Being pedantic won't this need an 8 bit graphics card? 16 bit ISA came along with the 80286 didn't it?

That said you can certainly get EGA and if you are lucky you might find an 8bit VGA card (back then VGA was new I remember my parents amstrad 2086 (had a 8086 processor at 8Mhz but boasted VGA graphics and a 640x480 display!) so it should be possible.

I agree most do not seem to grasp the nature of the question.

Why can manufacturers make high resolution LCD screens for laptops but do not use these screens to produce similar desktop LCD screens?

Maybe it is to artificialy boost the laptop market?

The smallest pixel size I have seen if from the libretto U100 screen, 7.1 inches and 1280 x 768, so why can't I have a 15 inch LCD screen at the same pixel size? ie 2540 x 1536

Lets hope microsoft don't buy the rights to the gaming franchise

I thought that you can't use this kind of probablity questions when you already know the outcome of the last 100 years of air travel. This kind of calculations as I udnerstand it is only valid for predicting future events.

So while in the next hundred years it is 1/20 (or whatever the result of the calculation is depending on how detailed you go) of a meteor and aircraft collision, you can't then say well we have already been flying for a hundred years so we a pretty due a collision.

So given it hasn't happened yet it remains increadibly unlikley that there will be a meteor vs aircraft collision.

Or did I miss something - I am sure you will tell me if I have.

I have to say that launching a shuttle while very cool in concept and very handy for returning large objects from orbit, but given how little that was used is about the heaviest solution I think you could imagine to lift a few astronauts to the space station.

I think the weight of the russian capsule with the added weight of the solid rockets, plus a few spares in case of failure would still come in as a lighter option than lifting a shuttle.

This of course will change with the new Orion as it is back to the light weight capsule idea (as is required to leave low earth orbit)

Has anyone else noticed that in the aritcle they mention "The ballute is jettisoned from the spacecraft once the desired capture orbit is achieved, the company said."

Do we need any more litter in space - especially earth orbit?

We all think of balloons being filled with light than air gasses, but in this case they will want both low compressed volume and low weight for takeoff. So it may well be that they use liquid Helium - in which case would they hang around in orbit - once the drag of the ship is gone might they bounce off the atmosphere as they are still moving at orbital velocity.

Even if they go sub orbital velocity they are still intact balloons at the edge of space and they are not going to sink down the planet easily(presumably they will be quite strong).

I am sure they will think of it - but it would just be nice to see them mention retrieval/disposal with the increasing amount of junk in space these days...

The muppets show they have never shown.

Was Rimmer right after all?

Lister: Your explanation for anything slightly peculiar is aliens, isn't it? You lose your keys, it's aliens. A picture falls off the wall, it's aliens. That time we used up a whole bog roll in a day, you thought that was aliens as well.
Rimmer: Well we didn't use it all, Lister. Who did?
Lister: Rimmer, ALIENS used our bog roll?
Rimmer: Just cause they're aliens doesn't mean to say they don't have to visit the little boys' room. Only they probably do something weird and alien-esque, like it comes out of the top of their heads or something.
Lister: Well I wouldn't like to be stuck behind one in a cinema.

maybe I think this from the gmail EULA covers it:

http://www.google.com/accounts/TOS?hl=en

5.4 You agree that you will not engage in any activity that interferes with or disrupts the Services (or the servers and networks which are connected to the Services).

There has to be some misuse there that spamming "yourself" is breaking when it is an online email account? I havn't checked but what about I would have thought there is something in the agreements that you "check" when you start an account? After all it is using gmail and hotmail's resources (bandwidth, disk space etc) for purposfully receiving spam, which you could argue is verging on a DDOS attack on their servers. (ok the scale may be different but if it wasn't the BBC I expect gmail and hotmail would close those mailboxes pretty quickly if they where filled with thousands of emails in a matter of minutes.