I didn't know POV-Ray was still around. It caused me untold grief in the 90s and it's the main reason why I ended up buying Shade and Poser which were much easier to use. I've also used Photoshop and now use Blender. The very thought of using POV-Ray again gives a cold shiver, it would need to be a whole new beast to be a viable alternative.

Well there is a certain subtlety to it beyond the obvious. Take the women from any dynasty, The House of Windsor for example, from Queen Victoria to Princess Alexandra to Princess Elizabeth to her daughter Queen Elizabeth to Princess Diana to Duchess Camilla to Princess Catherine. Or perhaps Senior White House women. Any group of women who are newsworthy for other reasons create interesting patterns as the kaleidoscope changes with each change of generation.

Curiously in the 80s and 90s the type of girls known as Jersey Girls in the US were called Effies in Australia after a TV character called Efimea but known to all and sundry as Effie.

The different meanings of the words F-able and effable and their antonyms unF-able and ineffable often form an unholy symmetry when applied to particular women.

The prize is top spot in the foodchain of the future. I'm betting on mice to take it. They eat anything, they're small and clever, they won't be outside when the bombs start blowing and their favourite food is cockroaches so they'll always have something to eat. Perhaps we'll eventually have one tonne mouse predators hunting ten tonne mouse herbivores and even Rodent Sapiens making mouse warrior robots to fight their mouse wars for them against the Rodent Erectus scum.

That's why the Russians still make vacuum tubes and possibly still use them in military equipment. Vacuum tube circuits are much more resistant to EMP attacks and as I recall the Soviets designed a few EMP weapons, although of course a nulcear bomb does a fine job as it comes.

Small EMP devices are very easy to make and the designs for basic circuits were easily available in any large book store last time I looked for other books about electronics, maybe eight years ago. They always gave me a cold shiver when I came across them imagining one of the neighbouring kids making one and wiping out my computer.

So, perhaps the next cold war will be fought in bunches of skirmishes between the US and China in Third World countries using flying, land and water robots to protect small numbers of imported humans controlling large numbers of worker robots, rather like when ants go to war angainst each other and the first one to take over the other's nest and larvae becomes the winner while the losers scatter.

I used OS/2 for a few months in the early 90s and it was uglier than dog vomit. I dropped it entirely it when it wouldn't provide drivers for my new Lexmark printer and that was back when Lexmark were still calling themselves part of IBM. One of my relatives by marriage was using OS/2 extensively ten years later in his job as a systems programmer for IBM and he swore that it was the best operating system he had ever used.

Curiously once I dropped OS/2 I tried three different distros of Linux, I actually paid money for them in those days before the Internet was opened to the public. I could not get a single distro to install even after multiple attempts at each one with its pile of floppies - CD drives cost $400+ so no-one I knew had one then. The experience put me off Linux for ten years.

They were dark days and the only choice was Mac or MS-DOS 5.0 and Windows 3.1 and to get a game to run required changing your config.sys file for each different game.

Well their counterfeits have the backing of the US Government and its attendant resources. Americans as a whole are pretty good at solving any given problem. It's natural that they would find counterfeiting easy.

It's hard for others to counterfeit American currency, although I've often heard a little story that doesn't go away that there is a nation which has mastered that skill. The nation involved changes but South Korea and North Korea are most often mentioned. I imagine it's just a story though. If Nazi Germany couldn't manage it I can't see anyone else doing it now.

Counterfeiting money is really hard, even with paper notes such as you use there. Southworth is well known though as *the* paper to print resumés on because the paper feels like money and people like it without even knowing why. Its success in getting jobs has even been measured in a psychological test as I recall.

This is quite common knowledge and can be found in 2 seconds by searching for "paper feels like money". You Sir, need to relax a little and appreciate the humour. No knowledge has been passed on that will result in any conterfeit notes being put into circulation that wouldn't have anyway. Put a bit RX into your TX.

southworth cv 100% cotton paper

I once asked my Argentino friends when they used the word if "puto" meant "mujeriego" (man whore in that particular context) and they laughed and told me it meant "maricón" (poofter).

That's really interesting. My experience, and I'm on my fourth HTC (and possibly last depending on how well Cyanogen goes). I've never had any hardware problems. I don't even cringe when I accidentally drop my phone onto concrete now because I know it won't break.

Which do you recommend as the better quality brands? The Samsungs have lovely specs but they're huge and look seriously ugly. There just doesn't seem to be much of anyone else in the HD range where I'm looking.

I haven't tried Cyanogen yet but I agree entirely. HTC hardware is right up there with the best but the software ranges from okay to an excercise in frustation and one recent upgrade actually cost me the ability to share files with my Linux computer. Then in frustration I borrowed my wife's Windows laptop and it was only after half an hour that I could share files on that and then only by systematically turning off every bit of HTC software that it had installed on her laptop.

HTC make lovely phones that look and feel superb but they are let down by some really crappy software releases and even crappier software design choices.

I believe they got the job title wrong - surely it's Windows Blue ScrDETh (thanatest engineer).

Americans love public transport, look how often they catch cabs!