From the UK too (although about half your age) and I definitely encountered the word 'spatula' as used to refer to a fish slice-like paddle implement before the scientific/medical spoon.

Could be worse

He could be a republican.

"Tuh, dumdums."

No, not really.

El Reg may enjoy ribbing them, but personally I've found their predictions for this last year to be spot on.

That is, after all, what they're there for. Apps and widgets are just gravy.

"As this footage shows, the IRA gunman succeeded in destroying a British helicopter... by firing a toilet at it."

Gabe Newell said it

"In general, we think there is a fundamental misconception about piracy. Piracy is almost always a service problem and not a pricing problem. For example, if a pirate offers a product anywhere in the world, 24 x 7, purchasable from the convenience of your personal computer, and the legal provider says the product is region-locked, will come to your country 3 months after the U.S. release, and can only be purchased at a brick and mortar store, then the pirate's service is more valuable. Most DRM solutions diminish the value of the product by either directly restricting a customers use or by creating uncertainty." - Gabe Newell of Valve fame.

Basically boils down to "if piracy provides a better service than the producers, of course people will pirate."

It's a trap!

"Where would that come from? We already have a list of *well-behaved* installed applications that the user can remove if they wish. It's in whatever Control Panel calls itself these days."

That's pretty much the list I'm talking about. My idea would be to present the list in the refresh options, so that you can _put back_ everything you think is OK.

I've had trouble with XP that needed a rebuild but it was mostly hardware to blame. On the other hand, without doing anything other than turning it on, Windows 98 SE sometimes just forgot where bits of it were.

Uh yeah

I hope it works at least as well as system restore.

Not that the site authors care about this. If anyone mentions it, they say its just for fun, or just to show that torrents aren't secure.

I'd be a little more worried about false positives.

Seconded

I doubt I'll ever pay a grand or more on a TV in my life. Something a bit more down to Earth would be nice.

£

You do have to pay £20 for a ticket into Portsmouth Historic Dockyard, which includes only one tour of HMS Victory.

Commissioned in 1778

At that time we were the hated enemy.

Makes me feel all warm inside.

Um no.

Apple has invested a lot in having the biggest brand value. Even though some other manufacturers have brought out arguably better hardware, some of which is quite innovative (e.g. the ASUS transformer), there's just no marketing going on. Without making a name for themselves, people won't recognise the other brands and when Apple steals the best ideas (as they always do), people will just think it's Apple being clever again.

Also, although you may not agree, the "it just works" mantra around which iOS is designed appeals to a lot of people. Android is different on every machine.

"Keypads r mch nicr"

They don't help your typing though.

Bread won't keep you warm in winter

Actually, good shelter is a pretty important consideration. In temperate climates you need a decent house to survive the winter. In hotter climates you need to be able to get out of the sun.

Oh?

...and when that fondleslab breaks?

Indeed

You'd have to get to point 3 or above on the _top_ pay band at this uni to get over £49k.

@laird

Out of interest, how many requests have been made by the UK?

A few pints and a packet of peanuts

"What do we DO about it?"

Nothing. Nothing at all. Even trying would be futile.

If it happens tomorrow, just try to relax and be thankful that your life has been good to you so far. If it hasn't been good to you so far, don't worry. It won't be bothering you much longer.

If memory serves...

Ditching the telephone sanitisers resulted in the death of the rest of the species due to infection caught from dirty telephones.

"Xbox is useless without Gold"

Mine is pretty useful without it. Plays games and can download stuff and everything.

Not interested in playing against 13 yr old CoD fans in multiplayer so why would I want Gold?

Besides BBC iPlayer must be free to a license fee payer by law.

Ah, I wasn't accusing the Register of being sensationalist, that was aimed squarely at the Mirror and Daily Mail. In a brief article like this though the description of the work made it sound like absolute fluff, which is the conclusion some of the commenters above have obviously come to.

Sheffield has a horrible square ended cathedral in the city centre. Having played a lot of Fallout 3 on a pretty old PC, I imagined that someone must have set the draw distance quite low and that if I walked a bit closer the apparently missing spire would fade into view.

Not that I'm mad or anything.

...and the way El Reg described it made it sound like bad science, i.e. setting out to do a study using a tiny and biased sample. Whereas it was really a paper that says to other scientists "hey this is interesting, we're going to study it further".

The Mirror and Daily Fail clearly only cared about a sensationalist negative anti-gaming article, but then that's not anything new.

Not a binary classification

There's a whole spectrum of games between meat-headed COD and 'plan meticulously but still get shot by someone a mile away that you had no hope of seeing' Op Flashpoint. This is certainly closer to COD, but there is at least a semblance of tactics required, i.e. taking cover from time to time rather than running around like a maniac.

Some people like to cuddle afterwards.

...and how many professors actually wear their gowns to anything other than No.1 dress occasions?

Final point

"On top of which, sometimes it is just better to have 2 devices for doing 2 different things in 2 different places."

I agree with this. That's why I'd rather have a PC with separate monitor, or TV with separate DVD player and digi-box, rather than any kind of combo. If something fails, or you want to upgrade it (my HTC hero is going out the door as soon as my contract is up), you just swap out one of your gadgets instead of buying a whole new system.

Excellent!

Finally a way to deal with those beat-thumping hip-hop listening neighbours.

Not quite

Since SETI was essentially trying to find patterns in that static you see on an untuned TV, CERN have a slightly better chance I feel.