Oh no! "which is ... the rustling of small leaves."?

Would that be dry leaves, sappy leaves, wet leaves, pointy cactus type leaves? What is the average leaf density, the air flow rate and do the leaves actually touch? What is small?

Please be more scientific. What about an equivalence to well-watered petunias per cubic metre in a brisk May northerly with the hearing aid set at 'annoying relation' ...?

This is cobblers. Why can't we use pens any more? Online exams means a Vietnam/Indian/Myamar marking syndicate can mark a child's English paper allowing "large publishers" to make even more money on the back of the kids' education! Teach kids stuff, not how to fill in online multi-choice questions.

We appear obsessed with everyone being 'digital aware' yet who on this forum has actually been taught to type at a reasonable speed? Basic reqirement number 1 which used to take two year's training ...

By the way, the last time employers marked me on a piece on hand written work was when I applied for jobs ( "... must be handwritten ..." )!

Steal the details of 50 cards, email them to a.n.other in the US. Generate cards. Buy some stuff. All done and dusted the same day ... Isn't technology a wonderful thing?

And henceforth this peer-pressure will be known as a van de Waal's force ...

Sometimes I think I'm too geeky ...

... and while this takes place anywhere there's a huge town to service and make it economically viable, I assume they'll continue to supply me with jugs of water to keep my wet string connection damp?

The kilometer of overhead wet string to the cabinet and 1.5 kilometers of corroded copper to the exchange I have is to get replaced with fibre. /delusion mode off/

I used to get negotiated at 5Mbps, now fell to 4Mb if I'm lucky and I have more hesitation than a hesitant thing on a Hesitants-R-Us outing, stuck behind a tractor on the A47 ...

jxp says 3Mb is enough for iptv ... I have more than that and it isn't ... I don't care what the negotiated figure is, or the 'potential' figure but as soon as there is a slight hiccup my reception pauses ... and of course if there's someone watching a different channel upstairs and I want to record something else forget it. Then we're into having to download and store programmes as required ... play them on whatever player the broadcaster decides as the player will have to implement whatever auto-removal timebomb the broadcaster specifies and whatever pay-per-view system they use.

I said several years ago the aim of the government's 'internet upgrade' was to make the viewer pay for poor quality service over the internet and get rid of the costly broadcast OTA system. This is the first shot over the bows ...

RPIJ - so that'll be J for 'Just joking'.

CPIH - H for "Has little bearing in truth".

Amazing how these newly developed statistical functions always fudge ... I mean "accurately reflect the actual rate of inflation" downwards ... I remember the days when we only had one rate of inflation but I think we've been Euro-crated since then ...

"If you cant get your head round cobol then maybe you just aren't cut out for a career in IT (I have written in Pascal, C, c++, java, cobol, zos assember)."

IT professional and no mention of 'apps'? As any government minister knows, all we need for a booming jobs market and individual wealth is to be making 'apps' like "Quite Irate Fowl" ... you don't need to know any of these languages as long as you know how to make 'apps'.

Cynicism is me ...

I remember learning being taught how to program at university, and only the first term had much to do with a specific language (PAscal as it happens). The rest of the time was taken up learning how to use the tools of the day - Ada, C, COBOL, assembler, Prolog ... and how to build those tools - algorithms + data structures and all that ...

An in depth knowledge of PHP syntax and grammar does not a programmer make ... knowing how to program does.

Can cooler?

Come now folks, as a physicsy person I can state without fear of contradiction that it's obvious this thing will not cool your beer!

Well technically it could but I'd challenge anyone to detect a 40mK temperature difference between fractions of average pints in a pub ... for tis all the machine achieved ...

In fact the differential between bottom of the pint and the top is probably much more than a degree or so ... until you put your clammy mitts around it at which point it's warming massively and the convection currents increase.

Thaw to prevent water contamination?

Call me old fashioned, and excuse the technical scientific parlance, but surely a lump of rock big enough to end up as 18Kg on the surface would have been substantially toasty when it landed and punched what's commonly known as 'a big hole' in the snow?

In my mind, small though it is, I thought a hot stone may have melted itself a really good hole before it cooled anyway. Now (using possibly flawed logic and limited scientific knowledge) melted snow and ice may form, what we commoners call "water". And, if you have a rock cooling in a puddle does that not cause possible water contamination?

On the other hand, maybe the rock 'soft landed' so it didn't form a crater or any sort of hole ... but surely there'd be signs of its parachutes or retro-rockets?

"... students are often required to complete a spell fitting iPhone parts on low pay as a compulsory part of passing their degree."

And that differs from working in McDonalds selling McNo-Horse burgers for several hours a day to pay you way through university how?

Is the answer: the working conditions are better in China and the education is better and cheaper and no chinese student is still paying off their tuition fees twenty years after leaving university?

24l/s?

To clarify the above statements, 24l/s of H2 at STP liberates 286KW.

A hydrogen powered Panda was made which is 60KW, does over 80mph and 0-60 in 5 seconds. Assuming only 50% efficiency then we're still looking at some mean performance to use 286kW!

For an 'eco car' you can easily half that required volume so perhaps 12l/s is more sensible?

Thinking about this, if it's as efficient as they say, it's possible that piping could be reduced to 1/4" or even 1/8" flexible tube onto a small thermal block. With quick release fittings onto the case and mated onto an external manifold and cooling is done via one mother of a radiator plant outside the building ... it could be interesting.. My old water cooled system with 1/2" pvc pipes, plastic elbows and pond pump driving into a fan-cooled Seat Ibiza heater matrix now starts to look as if it needs a makeover ...

and now look to the future ...

perhaps you are looking at version 0.01A (alpha release) of the all singing universal translator ... Check the ingredients list for 'just add Google live translate' and you can speak to Mrs Miggins at Ye Olde Pie Shoppe ...

You're all missing the point. The guidelines will show how to make more cash out of cameras by selling material to "I am being Framed, Guv'", "Blimey that was rather a nasty axe-wielding incident Officer" or "Bollocks was I doin' a ton in a 30 mate" ... or perhaps even "Big Brother - The Reality Show ..."

Interesting dichotomy ...

HM Snoopers want tracking data stored for years by commercial organisations (ISPs), financial transaction records must be stored for years by companies, personel records often necessarily have historic content ... where does the 'right to forget' stop? Seems like it may end up as a 'right to be taken of a mailing list' which will mean the act gets through and the USA will still be our chums

All aboard the Comp Sci silli-bus!

Here we go ... computer science as specified by a load of bureaucrats, publishers and Google.

Contrary to what has already been said, at this level computer science should involve syntax, grammar, logical and methodical programming, problem solving, programming concepts, basic electronic circuits and logic and all of those basics. Once they are under the hood you can teach programmers or hardware engineers using the formal grounding.

Teaching some little herbert how to write an app for an iPhone and you have someone who can write another nameless app for an iphone but teach them methodical and logical programming and they may learn enough to look at everything and find something they're both interested in and really good at ...

Decidedly statistical

As usual, lies, damned lies and statistics ...

I'm in a town of about 15000 with a maximum *negotiated* speed of less than 8Mbps (that I'm aware of.) My connection is negotiated at 4.8Mbps but actual throughput can drop below 1Mbps depending on how wet the overhead string is ... welcome to Norfolk, a slow county ...

Thankfully, with £10m to spend, the Council will improve my connection ... like hell! They may improve my colleague's who negotiates at 1Mbps ... if he's lucky ... but it'll be superfast 100Mb broadband for the centre of Norwich where the councillors live first ...

Were they rubbish?

I had a 16k one, still have it boxed in the loft. I waited six months for it to be delivered then used it loads ...

I wrote loads of stuff in BASIC that could now be used as great examples of bad programming but I'd migrated from a ZX81 (which I hated and was almost impossible to use sensibly). I learned how to program (sort of) I learned assembler (sort of) and I learned how the hardware integrated with the firmware ... At that time I programmed the Oric-1 or I tried to get time on the 380Z and it's (black and white) basicsg interpreter at school ... the Oric inevitably won.

Clunky and made of plastic it might have been but it worked and, most importantly, I could afford it ...

What's in a patent?

Patents are good to have but only worth money if they're for something good. A patent for producing graphene in a lab is useless next to a patent for an economic, commercial process.

Having said that, our tax money is probably going into some director's back pocket for something that has already been done better, quicker and cheaper by the Chinese.

For the obvious answer, look at the geography ... It's Australian so, as the Aussies are upside down relative to the UK, the bottom of the slinky is actually the top and you see a simple pulse run along the spring. Try it - hold the slinky, tap the bottom of the spring in the UK and the pulse runs. According to my calculations, if they tried the same thing standing on their heads it wouldn't work. QED

Since the kids do the 'falling mass driving a generator to power sounder/led/pump/radio etc' every year in school, and it has been done since at least the 70's, the principle isn't patentable ... so from the economic point of view and in my best 'Dragon's Den' accent 'I'm out!'

"NORUSCA II is designed to switch between all of its optical bands “in a matter of microseconds”, explains this announcement. A standard camera with six machine-driven filters wouldn’t be able to keep up."

... and so we have here cameras showing the same thing in different wavelengths 'microseconds apart'?

No, try 2 1/4 hours! Can it actually be shown that the two observations have any relationship? Two observations, different wavelengths, different structures at different times ...

It's certainly not a justification for building an uber-fast-switching camera!

Perhaps the first and basic rule should be that the person that is the target of the offence (or their legal representative) should make the complaint. "Taking offence by proxy" either by individuals or the media is becoming the norm and it should not be so ...

Long live imperialist dogma!

What we actually need is not to try to fight but to embrace metrication and imperialism. In future averything should be 'ant' based with 100 ants to the foot, 10000 ants to the pound, 10^6 ants to the elephant ... The metric ant solves the problem ...

The coanda effect? So all that design work morphed into a garden vacuum/blower thingy ...?

Why can't they just decide what to retune and when? If I have to retune my mum's tv another ten times because GOD Tv is in the wrong channel I'll shove her set-top-box up Ofcom's antenna ...

Not in the UK

Sorry folks, 'not in the UK' should read 'already tried in the UK'. There was a major trial by some councils (including mine) with tagged wheely bins which were weighed as they were emptied. They logged bin weights centrally and you'd get notified if you didn't do enough recycling (by weight not proportion). Unfortunately the great unwashed could see where this was going (a pay as you throw tax), there was significant feeling expressed and people showed the futility by putting stuff in neighbours bins etc. so the 'trial' was oficially abandoned. The bins still exist but we are promised that data is no longer collected...

... or for a company that has the contract to feed the fish in the pond (amongst other things) at the local hospital pfi. The fact that someone would have done that job for the cost of the food, yet Serco can make a profit out of it, must say something about the company and the contracts it manages to get. Or perhaps even more about those awarding the contracts ...

I would agree with the vacuum tank approach. Draw down the vacuum, isolate the pump and gauge then let the vacuum tank take any residual combustion products whilst buffering the pressure. This can be cleaned out and dried between runs (a pain but not difficult with a decent inspection port) which will remove the need for a cold trap entirely.

AndyG