Good going folks

but I know you can do better. With a little bit more effort we can reach that elusive goal - a comments page consisting of nothing but "I for one welcome" jokes.

When I saw the pic

I thought "I like it - looks a bit like a mini". Unfortunately,,I agree with your other points as well. It should be half the price and it doesn't exactly look like it has much in the way of crash protection (probably better than a moped though). Plus there's no way you'd get a ton of gold in the back.

Will 'the smartest and most passionate'

be granted a B.B. (bachelor of buzzwords among other less flattering interpretations).

Seriously, if you're among the 'the smartest and most passionate' you'll be doing this already - I very much doubt that Kurzweil et al will be bringing much to the party.

I shouldn't comment

most definately not being in the demographic for this one

but

what's this about an 8Gb card limit?

If it supports 8Gb, I assume it's the SDHC version. If not why not?

Anyone?

no $%*#ing duh

Couldn't have put it better myself.

So how much did 'Big Pharma' make

From antibiotics in the 1920s? (hint: considerably less than anything)

Conspiracy theorist cheerfully ignoring the facts since forever.

re: @Francis Boyle

I can only second Brandon's comments - you're on the wrong side, mate! The 4850 is a brilliant card capable of handling anything that Crysis can throw at it and more (and that's at 1600x1200 with the quality settings turned up to the max). The 48xx series killed the "but can it run Crysis" joke stone dead. Sure, it took a while (well, 7 months according to my calculations) but then Crysis is hardly an average game. Face it we've never had it so good. Sounds like you contracted a bad case of nostalgia there.

@ Stu

Type your comment here — plain text only, no HTML

There's no crop factor

since it's not designed to be used with 35mm lenses. Indeed wide angle lenses should be easier to make since you don't need to use a retrofocus design to clear the mirror. Of course, since I rather like to use my 35mm lenses, I'm not a potential buyer and I suspect I'm not alone. The market effectively sidelined the four thirds format years ago, despite it being a nice idea in principle, and I can't see going to an electronic viewfinder changing that.

Oh, and to echo an earlier post, if those sample are representative I'll be staying with Pentax.

@ Stu

Maybe El Reg should commision an article from you - at least then I meant have some chance of working out what you're on about. But since that's probably not going to happen I'll do my best to respond to what you appear to be saying.

re: part one

I've never bought a new graphics card to get an increase in frame rates (Why would I want that - is someone overclocking my brain?) I buy new graphics card to run games that are more "visually 'rich' " at the same frame rate. That's the way I like it.

re: part two

Oddly enough, we have arrived at a situation where most games work well on modestly priced hardware. My radeon X4850 is the most capable card I've ever owned relative to the games current at the time of purchase, yet it cost be around half what I had become used to paying. The top end is largely irrelevant to the majority who have no interest in bragging rights, save as a preview of what we'll be buying in six month's time. As for Nvidia and ATI copying the Sony/MS way of doing things - no you've got me there. I can't think of a single argument against it.

I have no love for Michael Dell

But Putin's a crypto fascist jerk and it shows.

@ Steve & others

If you read the article you'll see that no one's talking about taking anything away from users. The relevant sentence is: "According to Microsoft, such a ruling might require that OEMs distribute browsers from the company's rivals along with IE on new PCs". So users get a choice of bundled products. Which will confuse the hell out of them. Or they will just click on the big blue 'E' because it's what they know. In any case it's hardly more onerous than clicking on the 'accept' button on the eula that you haven't scrolled through let alone read. All in all, it amounts to a "hey, mate, you got a choice" disclaimer. So please stop crying for the 'poor user' because it's not going to hurt them.

Ridiculous price

but please buy one so I don't have to wait too long to get one at a sensible price. (You know you want to).

@ Nigel

Get a secondhand Palm V* and one of the many palm remote control apps. You don't get a colour screen but you do get one of the nicest pieces of industrial design in the last few decades and it will probably set you back a lot less than the cheapest of phones.

Other Palms no doubt would work - I've just never tried them.

re: Northern Ireland

"why not give give Australia back to the original inhabitants"

We did that (google Mabo). Worthwhile as that was it did nothing to solve the truly terrible problems of alcoholism and violence that the the indigenous people of Northern Australia suffer from problems that in large part are due to an almost complete lack of economic opportunities. Yes, we need to identify obstacles but it's also good to identify opportunities.

Btw, the area of Northern Ireland is less than one percent of that of the Northern Territory. Or head a little further south and you'll find Lake Eyre which is only a little smaller than NI. (Not that I'm advocating turning that rather beautiful area into a sludge pond. Better to flood a few cattle stations since livestock produce an obscene amount of greenhouse gas. For example this one: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anna_Creek_station - twice the size of NI)

PS: did I mention that Australia's big.

I've used their service

which is excellent though at the moment a tad too expensive for anything other than experiencing the pleasure of holding your 3d work in your hand. But the prices are coming down and it shouldn't be long before it becomes a viable means of producing saleable products.

Nice

and not too expensive but I can't help wondering what's the point. For the high level stuff, well I can do that on my EEE (or a ten year old laptop with the screen hanging out) - for low level hardware hacking nothing beats the Arduino based stuff. (Insanely cheap especially if you build it yourself and infinitely flexible.)

Best Classmate yet

Ugliest classmate yet.

I pity the kid who has to use that.

re: Algae.....

' to replace the worlds use of avation fuel with algae biofuel would require a farm the size of northern ireland'

Where I come from (Australia) we call that the back paddock.

Basically, you need a large are of unused land (or sea), plenty of sunlight and some (salt)water. Not exactly things that are in short supply. The US could manage it, as could parts of Africa, and Australia, of course. The Saudi's might even want to look into it as an alternative to going back to riding camels.

Sometimes, I despair of the mindless criticism of human ingenuity and this on an IT site.

Web Vista - wasn't that

something called Myspace.

So when will this episode

be shown in Australia.

I desperately need to know what it's like when a car runs out of juice. It's not like it's something I could visualise and of course I've never experienced it.

That's what I love about Top Gear - it tells me the things I need to know to live in this puzzling world of ours.

Since it's submarines we're talking about

shouldn't it be the 'blue screen of depth'.

One 'cleanfeed' down

and one to go.

Sadly, UK residents are stuck with the extreme porn law but as the man said "two out of three ain't bad".

Did you say blancmange like

In that case we can just call in Mr and Mrs Samuel Brainsample. They must be getting on a bit but I'm sure they're still up to the job.

re: Sorry no can do

Not suitable for vegetarians?

Surely you mean "vagitarians".

mysteriously?

It's Premier = Diebold.

Oh wait, irony.

Bit like shooting fish in a barrel, innit?

Ralph - a men's magazine?

Real men don't read Ralph - they read ******* *** ** *

*censored to protect El Reg from the extreme porn laws.

re:Tis a shame...

When he made the decision to head to Miramar he was running on one engine - i.e. the plane was already in some significant danger of crashing. Surely good operational practice in such situations would be to avoid populated areas, if at all possible, even if it means a greater risk of losing the aircraft.

Not that I'm blaming the pilot. I'm sure that he acted as he was trained to do, possibly even as he was ordered to do but I do question the procedures that allowed this to happen.

I've been using interference technology

to keep my brain cool for a while now. I call it a "hat'. It also has the advantage of hiding my bald spot.

Still this will get me a hot, if slightly suspicious, babe to literally hang around me so I suppose it has something going for it.

Considering

the difficulties their ancestors had with an earlier form of GPS I'm not surprised they banned it.

I read it in the Bible so it must be true.

The traditional American definition

of the edge of space is 50 miles (and has been since the days when the X15 pilots would get their wings for exceeding that altitude). The rest of us can go for 100km, or if we're feeling generous, round the 50 miles to 80km but 61km is really pushing it. Nice view I'm sure but no astronaut wings for you Mr Wimmer.

@ AU$299

I'd be seriously tempted to get one to replace my Treo if it didn't mean giving up my 320x320 screen.

Brilliant!

El Reg, Ditch those Playmobil figures at once. We have seen the future.

True Buddhist Compassion -

to use PowerPoint but not to inflict the results on others.

We can all learn from that (and the other stuff too I hasten to add).

Bloody offensive!

Too bloody right, mate.

Since you bloody Poms outnumber us Aussies three to bloody one you've got nothing to bloody well crow about. </ocker mode>

re: Live map isn't piracy

If he swam to the ship with the knife in his mouth he was a pirate.

Looks uncannily like HAL

Just needs some orange mood lightning.

A game fit for a Klingon.

Especially as you don't actually get to cook the thing.

Now hand me that plate or gagh - I'm feeling peckish.

I'd make a comment

about the low Opera share but I still can't post comments using Opera so I won't.

Seriously,

It isn't terrorism if they're just making a nuisance of themselves, but yes, nobody's going to get funding to combat "mild annoyancism".

The Brothers Karamazov*

That's one seriously over-enguineered piece of furniture.

A title was required so I borrowed one from Fyodor Dostoevsky.

Organic Capabilities?

You mean rat's brains?

re: Environment ruins classic film

Don't worry, I hear they're remaking it in Swindon with Sinclair C5s.

If it's electric

why is does it have a grill. And what's behind it?

Seriously nice car though.

But is The Warfighter

a superhero or a supervillian?

Well now taht important matter's settled

she go can go help out Heather Mills.