Excuse me, but 3G frequency? Doesn't 3G end at 2100MHz (with some potential future uses at 2600MHz)? So which 3G frequency, exactly, is interfering with a wireless standard that starts at 2412MHz and ends at 2484MHz?

>>What are "rotation forces"?

>>Surely we can come up with a sexier name than that don't you think?

This calls for a suitable unit of measurement!

Very tempted by Connery, but in the end I had to vote Craig, based on how well he delivered one of his very first lines -

"Don't worry, the second is -"

*gunshot*

"Yes. Considerably."

Even Pierce Brosnan had his moments though.

2 months down the line this will turn out to have been a viral marketing campaign for Die Hard 5.

AC: Good call, because you really want to encourage the habit in users of following the instructions of a website that says your computer is infected with a virus.

Isn't this a pretty obvious conclusion? The very definition of prejudice is making a judgement without rational justification. Therefore, people who are less skilled at reason and logic (i.e. those of below-average IQ) will be more prone to prejudiced views because their mental capacity makes it more difficult for them to recognise an opinion that isn't well-founded.

NEWSFLASH: Scientists prove that a word means what the dictionary says it means.

"Er, I think you'll find that Symbian is a smartphone operating system with a lot of features that iOS lacks even today."

I think you'll find that Symbian is a family of operating systems that includes S60 (smartphone OS), S^3 (less common smartphone OS) and the incredibly popular S40 (feature phone OS). Cheap and cheerful Nokia? It'll be running Symbian series 40 OS unless it's really old. And there are millions upon millions of those in circulation.

I'm surprised nobody has mentioned that the $1 salary is a tax evasion ploy. It enables them to be compensated through methods that they get taxed far less on. Many execs have used this including Steve Jobs.

I don't know whether it would get anyone killed, but I'm quite sure this kind of thing could derail prosecutions, resulting in murderers, paedophiles, rapists and plenty more similarly upstanding citizens going free.

Massive energy absorption and high elasticity... I wonder how well this would function as ballistic armour?

I actually found this one more entertaining than the previous BOFH. Good job, this time it was actually funny.

"The longest and most expensive assassination in history"

Weren't there two ground wars in Iraq plus an ongoing occupation? I don't think some airstrikes and a naval blocade will really compare to those. Oh, maybe that wasn't an assassination mission. My bad.

... Or I could just use whatever wallet function they build into the handset to find out. < 3 hours sleep fail.

What I find most interesting is that the UK release is first... makes a nice change from things like the Space Marine game where we got it last despite WH40K being a thoroughly British phenomenon, among many other examples.

Yay for us being first for once.

Snow Leopard price...

The reason Snow Leopard cost so little is because it was a largely behind-the-scenes update for performance. Apple was concerned its main user base wouldn't be willing to pay normal OS upgrade price for something that didn't add many visible features. Previous incarnations such as Tiger and Leopard were about £79 ($99) if I recall correctly. I expect Lion to be priced around this level.

Start 'em young

Speaking from the student side of this debate, I think one of the best points being made here is how poorly the pre-university education system prepares people (damn that's a lot of ps) for actual computing work. My school was billed as a "technology college" and yet the number of computing-specific courses was zero. The closest A-level equivalents were in Electronics, which did involve the basis of digital theory but little more, and Business. Now there's an appealing title, especially to geeks [/sarcasm]. Not only this, but the careers advisors were useless, I doubt any of the students who were enthusiastic about the paths they chose derived any benefit from the careers staff.

I am curious however about the numbers here, and wonder whether the OP is referring only to courses specifically labelled "Computer Science" or whether he has investigated other computing courses. I'm currently studying Forensic Computing at the University of Central Lancashire; in our first year we were required to do basic C++, PHP and a little SQL and could choose either C# or further C++ for the second semester. In the second we could choose between OO-based C++ (until that point it had been entirely procedural) or SQL (Oracle based). Furthermore the networking module has covered well beyond the understanding of the difference between switches and routers already and this module is required for quite a few of the courses.

Granted, the majority of the students chose SQL because it was seen as the easy option, and not because they were more interested; but the general outline of skills learnt does not match up with the poor understanding displayed by the graduates he has spoken to.

On the other hand, the fact that I achieved the second highest mark in the year for both the C++ and PHP/SQL modules in the first year when I didn't even enjoy C++, and had never previously touched either at all does seem to suggest that whilst being taught more broadly than the examples that have been the despair of the OP, my coursemates may not be a shining example of all that is best and brightest in British universities.

Cloud computing - the next water supply?

Is it just me or does anyone else see a future where cloud computing is simply another public utility, like water, electricity and gas? Billed by the number of processing cycles used, or data throughput or some other more obscure measurement? Google is already moving its way into the utility market in a slightly different manner. Maybe we'll see some kind of merging of our broadband service where our connection package includes time on the cloud, like mobile phone minutes.

That's the reason the future might look dull, folks - because it's cloudy.

And my friends wonder why I don't trust Google anymore...

So, let me get this straight - where they've been ordered to do so by the relevant authority, they've deleted the data, and everywhere else, they haven't. Furthermore, although they "want to" delete the rest of it, the only apparent difference between places where they have and haven't is whether they've been ordered to do it.

Seems Google requires my services as a translator, so to summarise:

"We want people to think we're going to delete the data without having our arm twisted"

What are the odds that they'll find a way to keep some of the data they've promised to erase?