I think it means that is was a miss that was near.

On the contrary, Earth radii is a useful unit when explaining how close something came to the earth. It helps to form a mental picture.

For example, if you state that the moon is 384,400km from the earth, that doesn't really mean much - even if you know the diameter of the earth it's not as easy to form a mental picture as it is if you say that it is 62 Earth radii.

Personally though I would have thought diameters would be better than radii? I.e. the moon is 31 Earth diameters (or simply 31 'Earths') away. (As a side note I think that is much further than most people would guess it is).

Of course they wouldn't need to fork the code - it's possible to make use of new features in the operating system if available but fall back to the older methods.

Requiring Windows Vista/7 specific features will lock the browser to Windows and will make porting to other operating systems, should they choose to, difficult. As I said, other browsers have no problem making use of specific operating system features for acceleration and still being cross-platform.

Windows XP has a 25% share so is a long way from obsolete.

I've used them (with VirtualBox). They are large and slow, and it would probably be easier to buy a cheap Windows 7 laptop instead.

I hate having to go through all of this for one browser, when supporting Firefox, Chrome, Safari, Opera is so easy in comparison.

And there was absolutely no way they could implement this in a way that would work on earlier versions of Windows, or on other operating systems?

Funny that Chrome, Safari, Opera etc. don't have the same issues. I believe Chrome also uses 3D acceleration when available?

It's an interesting idea, although the percentage seems quite high particularly if they already support IE7 - ongoing efforts to maintain compatibility are probably not that expensive. It can be a real pain at the HTML/CSS build stage though.

I wonder instead if this is an attempt to get a bit of press coverage, like RyanAir who every now and then state they are going to do something outrageous like charge for using the toilet on their aircraft. They never go through with it, but it generates a lot of press interest and further promotes their image as a low cost no frills company.

That might be so, but I don't like them because I need Windows Vista or Windows 7 to be able to test my web apps with them, unlike most of the other browsers which are cross-platform. They are locked in to Microsoft and force developers to run Windows if they want to ensure compatibility. I can't even use the ancient Windows XP laptop I keep around for the IE6, 7, and 8 testing, because for some reason they've decided the newer browsers won't run on XP (for marketing rather than technical reasons I expect).

Actually it seems it was a DC-8 in 1961, but it was in a controlled dive so not really too sustainable...

http://www.dc8.org/library/supersonic/index.php
http://www.dc-8jet.com/0-dc8-sst-flight.htm

The GP probably means 'First supersonic airliner passenger service' in which case we're back to the Anglo-French Concorde.

General Motorolas :)

The $30 million is probably across all brands, of which GM has 8. They probably have a page for each, and they have pages for particular models too - in some case several where a modal is used across several brands (Chevy Volt / Opal Ampera / Vauxhall Ampera). So they probably have quite a big FB presence.

Still, it doesn't really add up - let's be generous and assume there are 50 pages each of which needs a full time employee to manage (which would be easy work). That's $600K per person and I'd be surprised if it costs more than $200K each when you factor in office costs, admin, etc.

I'd guess the bulk of the money is ending up in the pockets of ad agency owners.

My thoughts also. The ACCC don't need to 'battle' with corporations. They make a ruling, and that's it.

If quantum effects are real (as they demonstrably are), should it be a surprise that evolution made use of them?

Assuming that your post wasn't a joke - a generator is not supplied with the LEAF. The efficiency of the chosen generator would affect the results.

A better answer would be "The question was not valid as MPG does not have meaning for Electric Vehicles".

Probably to allow RSS feeds specific to your journey - for example 'travel issues affecting my journey', or 'coffee shops en route'.

The oversight is that it isn't asking before sending that information.

It's 100% electric. You can't run it on petrol.