Re: @Matt "an American "diplomat" was out recruiting with a wig or two in his bag."

Yeah, most of the items he was caught with can be understood and also be quickly dumped or excused if stopped, apart from the cash and the written instructions. The foil could be to wrap his phone in to stop it being tracked (if he had a device without a removal battery it would have to be foil-wrapped, and if his phone did have a removable battery it would still be quicker to whip the foil off to use the phone than put the battery back and wait for it to boot). The knife can be excused away as "I was scared of muggers" and not as incriminating as a pistol. And, IIRC, carriage of folding knifes is not illegal in Russia, so it might even have escaped a police stop and search without comment if it was a gravity blade or the like.

But the cash? Surely it would have been simpler just to stick the funds in bank account under a fake ID, then take the potential recruit an ATM card that accessed the account. One ATM card in the wallet amongst many would probably go unnoticed, but carrying wads of cash? Hmmmmmm. And I'm a bit sceptical of the written instructions, I would have thought it much more likely that he would have memorised any such rather than carry around such an incriminating bit of evidence. That and the cash may be the FSB padding out the evidence to make it more spectacular.

Re: Erm.

".....where they don't even ask for a signature a lot of the time." One of my colleagues over from the States a few years back was shocked by the higher levels of credit-card security over here. It rendered his wife's non-C&P card unusable for the duration of their visit as the signature strip on the back was marked "CID", which apparently means "check ID to confirm the user is the card owner". Apparently, that also meant it was the cheapest holiday they'd had for years, so maybe not all bad.

Re: mutatedwombat: It's too expensive

"to justify as a peripheral, not good enough to replace a PC or one of the coming consoles as a gaming platform, and has insufficient launch titles for it to make sense as a player's only game machine. It looks nice, though." What about as a MOBILE gaming platform? I used to have power adapters and cables for the kids to run two laptops in the back of the car for long journeys, but when I suggested tablets the kids said "no thanks, they don't have any good games" - if this can offer some good games, and play movies and music, it will be a better long distance journey option than the iPad, Surface Pro and comparable to the other portable games devices from Sony and co.

Re: Charles 9

"But...can it play Crysis?....." Crysis Schmysis, can it play Duke Nukem 3D? We need to start re-educating the current generation in non-PC thought. ;)

Re: I am AVunit

".....oops, did I forget to post as AC ?" More pertinently, did you sign in via TOR?

Re: Charles 9 Re: Jedit "On the downside, being a mini-tablet it was too big for most pockets "

".....Have you considered a belt clip pouch....." Erm.... Do you use pocket protector for your pens? I'm told they're a good idea too, as long as you don't mind looking too much like an über dork!

Re: Blinkeredhorse Re: Totally Meaningless Study

Ooh, look - one religious nutter making fun of another religion! How quaint!

Re: TheOtherHobbes Re: Proof?

"By that logic 100% consensus wouldn't be credible to you because you....." I would refer you back to the previous and since discredited scientific theorems mentioned - that the atom was the smallest possible building block of matter; that the Sun orbited the Earth; which replaced the discredited notion the Earth was flat - all of which had 100% consensus amongst the scientists of their respective days.

".....You're obviously not understanding how this science actually works...." I think it is more of a case that you have found a belief that lines up neatly with your sociopolitical views, and you therefore do not want to understand how science actually works (or doesn't).

"...... There's nothing quasi-religious about increased flooding....." Please don't be so stupid. Flooding predates man's existence, the worst cases including the creation of the Mediterranean Sea, long before man got beyond the campfire stage. If you are referring in particular to flooding in the UK, that to a large extent is due to building on floodplains and not dredging waterways as we should. I would suggest you try reading more than the Al Gore Fanclub magazine.

Re: SuccessCase

Indeed. This is more Hockeystick "science" - using a flawed method to deliberately "prove" the desired result. Nothing exposes this more then the statement about the first step of the method, where they took biased members of his own team to do the first pass and found only ".....32.6 per cent endorsed AGW...."! They then made a second pass consisting of approaching the scientists that they believed had a preference for AGW and asked them "do you believe in AGW?" - that's like asking the Catholic Church to only talk to Bible printers and ask them if they believe in God. Result - massively skewed, predetermined result, seized on by the gullible to justify their position and browbeat anyone that dares to disagree.

Re: @Matt:"Where do you think the current generation of anti-Semites got their diseased views."

So your counter consists of repeating more fairy tales in an attempt to avoid admitting your own racism is due to those that raised and "educated" you?

Re: Brattus Brattus Re: Rattus Rattus fawlty: exactly

All I can say you just carry on bleating whatever childish justifications and delusions help you make it through the day. There are very tight legal definitions of child porn in the UK courts, and any attempt to pass off anything milder would have been seized on by their legal team and trumpeted as "evidence" of a setup. I would suggest you go buy a clue as you seem incapable of developing one yourself, but I suspect even the haul of Bitcoins AVunit has run off with wouldn't be enough for the extensive neurosurgery your case requires. Enjoy!

Re: bexley Re: Got off lightly

"With the kiddie porn, was a he a pedophile or are we talking about some 4chan pictures?...." COUGH* apologist * COUGH! Yeah, like everyone that visits 4chan keeps copies of the pics. Oh, wait - no I didn't, and not because I didn't find them "shocking" enought but because I'm not a paedophile.

".....Sounds like they threw a net out and trawled to try and beef up their case as much as they could....." Sounds like "they" didn't have to do much at all seeing as these prime-grade numpties got caught not only with a shed load of evidence of the crimes they committed, but also got thoroughly grassed up by their equally vacuous online buddy (who it turned out valued his real-life freedom more than protecting his e-chums). Maybe they should have invested more time in finding real friends offline.

".....These boys need helping to become more responsible citizens....Lulzsec, if nothing else, helped to harden the internet.....". Oh yes, 'cos they're just such sharp in-duh-viduals, right? Wrong! They did nothing new or inventive, they just used simple social engineering, known vulnerabilities and downloaded tools, just like the majority of the skiddies out there. They committed crimes and need to be punished, and then they need to be put on probation to make sure they have learned their lesson. And if they have not learned how to become responsible, productive citizens, and decide to return to their criminal ways, then I'm pretty sure they'll be caught and sent back to prison again, no matter how smart they, or you, think they are.

Re: Rattus Rattus Re: fawlty: exactly

Everyone's entitled to their opinion, and just watch me laugh at yours whilst I go on my way, untroubled by your shrieking froth. Oh look - one of your convicted e-crim "heros" turned out to be a child pr0n collector, doesn't that mean you and the rest of the sheeple should be screaming at him? Didn't the Anonyputzs say they were going to attack such types? LOL, now that must give them (and you) a dilemma!

Re: Senior Ugli

"....On the other hand, making £2,500 a month on a botnet is pretty impressive, imagine that much money at 21!...." Seriously? Do the maths - the six hits he was convicted of, each at £2500, even if he managed them in one year, equates to an annual income of £15k, which is about what a junior sysadmin gets in the UK. I have known plenty of coders on more than that at age 21.

My uncle was a copper and would explain it to you the same way he explained to me why there never a shortage of losers ready to replace drug dealers he used to lock up. The problem is that losers are always looking for a shortcut to money, and they would look at that £2500 hit and fail to consider the risks involved. The money in drugs is even better, but the thing the losers fail to see is that there are very, very few drug dealers that live past forty, and they're usually the ones that got arrested and are in prison. There may be e-crims making big bucks, but they are getting caught and ending up with the type of criminal record that pretty much screws up their chances of working as anything other than first line PC support monkeys. But there will always be more ID10T5 that will think "Wow, £2500...."

Re: DrXym: Got off lightly

"..... these sentences amount to little more than a slap on the wrist...." Yes, but with luck it will give the US authorities just enough time to get their indictments in and the extradition requests sorted, then they can go rot in an US prison at the US taxpayers' expense.

Re: NomNomNom

At one time the cutting edge of car crime was lobbing a brick through the window and yanking out the stereo, and I don't recall any of those "cutting edge criminals" being employed by the Police to prevent car crime. The real superduper cybercrims don't get caught.

Re; AC Re: Unbelievable

"....young boys "doin it for the Lulz"...." Renting out a botnet of 100,000 compromised systems at £2500 a pop to any criminal that comes along gives a hint - at least to those of us with an upbringing that included right and wrong and a grounding in personal responsibility - that "the Lulz" is just apologist froth from those bitter losers that would excuse anything that involved hitting out at "the Man". A pathetic fail to grasp the realities of their criminal activities due to socipolitical blinkers.

Re: fawlty: exactly

"and they'll get 30 years each....." Even better, as soon as they're on US soil, I expect the US companies involved will hit them for damages claims. In US courts they'll go down BIG TIME! Even if these ID10T5 ever get out of prison they will spend the rest of their lives scraping a living trying to pay off their debts. Now that's the lulz!

Re: Allison Park: Flash is the way to go

".....The DL980 is two four socket boxes tied together with two glue chips. The problem is the I/O is tied to the processors so it is unbearable to get from one processor thru the glue chip to the other processor then finally out to the network....." The IBM FUD on the DL980 has had years to ferment given that IBM can't make x64 above four sockets. And why is it modular systems, glue chips and crossbar switches are only a problem in non-IBM systems, and NEVER in IBM systems like the Power servers? LOL!

".....Will be interesting to see when HP actually gets this system out the door....." Don't worry, Alli, by then IBM will have sold their failing x64 server biz to Lenovo and retreated to the mainframe market, and then all you'll have to worry about if FUDding NonStop, ClearPath and BS2000.

Re: Local Dupe: <klaxon>Aah-Ooo-Gah. Aah-Ooo-Gah. Delusional Matt Bryant has escaped......

"Why Matt, I do believe you're whinging..." No, that's winning, again. To be frank, it doesn't really take much effort with the weak rebleating you put forth.

".....Everyone at The Reg who wanted to read http://usslibertyinquiry.com/law/jacobsen.pdf already has...." LOL, I like how you try to avoid admitting the places on the Web that share your views are either all drenched in white supremacist bile and swathed in swastikas or Islamist shrieking, or both. Someone once told me that the psychiatrists are convinced that people aren't born racist, but that the opinions form at an early age, often by seven, from the home environment, and are pretty much engrained by age twelve. So I suppose there's little chance of reforming you now, even if your mental age probably matches that of a twelve-year-old. Even your attempts to evade off into "safe" topics where you feel more comfortable rebleating your half-truths, lies and myths, are becoming sadly predictable.

I'll tell you what, just to give you a semblance of a chance to redeem yourself, I'll give you an easy one to come back on - why don't you post why you are so happy that Google has a www.google.ps page? Please explain how it has advanced anything anywhere, how it has changed the situation on the ground, given the Fakeistinians one ounce more legal right or might, or even caused Israel to surrender one square kilometer of land? Oh, but that's the problem for you - like most Fakeistinian "victories", this is just an empty echo lost on the Internet, achieving nothing more than giving the hating sheeple like you "hope". LOL! Enjoy!

Re: AC Re: I wonder which Hawking would have listened to given the chance.....

"That would depend on whether or not Einstein read the papers after he died in 1955?" Why? There were just as many vitriolic hate-pieces in circulation then as now. Where do you think the current generation of anti-Semites got their diseased views from if not from the previous generation of haters?

Re: Database numpty question time

Shush!! The salesgrunts will hunt you down and cry on your shoulder if you carry on! They need to sell all that lovely memory, it's so much more expensive than just selling the customer half that much memory and the rest as disk.

Re: It Lives!

".....Most of mine have been FrankenPCs...." It seems that, in the "current econimic situation", businesses are also rediscovering the joy of upgrades as opposed to new purchases. I visited a company the other week that had ten-year-old Dell desktops that they have simply added memory and bigger disks to as required. The bigger issue for them is the projected end of Win XP support which could force them to grudgingly upgrade to Win8. I suspect there are many companies out there that would have been buyng new PCs that have decided to instead stretch the life of those they have.

Re: @Matt Tell us how it feels to be hoist with your own petard?

".....only you and Rush Limbaugh....your ridiculous opinions....." This from the cretin that got caught rebleating Keith Olbermann's hysterical accusation that Anna Ardin was a CIA spy (http://forums.theregister.co.uk/forum/1/2013/04/19/assange_meets_schmidt/)! A critique of that accusation here (http://reason.com/archives/2010/12/07/olbermann-assange-and-the-holo). But then I suspect you didn't get it from Olbermann but direct from Israel Shamir's Jew-hating, Holocaust-denying website, or maybe just from Stormfront again.

Hey, look! I managed to expose your anti-Semite sillyness in two topics at once!

Re: @ Matt Bryant "And did you miss the Planck joke?"

".....and was GERMANE to the topic." Sorry, it is unknown for you to post anything even remotely germane in any thread, so I'll have to regretfully decline to believe you. BTW, whilst we're on the topic of German physicists, have you heard of that guy called Albert Einstein? You probably haven't seeing as he was a Jew, once being offered the Presidency of Israel, and was a supporter of Israel right up to his death. Now, I wonder which Hawking would have listened to given the chance, Einstein or Chomsky?

Re: "still hopes you may, one day, be able to make a relevant and constructive post"

"....The only relevant and constructive post I could make is the one we all want to tie you to before setting fire to the straw at your feet." Well, at least Local Dupe echoes the sentiment of the terrorists he so espouses - when you have lost the argument, threaten violence. Such a shame he is so outclassed in any form of verbal combat, probably even by a five-year-old. I have to wonder if the "we" is a reference to the voices in his head.

Meanwhile, Naom Chomskey, veteran ivory tower anarchist nutjob, has been exposed as the "Palestinian scientist" behind Hawking's decision (http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2013/may/10/noam-chomsky-stephen-hawking-israel-boycott). You have to ask where was Chomsky's objection when Hawking was jetting off to conferences in China and Iran? After all, Chomsky was an early critic of Indonesia’s annexation of East Timor in 1975. A blind hypocrit leading one just as blind?

Re: <klaxon>Aah-Ooo-Gah. Aah-Ooo-Gah. Delusional Matt Bryant has escaped from Lobotomy Op Room.

And, yet again, Local Dupe adds nothing to the conversation other than what one suspects are his drug-addled "thoughts".

"....wearing a cowl...." If anyone is to be wearing any headgear I would suggest it is more likley to be you wearing a white hood, seeing as you seem to share a common vein of anti-semitism with that old Klan favourite, Stormfront. And - what a surprise! - Stormfront has a cesspool of a forum that likes to shriek hatred regarding one of your favourite Israel-bashing topics, the USS Liberty incident (warning, NSFW - http://www.stormfront.org/forum/t807427/). Truly you are a sad little individual.

Re: @Matt Bryant: "it is Heisenberg's Uncertainty Principle"

"You, Sir, are a humorless idiot....." On the contrary, I often have a pitying laugh at your posts. And did you miss the Planck joke? Sorry, I suppose only someone with some education higher than junior school physics would get the joke of exposing your Heisenberg error and then adding in a dig with Planck's Constant. At least I suppose you can take comfort in knowing you will never be accused of being a geek or nerd, you're obviously too intellectually limited. But I think it would be far too much to ask you to also add quantum physics to your remedial reading list, seeing as you are already so far behind on geography, history, religion, politics and geology. Don't worry, I'm sure there is someone somewhere that still hopes you may, one day, be able to make a relevant and constructive post.

".....There's little uncertainty about that......" Ah, there's no-one more certain than a fool! In the words of Norman Macdonald (and I know you love a quote, seeing as you seem to realise your one chance of passing off as having the vague semblance of an intelligent thought is to ape the works of others): "They that are fated to be fools, have one consolation, that they are fated also to be ignorant of it." I apologise most insincerely for repeatedly posting evidence that might force you to realise the extent of your own ignorance of your ignorance.

Re: Chabdul Chadbul There is no such thing as Palestine!

"Matt, I know you might not have many friends the way you act....." Hate to break it to you but I have no problem getting on with intelligent people not trying to force-feed me their agenda. I just must hang out with people a lot smarter than the sheeple you spend time dribbling with.

".....so much abrasiveness and with the way you throw around insults...." Puh-lease, going by the idiocy in your posts, I find it very unlikely that you aren't called a fool on a daily basis! If you can't stand the heat (and you obviously can't supply any arguments to back up your "ideals"), then get out of the kitchen and go back to the kiddie websites, at least until you've grown up and learned enough to be able to participate like an educated adult.

".....By the way, how much does Hamas pay you to embarras yourself like this?" Is that tragic effort the best you can make towards a contribution to the thread? I pity you, I really do, that you somehow think that was either topical or humourous.

I think you'll find Hamas would be unlikely to pay me to expose the delusions of people like you, though they would probably enjoy the next bit. You see, unlike the PLO, Hamas haven't had forty years to develop a massive and illegal income ("..... In 1993 and 1994, the British National Criminal Intelligence Services estimated the total to be about $10 billion, with an annual income of $1.5 – $2 billion....." http://www.eufunding.org/terror/FundingEvil.pdf). Instead, they are spending the funds they should be using for developing Gaza on buying rockets and sending their fighters to train in Iran (http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/middleeast/israel/4127074/Hamas-fighters-now-a-well-organised-force.html). How long Iran is happy to fund them is also in question, now, given events in Syria.

Indeed, Hamas is a bit short of cash, and the Hamas fighters have been moonlighting as mercenaries for the Sunni Gulf peinces in Syria (http://breakingnews.sy/en/article/10056.html?m=0). You'd think the latter would be an embarassment for the Hamas leadership after they spent so many years hiding behind Assad's apron in Damascus, but once again it can be explained by the old Sunni-Shia schism - when they're not all hating Jews together, Muslims are quite happy to kill each other (http://www.reuters.com/article/2012/02/24/us-syria-palestinians-idUSTRE81N1CC20120224).

I suspect that - unless the Gulf princes start making me an offer - I'll just have to keep exposing your idiocy for free! Enjoy!

Re: @Intractable Potsherd (was: @Not That Andrew (was: @ AC Trouble is ...))

"......Still some people condemn someone that takes 1-2 units (above that is of personal capability) of beer or wine and jumps on the throttle (i refer to cars here). To put things in perspective being a little tired, having your thoughts on other things than driving or just the kind of person who isn't so well coordinated. Is just as or even more dangerous than a couple of beers in traffic....." Having been in a serious accident with a drunk driver early in my driving experience I took the line of zero tolerance from an early age. The difference with tiredness versus alcohol is, even when you are mentally tired, your body can still make very quick trained reactions (when was the last time you had to think about how to make an emergency stop as opposed to just reflexively doing it?), especially with a kick of adrenaline. But even a little alcohol can seriously impair your reactions and judgement.

Re: standard Internet attack pieces.... which are predictable and very easy to debunk.

"DEBUNK THIS, SIR....." Already have in a previous thread where it was no relation to the topic, so I can't be bothered to entertain your attempt to schwing off topic again. Please try and come up with something even remotely conencted to the thread topic - Google's "recognition" of Palestine as a "country" - and please do try a little original thought, rather than just rebleating some canned Israeli-bashing article that was spoonfed to you.

Re: jake Re: @Neil Charles (was: Trouble is ...)

If we suppose that - somehow - Terriblefugup do get the technology to get either of their monstrosity designs airborne in numbers, they will actually be less of a hazard than other craft such as hot-air balloons. I was a passenger in a light aircraft that had a close miss with a hot-air balloon (literally saved by the experienced pilot's quick reflexes alone). Ever since I have stopped referring to glider pilots as the moped drivers of the air.

Re: Peter 50

"There is a big difference between what Larry Ellison says and what he does....." Gosh, you're not implying Larry is economic with the truth / lies to customers and shareholders / tries to influence the market with complete male bovine manure statements (delete as you see appropriate), are you? After all, wouldn't that be in conflict with Oracle's own Code of Conduct, as foreworded by Larry himself (http://www.oracle.com/us/corporate/investor-relations/cebc-176732.pdf)?

".....Oracle expects its employees to:

• Act ethically and with integrity in all

business dealings..."

/ROFLMAO!

Re: Too little, too late

".....it isn't a Microsoft only world out there." True, but a very, very big bit of it is M$.

Re: Local Dupe Re: "a continuous Jewish presence for the past 3000 plus years"

".... I never said elections. "Election" being a formal and organized process of electing somebody to something. I said "electorate", those people qualified to vote and elect somebody IF and WHEN there's election...." Wriggle, wriggle, wriggle! Just man up and admit you were wrong, your evasions are simply tiresomely boring.

".....The Arabs living in the Mandate after 1922 were so qualified. However, the self-interested British only allowed the people to vote in plebiscites for monarchs the Brits had nominated. "At the Cairo Conference of 1921, the British set the parameters for Iraqi political life"...." Iraq was not part of the Palestine Mandate territories, it was under a separate Mandate of Mesopotamia (also sometimes known as the British Mandate of Iraq). You are so desperate to avoid admitting you were wrong you are trying to apply British measures from a completely different area to your vacuous denials of history.

"....And as for you previous contention that oil was unknown to the region until 1933...." Once again, you are applying the history of a completely different area - Iraq - to that of the Palestine Mandate! You stated that oil in Palestine was a prime consideration of your claimed British backing of the Jewish homeland in the Partition Plan, yet have failed to show any record of such, instead taking examples of oil in Saudi and Iraq and trying to make out they apply to the Palestine Mandate territories. Fail, fail, fail!

".....You remember "Heisenberg's Certainty Principle?" If one of your neighbors has oil underneath his country, you can be almost certain there's oil under yours....." Firstly, it is Heisenberg's Uncertainty Principle. Secondly, it is a rule of quantum physics, not geology. If you are going to make pseudo-scientific statements please at least try and stay within the correct field. So Heisenberg's principle does not apply, but geology most certainly does, and the geologies of the Palestine Mandate and Iraq areas are so different as to make the likelihood of oil in the Palestine Mandate very unlikely. Indeed, modern oil discovery techniques have found very little oil in either Israel, the West Bank or Jordan, and certainly nothing to compare to the Kirkuk oilfield discovered in Iraq in 1927. To give you an inkling of how stupid your "if one of your neighbours has oil" non-argument is, you may want to consider that California has six oilfields with deposits of over a billion barrels, but neighbouring Nevada has none, because the geology of the two states is completely different. Please add basic geology to your reading list. And please do try and think a lot harder before your next post involving science, otherwise you will come off Constantly looking like a complete Planck (badoom-doom-tish!).

"....Why would I do that?...." I know, you have made fact avoidance a staple of your life. Anything that might upset your carefully constructed fantasy view of reality must be avoided, right? I have news for you - denial is not a river in Egypt, before or after the British Protectorate. Enjoy!

Re: SolidSquid Re: AC Mr Hawking, you should listen to “Palestinian academics”

"I'm guessing the objection is to Israeli policies regarding occupation of Palestinian territories and their forcing Palestinians into refugee status as a result" A more likely correct appraisal of the situation would be that his objection is due to his ignorance or denial of the realities of the situation, probably based on prejudice given his happiness to travel to an event in Iran, and no doubt ignoring the fact the Palestinian Arabs made themselves refugees and were then kept that way by the other Arab states.

Re: Philistines were a completely separate ethnic group to the people.....

Oh look, another fact that Local Dupe cannot argue against.

Re: "your definition of clever being a whole lot lower in cleverness than the.... norm"

"....Your cleverness is a lot lower than I think it is......" Well, let's look at your track record in "thinking". Firstly, all you ever do is regurgitate the standard Internet attack pieces on any subject, all of which are predictable and very easy to debunk. Whilst there are often more complex and pertinent arguments you could deploy, you never do, probably because they are either too complex for you to regurgitate, or because the websites they occupy are not on your approved reading list. Then we have your constantly being wrong, as shown by how you always lose the argument and going schwinging off on a tangent. And then we have the most damning fact, that you keep getting caught out in blatant lies. So, applying your track record, for you to say my cleverness is a lot lower than you think it is would actually mean my cleverness is a lot higher than your limited outlook can comprehend. Thanks.

"....the USS Liberty...." Aaaaand SCHWING! Not only are you reaching for the bottled Israel-bashing sauce, this one you've already tried and been soundly shown up on! Please, if you're going to be ridiculously stupid, at least present a new case of your stupidity, otherwise you'll go from being childishly naive but amusing to just plain boring. Oh, and can we safely assume that your desperate change of tack is yet another case of you avoiding admitting that you have lost another argument? This is my surprised face, honest.

Re: Jedit Re: "On the downside, being a mini-tablet it was too big for most pockets "

"How small are your pockets?....." It's a continued grumble in the office that our work Blackberrys are not "cool" but you can at least put them in your jeans pocket without castrating yourself everytime you sit down. Consequently, the BBs go everywhere with their owners, whereas other phones we have tried have often been left on the desk.

"..... Gingerbread Keyboard is free, better and comes with the predictive text we all crave....." Thanks, I'll point my colleague in that direction. Interestingly, given uknutz comment below, we could not find a setting for predictive text on my mate's S4. His was a Vodafone one, I wonder if that makes a difference?

Re: AC Re: Ho-hum

".....predictive text is the spawn of satans curry turds...." Excellent! But predictive text is only bad when poorly implemented, such as the very annoying Apple version which doesn't just offer you what it thinks you want but also corrects your text regardless, leading to some hilarious errors.

Re: AC Re: Trouble is ...

".....Those crappy Robinson heliocopters....." Sorry, I can't agree with that. I've been for several rides in R22s and an R44 without any hitches, roll-overs or other disasters, and they seemd quite neat little 'copters. I hear the original models had a problem with delamination of subcontracted mainblades but that has been fixed.

Re: Zaphod.Beeblebrox Re: @ Neil Charles, Matthew 3, etc. Trouble is ...

"Dear non-pilots, the term "my airspace" refers to that bubble of air surrounding "my aircraft"...." Yeah, I find ATC does a good job of covering the blind spots. Seeing as it is highly likely any "flying car" will be very tightly restricted in where and at which flight levels it can be a mobile hazard, they will probably present no more risk than you do now.

"..... Given that the great unwashed have substantial difficulty keeping from intruding into "my roadspace"....." Many years ago there were many that insisted the common man (let alone any woman) was simply too ill-educated and unfamiliar with machinery to be allowed to drive an automobile. That belief was shown to be cobblers too. The key to mass flight will be control through training and regulation, just as used today to ensure most motorists get through the day without killing each other. And if the system can be made largely automatic then the risk is even further reduced, to the point where you in your non-automated light aircraft actually become more of a risk. Besides, one thing that seems common to all the Terriblefugup ideas is that they are all so hideously expensive so as to make them completely out of the reach of the "great unwashed", so I don't think you or I will have to worry much during our lifetimes.

Re: That's not high enough

Obviously, they didn't recognise the figure because they couldn't find it in the existing records system.....

Re: K : £90m.. its not going cost us anything..

One of the most common complaints you hear during project reviews is "but we can't stop now, look at all the money we've spent!" Sometimes the smarter thing to do (and often the braver in terms of career prospects) is to upset some people by identifying a failure as a failure, pulling the plug, and stopping further money going to waste. Yes, £90m may have "gone to waste" (ignoring that hardware and software plus the experience gained could be re-used for another project or the second stab at the same project), but that's a lot better than letting a project meander through years of revisions and possibly billions of pounds before someone finally admits defeat. Whilst the headline will be (predictably) "90m wasted" that's probably not a completely realistic viewpoint.

The question is were Deloitte incompetent in identifying the requirement, or did they just build what they were told to build and now have been unfairly tarred as the cause of failure?

Re: "tilt rotors that tilt and collapse"

You have to ask why did they go to the extra complexity of folding rotors when they could simple feather them. true, a feathered rotor would still be quite draggy, but it would be simpler, use existing tech, and not require the additional weight and juice of the motors and hinges for unfolding into the airstream prior to landing. All in all I'd have to say this is even more of a fantasy design than the Transition.