweeting is an acceptable verb"

Unless you're referring to a pretty little bird, 'tweeting' is NEVER an acceptable verb.

@ Anonymous Coward

'Using nuclear weapons to dig a newer, wider, better Panama canal.

'Who'd ah thunk it?'

The answer to these sorts of question is always Edward Teller; a man always one secret volcano lair away from certifiable Bond villain.

@ Ivan Headache

If you put a new drive in a Mac and insert an update disk you are then prompted to install the OS disk which came with the machine in the first place.

Channel 4 in 3D

'Location, Location, Location' normally only makes me queasy, now I can be guaranteed to throw up when the posh bint and the bloke who can't pronounce his 'r's show Tarquin, Jocasta and darling Bubblejet around their fifth home - in 3D!

Six hundred quid???

Bloody hell you can buy top quality dSLRs for that much.

Try as I might, I really can't see the point of the micro four-thirds if the prices are going to be higher than better featured dSLRs. You don't save that much space in the camera bag and if that's your most pressing concern the Lumix range from Panasonic would be a better bet.

It's a bold move, but without heavy discounting I think micro four-thirds is doomed to go into the 'interesting but no way' bin alongside the Foveon sensor.

I'll stick with my Alpha 700 and Ixus combination thanks.

Ooopsie

'For the British the smart thing to do would be to produce their own domestic drone, even if it is more expensive than the US counterpart.'

You haven't been round here long have you? The track record of Britain's defence industry to produced sub-standard gold-plated garbage is a regular feature of Lewis' articles. They'd be really enjoyable if it weren't for the fact they cost us so much money.

Only 2000 in Greater Manchester?

That can't even cover the number of Labour Party apparachiks running Manchester Council.

Sartorial point

They really should get better outfits - they look like someone who might come round to fix your boiler.

Something in silver methinks and catsuits for any ladies who might be about to blasted into orbit (UFO purple wigs optional).