Exactly, make the citizenship test in Latin - so only true British people can pass it.

Re: what this country needs

An extreme solution to overcrowding on network south east - but definitely out-of-the-box thinking

An avoidable tragedy

That was one of the opinions/rumours/conspiracies going around at the time, after management vetoed imaging it with spy satelites or a space walk.

If they (and the public) knew there was damage there would have to be a rescue mission.

The orbiter couldn't reach the ISS and getting the second shuttle ready in time and a rescue was tricky.

So they didn't want the bad publicity of having a crew in space that were definitely going to die - on national television. It would have been the end of manned space flight, or at least their careers.

Re: VS2012

Excellent - I look forward to a crowd of hip and trendy young attractive devs all working in c++ while rollerblading and playing ultimate frisbee.

Is it just me or do the Windows8 ads all look like a tampon commercial ?

Re: As an owner of a Nexus 4

My desk comes with a non-slip coating of coffee rings, strangely sticky fluff and something unidentifieable which seems to be growing.

Advantages: nothing slips off and nobody ever wants to steal your keyboard.

Disadvantages: probable outbreak of plague

Re: Too expensive

If you need 3-way track changes in Word or you have an Excel file that auto links to Project or some other homemade ERP system - then get office pro.

But nobody needs to spend 399 quid to write their homework or do a few expenses spreadsheets.

As to upgrades, exactly what do you need to type into a document in 2013 that you didn't need to type in 2000, or 1995? How much would your business suffer if you couldn't adjust the radius of the terminators of the underline lines - or whatever new "feature" they have managed to squeeze into the new release

Not fraud - but part of that "not making any profits" was buying $1.5Bn of securities, which they presumably hope to sell for a profit at some point

It's just like saying, we made $1.5Bn but bought $1.5Bn worth of gold - therefore we didn't make any profit (and don't pay any tax) but we do own $1.5Bn worth of gold.

Re: No dividends, ever, and no plans to start one

>As if that were a good thing

Paying a dividend says "we think we would be better returning this money to our share holders so they can invest it - in another company", not paying a dividend says "we think we can use this money to grow our business and it's share price"

Re: Neutral?

Since part of their 'not a profit' was buying $1.5Bn in securities - perhaps Amazon put it all in Apple shares

Re: And the significance?

And how many of the tablets were $75 Android 2.3 machines from Walmart rather than iPads

I suspect that tablets outsold laptops at christmas for pretty much the same reason that kid's bikes outsold cars - it doesn't mean the whole world is going to start cycling to work.

Re: History and culture

The military importance of Trafalgar has been re-assessed somewhat since Nelson's day.

Napoleon had already withdrawn his invasion army from France and sent it toward the invasion of Austria 5days before the battle - although the news hadn't reach the British fleet.

The major strategic effect of Trafalgar was actually on the Spanish rather than the French.

They lost many more ships and officers and never managed to rebuild - 1805 marked the end of Spain as any sort of power in Europe. The French fleet was back upto strength and arguably better equipped and better led within a generation.

Re: @Voland's right hand

"The history of the country where you are applying for a citizenship is a core value".

It is indeed:

0-9Bn years, mostly hanging around as Hydrogen and Helium

9-13Bn years, collapsed into ball of rock, got hot, cooled down

13-13.6Bn years, split off from rest of single giant continent somewhere south of the equator and headed north in search of weather worth complaining about. Eventually crashed into Scotland which had left Canada for same reason

13.6 - 13.6001 Bn years, ice retreats finally cutting off rest of world.

1, Are you Brazilian ? Then shoot him

2, Are they playing summer holiday? Then shoot them. they may grow up to be Cliff Richard

3, Check if either of you is Bruce Willis. If you are - shoot the other one.

>stick it to the yanquis

Guess where their only internet connections goes to and who owns the link.

Re: Dumb Idea

Would that be a reflexive or intransitive use of integrate?

Do we need people who can be just like everyone else - or people who can do calculus?

Re: Chances are ...

The main thing I had to learn for my canadian citizenship was the captial of each province/territory.

So if the natives (well not actually the natives of course - just the last lot of immigrants with a more direct attitude to citizenship) ever need any help I'm ready and waiting to tell them that Charlottetown is the capital of PEI

Re: I fail.

I suspect a bloke called manuel feels much the same about Brits.

Re: All blow over? Not likely

And basically can kiss her politcal career goodbye - if you thought Rick Santorum had a bad Google day

Re: Not really

There was a similar problem in the 50/60s in the USA. Anybody who could translate secret Russian messages was obviously a commie and so couldn't have clearance to see secret Russian messages.

Even the BBC used to blacklist reporters who spoke Russian/Chinese -as potential security risks. In one famous case, including an historian with a PhD in medieval chinese

Re: More explanation please

Thermal conductivity of helium is much higher. So not only do you get less drag heating of the platters - it's easier to conduct that heat to the case

re: A great way for terrorists to obfuscate their code.

You think the IRA will bother to learn Arabic?

Official suppliers of domestic terrorism to her majesty for more than a century.

Re: Difficult fire suppression / fire extinguishing

Great blog of "interesting" chemistry - including one material that burns sand!

http://pipeline.corante.com/archives/2008/02/26/sand_wont_save_you_this_time.php

Re: "In order to supply enough power, the aircraft depends on its battery packs"

Especially if the bit of red ribbon gets stuck underneath and so in mid-fligth you need to extract 100,000 AA batteries with the end of a pencil.

Re: cosy cosy cosy

There is no question of national interests interfering in a commercial Airline's business !

It just happens that no US airline, in receipt of lots of US government aid, chooses to fly Airbus.

And there was no link between BA choosing to buy some Airbusses and getting more landing slots in CDG.

The main reason for Airbus building the A380 is to stop airlines having to buy Boeing if they need a 400+ seat plane.

Re: battery cooling

" is it pressurized, "

Generally the whole of the inside of the fuselage is pressurised.

It's very difficult to make a tube where the bit the passengers are in is pressurised but a thin floor away is a cargo hold that isn't. The exception is some planes where you want to open the cargo bay doors in flight - for those special deliveries.

The airlines themselves don't seem to understand this and used to tell you not to put certain items in the checked baggage because they might be damaged by the lack of pressure.

The only difference is that the cargo hold isn't heated (except for the bits you put pets or sleeping crew in)

Re: Good news

"Who did the inspectors who qualified the 787 work for?"

It's standard in any safety critical industry - and it' the only way to do it.

If the inspectors from the FAA/CAA were directly inspecting the plane - they would have to know more about the design of aircraft in general and the 787 in detail than the Boeing engineers themselves.

Instead the inspectors are checking Boeing's procedures and methodology - just as our ISO auditors do to us.

They don't read through our code with a deep understanding of our business logic - they look at our history of tests, bugs, resolutions, plans etc - and assume we didn't make it all up.

Re: What a mess...

One of Boeing's unique innovations in the 78 was that often the supplier was also responsible for the design of the component.

It saves on a lot of expensive engineers in Seattle - but does make it rather tricky to change vendors.

Boeing have certainly gone very quite on all the statements they made about carbon fiber planes when an American Airlines pilot tried to do a handbrake turn in an Airbus A300 and broke the tail off.

Ironically this is also the only Airbus model that has direct Boeing-style controls that allowed the pilot to break it - rather than a computer that would have stopped him

Re: Good news

It's a very good sign of the FAA attitude.

The NTSB was created because the FAA used to be in charge of investigating air accidents AND promoting air travel - which led to all their accident reports concluding it was a one-in-a-million act of god that could never happen again.

More recently the FAA have got into trouble for giving US airlines an easy ride on safety violations because it would cost American jobs. Then there was the statement by some US politician that anyone criticising a company as vital to US defense as Boeing was at least a traitor and probably a terrorist.

re: Am I glad I live in the UK

Of course unless Britain wants to be thought of as an axis of evil/supporter of terrorism it will wish to get alongside the forces of Righteousness and implement these rules itself.

After all we bravely fought Europe for the right to have 1 year warranties rather than 2 - having locked phones is a fundamental sign of Freedom(tm)

Re: I know I am a bad person

>you'll always be a Catholic but with care you will avoid any ill effects.

If you joined the Taliban, you'd merely be regarded as a bad Catholic. (Dara O'Briain)

>Being responsible for aids being spread

Apart from banning condoms, and refusing to cooperate with health and medical aid programs that supply condoms in areas with high levels of AIDS.

The Vatican's Council for the Family made an official announcement that condoms do not prevent AIDS and that AIDS virus can pass through condoms.

Re: Common sense applies

It's not just a question of "people on a watchlist" worrying.

Lots of us have rules about what medium we can use for certain communications. Anyone who works for a public listed company, files patents, works with patient data or defense contracts has these rules.

If there is a secret NSA back door that probably only effects the bad guys - although if i were BAe or Airbus I wouldn't be using skype anymore.

But if the data is also "passed to our partners for marketing purposes" - then the lawyers will decide that a skype call is the equivalent of publishing it. So I can't use it for anything work related. The point is that I need an official statement to wave at the lawyers.

Re: High speed okay - if the ISP doesn't rip you off!

What a rip-off, the ISP not providing an individual transpac cable for each subscriber for your 12quid.

It's the same here with road tax, you pay it for your car and are expected to share the road with others!

Re: Apple did not invent mobile computing, nor even make it real.

The German army had mobile devices rather before the 90s.

The security was better than Apple, at least assuming you didn't always use "hitler" as the passwd

Re: What has this got to do with a Supernova?

Nothing - they are completely unconnected 'facts' about the star.

The density of the gas bar is so small the star won't notice

Re: Analysis

They could just upload the movies to "mega", I'm sure the$48m would pay for a premium account

Re: Quite correct

It's easy to safely dispose of mercury, especially as you said, the sulphide

We could then dig a series of tunnels deep underground and put the cinnabar into holes in the rock.

We could call it an "enim"

Re: And tradesman (VAT = Turnover tax!!)

Remember the VAT limit is on turnover not fees.

If you are the sort of business with lots of stock but low fees you pay VAT, if you are the sort of business with no stock to buy but all the money goes into fees then no VAT (if you are happy earning 77K)

I wonder how many lawyers and accountants were involved in the drafting of the law - and how many builders ?

Re: So...

But if the government increased tax then Starbucks would move it's operations out of the UK and employ cheap chinese labour to drink it's burnt coffee

Re: Well lets put this way...

- choosing a car for its snow handling when it only matters one week a year is asinine.

To be fair you only expect a Jeep to be in working order one week a year.

If you are really lucky then that coincides with the snow

(smug owner of Subaru with snow tyres ;-)

Re: Small car please

> the point of 300+HP .... 155mph

Because only a few of us have the massively impressive man-parts to be allowed to drive a Smart, or a 1.2L Citroen AX diesel. Those of you with more inadequate bits are forced to buy these mechanical supplements

Of course real super-men ride a bike - I've got 21gears and wear lycra in public ;-)

Re: meh

>Remember this is a tech site not a group of 12 year-olds discussing what they will do when they 'are grown up'.

Specifically it's a tech site for 30/40years olds to discuss what they would do if they were grown up