I love royal weddings

When big ears married barbie we got the day off school and we went to the seaside

There should be a royal wedding every friday.

Combined with Duke-Nukem 3D

And there's an app I would play.

ooops

I think I got X and Y mixed up in the last comment - I never did biology.

I will ask the missus, "Hey Fred - are women X or Y?"

@I don't believe in the Higgs-Boson!

Nobody expects the CERN inquisition -

Their chief weapon is surprise, surprise and a bloody big magnet .....

No chance

If it was down to Siemens they would have charged Iran for deploying it after charging the US and Israel for developing it.

@Security - we've heard of it

Don't worry - the hack wasn't that widespread, they only discovered a single password (which everybody used)

Please don't call them a church

>They are a bunch of murderous, mind controlling thugs

And your point being?

@complexes

>The pope's beliefs, on the other hand, have it that we are special favourites of the ultimate big guy,

Only us catholics - the rest of you he can't stand!

dear ME

They know they are going sell bugger-all (=3 in reg units) to a few french companies/celebs who want to look green and don't have a prius

So if you aren't going to sell any there's no need to price it to sell.

The first smart car clone with batteries and a 50mi in town range would sell - but the safety regs introduced to suit 3tons SUVs doing 100mph mean it would be impossible.

1984

Or was this limited to science-fiction ?

But the terrorists could have used these

Remember the last time there was a credible security threat ( AKA politician anted to be on the today program) a bunch of tanks were parked at Heathrow.

But these were only tiny little baby tanks - no match for T72s.

The euro-fighter and the new carriers must be scrapped and the money used to pay for a battalion of new heavy battle tanks to handle millions of potential terrorists coming through Heathrow armed with T72s

A bit rough on the scots

Are the men of the "3rd Foot and Mouth Regiment", the famous devils in skirts, left totally unprotected?

Now that's why you wear a seatbelt!

Still need some new underwear though!

@So Presidents are more expensive than Monarchs?

Total cost of ownership - it's a matter of lifetime and replacement costs

A monarch can do you 60-70 years if they are painted regularly whereas a president you might have to upgrade every 4-5 years.

Then a presidential election can costs $Bn whereas to get a new monarch all you need is a rugby player and a bottle of Lambrusco.

More over, what are those of us in "first world" countries meant to do?

Well we could educate our children in science and technology, send them to university and move up the value chain so we are designing the ARM cores that go in the iPads.

We could invest in high tech manufacturing so that we can make things with automated assembly lines instead of needing millions of cheap workers.

Or we could just open another branch of "scented-candles-R-us" and make reality TV shows about shopping there.

Consolation prize

Just on the news here - the air and space museum in Seattle (AKA Boeing's gift shop) didn't get one.

They are trying to put a brave face on it. They did get the plywood mockup that the astronauts trained on. But it's not just a mockup it's THE mockup "the only one of its kind in the world" according to their press release.

Treadmill?

Most wars today are "asymetric conflicts in human resource rich countries" = us with guns, them with lots of non-white people

So simply round up 1000 of them, put them on a treadmill, @150W each you have 150KW for as long as you want. Optional power boost available with well known whip technology.

In conflicts closer to home where either the locals are too fat and lardy to be of any use, simply exchange for squaddies. With the correct inducement you could probably get more than 150W out of them and at worst they would get fit

Typical - blame the chickens

"They don't plot, they don't scheme, and they are *not* organized."

Alternately a large contained space filled with fine aerosol powder of highly combustible feather, feed and bedding remains ignited - like the great Norwich custard explosion

Statistics

But by the same reasoning everybody in Idaho and Montana already has a gun - and probably a much better one than the supermarket cheapie being given away

Alternatively

I do 15mi each way on a carbon fibre+aluminium bodied vehicle that runs on mars bars and chips.

Only cost 250quid from Edinburgh Bike Coop

Gets through downtown faster than the cars and gives you an excuse to wear Lycra in public.

@A superlative suggestion, sir, with just two minor flaws

That didn't stop them making the last two Inspector Clouseau movies !

@Poor astronaut

I think you drink from the bottle

The potty (human waste management system facility in Nasa-speak) is for the end product.....

@deniable responcibility

They already have a system for that - it's called sail in and out of Portsmouth submerged at speed. Hit fishing boat, sink it and kill crew.

Then deny that you had a sub in the area until a passing group of school children show you the pictures of the sub submerging that they drew just before the incident.

Then when you raise the wreck of the fishing boat and find the hull smashed in and acoustic tiles embedded in the wreckage - classify the whole thing as secret. And prosecute the owners of the fishing boat for their life raft being out of test date.

Top secret kinetic energy weapon

The Royal Navy is beginning trials of a top secret kinetic energy weapon

It will fire a spherical Ballistic Action Launch Load into the enemy vessel at super-clarkson speed. They should be able to deal with targets this size with a single shot

The kinetic energy generation system is smaller than the laser and uses a loading and targeting system that is completely immune to computer failures and ECM.

It is believed that because of the lower electrical power demands even the new class of small warships will be able to carry hundreds of individual launchers .

To reduce radar cross-section, susceptibility to magnetic mines and reliance on fueling, a series of new natural organic composite hulled warships with a wind power system is envisioned to carry the new weapons.

Or just have the same name as a celeb

My GP used to regularly send me details of somebody else with the same name.

My wife was a little surprised that I was having IFV treatment with another women (whose name was helpfully on all the letters). On the other hand since they had all been sent to my address they could claim they hadn't leaked any location data.

MP3 players

Used to be common with chiPod 4Gb MP3 players - they were 2Gb chips fixed to look like 4Gb

Slim not going to be a design goal then?

The iPad3 will be a little thicker around the middle then?

Classic

No it isn't - even in stainless steel it looks like any other electronic toy. In 10years it's going to look clunky and out of date and in 20years all the electronics will have stopped working and the little rubber buttons will have worn away.

Now that nobody uses film you can buy used Hasselblad 500s for next to nothing - I'm almost tempted to get one as a piece of sculpture. They were classics

Goldplating

So the idea is to blame europe when the 'Eu regulations' are less strict than the UK ones?

New leader - same tories.

@Curb the Church

Exactly - who died and made them God?

Simple misunderstanding

He was just saying "Nokia are still open" ( for now )

- you might have been confused by the way all the doors are locked, the windows boarded up and the tumbleweed blowing through the carpark

Passive 3D TV

Are MUCH better- we have a couple of JVC 46" TVs with REALD cinema glasses, much better brightness, colour and picture than active sets. Only problem is that they cost about 5grand.

The reason makers like the active sets is that there is no real change from a standard 120Hz TV to an active set - other than flogging you a 100quid transmitter ad a few pairs of 200quid glasses.

ps. If you don't like the early 60s Michael Caine, cinema glasses - there are a bunch of companies that do fashion versions, even clip-on sunglasses style if you wear specs.

@Ummmmmm

That's not really fair - some people have got a DAB radio to work!

@Enormous waste of time

Because 3G licenses raised 25Bn so somebody has decided that selling a few 10MHz of FM spectrum will obviously raise more (not sure how - they probably multiplied the number of people listening to FM by the price of an iPad or something)

NASA IS a model of effectiveness and efficiency

Remember Nasa's job is to do tax payer funded R+D for Boeing (sorry support all US large passenger aircraft makers).

Manage pork barrel contracts with whichever aerospace company has a supportive senator in it's state (or was Houston chosen for it's natural closeness to space?)

Hide the cost of some military projects

It does all those very very well, it's crap at space exploration but that's not really important.

Maths with a calculator

How does having a calculator help with maths?

The only example I can think of is the proof of the 4 colour problem and that needed a bit more than a pocket calculator.

(They are useful for arithmetic though)

R&D isn't white coats

What is corporate R&D depends on the company accountants, what Wall St wants to hear and the local tax laws.

So company A counts almost nothing as R&D, everything is product development, to Wall St analysts it looks very lean and productive.

Company B counts everything that hasn't actually shipped yet as R&D, it writes off all it's development costs as R&D tax credits and tells Wall St it is a major innovator.

Cost savings

How much does it cost to do a DNA profile?

I can't imagine it's cheap, private companies charge about $250 for paternity tests etc. So assuming that $1=£1 and add a 1000% government contractor markup they are paying a few quid to put innocent people's DNA into the system in the first place

If you waited for them to be convicted before doing the profile than you could save the cost of removing the innocent ones pretty quickly

Obvious

They use GPL software written by other people but don't have to share it because they never 'distribute' the software. It's like me renting a DVD pointing a video camera at the screen and broadcasting that - claiming that I'm not "distributing" the DVD

The AGPL stops this loop hole so they don't like it.

Etch-a-sketch

Cheap, Colourfull, Low security risk, hard to hack, and no USB sockets to be left on a train

And because it can't run Powerpoint or IE the effectiveness of any manager issued with one should increase hugely.

There is also a reduced support overhead since it can be rebooted by simply shaking it (http://www.dilbert.com/strips/comic/1995-04-03/)

Pre-emptive

Although the west midlands police standard procedure of automatically locking up the first 6 Irish guys every time there is a terrorist bomb might need small tweaks to be effective in Dublin.

Ummm actually.

Hasn't been a fatal US major airline crash in about 10years

Some of this is marketing - when you book a ticket on UA and end up flying on a 12seat commuter plane operated by 1man and a dog thats just code-sharing, if one crashes then it was nothing to do with UA.

Water landings aren't that bad - assuming it's a water landing a'la Hudson not a water landing as in falling from 38,000 ft and hitting the atlantic nose first. People normally die when they inflate their life jackets inside the plane. Which suggests that the American flight's passengers either listened to the briefing - or didn't know where the lifejackets were..

And finally Aeroflot's reputation is unfair - all flights in the USSR were counted as Aeroflot. So cargo flights into Kabul, supply trips in winter to siberian bases, one man survey flights over the artic all counted as aeroflot crashes.

Couldn't they simply turn it off

"Agency-wide mission" = what mission?

They aren't doing space flights, they haven't been launching commercial or military sats since challenger and the science projects are built by universities.

If you stop the bits that are just a tax-payer funded R+D write off for Boeing and the bits that are a back-hander (sorry strategic investment) in the other California aerospace companies then all you have left is two theme parks - and you can get Disney to run those.

Could improve with the right 3D

If you simply swapped the Z direction ( DirectX instead of openGL) and had Jar-Jar be rendered into the screen - actually behind the screen, and behind the background, and preferably appear in the alley out the back of the cinema

Go on the attack

Make some ads showing footage of car crash victims burning to death in petrol powered cars.

First 'extra' site blocked

www.vatican.va

Updated version

Bodie and Doyle go on holiday, get captured by local farmers and Cowley has to ring up and explain they were only there looking for butterflys.

@Ridden down

No that's what the ruling norman elite want you to think - he was actually hit from a grassy knoll not shown in the tapestry

Question 17

It's the "are you a terrorist?" question:

If yours is blank then they have already decided and you don't have to answer it.