No.

I very deliberately did NOT set up a Google account on my Android Fairphone, and it does the basic things just fine, like, um, phone calls and even alarms. It even takes OK pictures.

I have EU citizens' contact details in my phone and I think that, given NSA revelations, I would be breaking the law to knowingly share/sync those details with/via a US entity such as Google (or Apple).

Would be nice to have local contact and calendar sync with my MacBook (OS X 10.9) but Apple made that hard, not the lack of apps on the phone so far as I can tell.

Rgds

Damon

Only to a degree, and typically less following is possible as the fuel load gets older in each reactor.

Rgds

Damon

They already do from time to time in (eg) Germany and Spain.

Rgds

Damon

On which planet? They work just fine as long as you are not expecting unicorn farts. 15% of UK electricity roughly, ~50% of German.

And nukes are hardly perfect (though I have nothing against them and want at least some in the mix); ignoring the waste issue they don't load-follow well or at all (solar PV is a natural match for some/most load given that we're diurnal), and sometimes only manage twice the capacity factor of wind (eg look at some UK nuke fleet capacity factor vs offshore wind).

Rgds

Damon

Solar PV and reglazing (unless currently in a very poor state) should usually be low down the list of things to do if you are driven by maximising ROI (or ERO(E)I).

Rgds

Damon

PS. Having said that I have already done PV and triple-glazing though have not quite finished internal wall insulation works: see earth.org.uk

http://e360.yale.edu/feature/u...

http://www.rsc.org/chemistrywo...

http://phys.org/news/2013-10-a...

Rgds

Damon

Still here, wasting food and oxygen, or it is just (say) brown people in far away countries unlike you that are useless?

Ha!

Ed is too painful to use under any circs IMHO, but I have been using vi (or in fact "pcz" + vi variants) since ~1984, so I was only 8 years late to the party.

I prefer non-interactive editing in the absence of vi, eg sed/awk/egrep...

Rgds

Damon

Yes, they do materialise, just not in your/GGP's attention span it seems, nor all at once, nor at your convenience. Read an electronics catalogue rather than /. if all you want to know about is things ready *now*.

I have the benefit of a nice big LiPO4 pack at home, enough to run my server for a couple of days, which would absolutely not even have been a twinkle in my eye when I started in electronics and computing for example. Oh and a couple of months' worth of lead-acid behind it, essentially a century-old technology with a little bit of gel and MPPT cleverness folded in much more recently.

Retail tech is full of tiny incremental improvements, which sometimes started as R&D tech breakthroughs many many years before.

Rgds

Damon

The solution is to have (almost) anyone use (almost) any socket and use a little thing called technology to bill the right person. Then sockets can be installed on public streets and in communal parking areas as well as in private driveways.

We do it with mobile phones, and we already do it with *some* plug-in EV points.

The tech isn't that hard.

Actually getting a suitably universal plug and socket seems *as* hard.

Rgds

Damon

PS. I have no driveway and would need a solution like this.

Because YouTube is not a monopoly and it's not unreasonable or unfair of it to try to recover costs (or, gasp, make a profit) somehow.

Nothing stops you nor anyone else hosting elsewhere or on your own physical server etc etc. I have several (media) servers around the world but for the latest media I put up YouTube was convenient and fast and free. Bandwidth is not free, even for Google.

Rgds

Damon

Hmm, I prefer Java over C and assembler because although I can write highly stable and secure code in C/asm, the effort to sustain the required level of paranoia and navel-gazing is for most code better directed elsewhere to visible benefits. I write code that actually has respected security crazies and bank auditors telling me to lighten up a bit, yes really!, but I'm still perfectly capable of making a mistake.

However, I'm inclined to think that whoever wilfully lets code out the door without appropriate bounds checking and incredible scrutiny of all input should face some kind of punishment.

(I dislike C++ because it combines the traps of C/asm with some novel ones of its own, but fools programmers into thinking that they are in a safe programming environment... Yes, I did a lot of C++ design and coding in mission-critical applications too!)

Rgds

Damon

There's a Downing Street in NYC, last time I looked, but it was a sewing materials and/or repair shop IIRC.

I'm downing my expectations of Americans understanding British idiom.

Rgds

Damon

Compared to identical prints on other printers that I've seen I'd rate it "medium".

After some delay getting it (I think Maplin was overwhelmed by interest) and some teething issues (Maplin just shoved the assembled unit into a cardboard box without proper packing so it arrived quite bent out of shape in places) and allowing for one continuing defect that I've worked around, I'd say it's a good little workhorse for the money especially considering that it's still pretty bleeding edge tech.

Rgds

Damon

You can't throw nice 2D printers around either and expect them not to suffer.

The process is not as painful as you think.

Myself and one other on the OpenTRV (opentrv.org.uk) project work to get OpenSCAD files and fromt hat we produce STL and many of us (maybe just short of 10) print from that same STL on lots of different printers with different setups without significant difficulty.

Yes, my 3D printer is a bit 'beta'y and slow, but it does work, and is now reliable and easy to use.

Rgds

Damon