Because its all a form offensive psychological attack, in which the advertiser believes he can overpower you and often does. Why participate in that?

Targeted ads are just a refinement; like a 500 lb JDAM instead of a 2000 lb Mk83. It'll still destroy you just as well.

If you need a thing you'll go out and search for it. If you don't need it, don't subject yourself to psychological attack.

If browser developers hadn't conflated the address field with the search field it wouldn't be a problem.

Your DCP or static confg sets the search domains. If ommadon doesn't exist in any of those ( that is, not your NAS box ), try to resolve .ommadon. as a eponymous host in that gTLD.

My 'local' hackerspace ( in a town about 10 miles away ) is expensive; basic membership is 25 UKP per month just to enter the place. And that doesn't cover costs of events or projects.

Hackerspaces might be good value for a student who could call in every evening, but for middle-age wage slaves who could avail once or twice a month it's uneconomic. But perhaps we're not their target demographic.

Do you find yourself searching the web with -wikipedia as a parameter, so that you can actually find sources of information and not endless repeats of what people copied from your site?

Buying more RAM only makes sense if there is somewhere to put it.

Of three laptops we have, one is limited to 8 GB and the two ultraportables to 2 GB.

That was two years ago. Still waiting for those open specs.

And technically we don't know if the new Hangout will be based on the old G+ Hangouts.

Yes, E-Paper and not eInk. If it was the latter your battery life could perhaps be several weeks.

E-Paper is a clever marketing term for ... a Sharp monochrome LCD display. It still requires a low current to maintain the display, even when the graphic is static.

Oh my, if only I was as informed about visual effects as Mr Pegg.

First, it's not a film term; it comes from photography. Lens flare indicates poor composure highlighting the flaws of the lens.

The first lens flare meme in filmed entertainment that I recall was in Babylon 5's CGI scenes, and we mocked that even though we loved the show and we weren't film students.

So now Mr Abrahms has discovered the technique for emphasising 'immediacy' and no-one may criticise.

Ease off the hyperbole.

1991: The first recorded successful scramjet test, when a modified Russian SAM was used as a booster for an engine which achieved supersonic combustion for 5 seconds.

1992: Another similar test, with French funding, pushed that out to 15 seconds.

2002: HySHot demonstrated the first controlled flight with supersonic combustion ...

2013: A milestone! A breakthrough!

Corporation Tax is, of course, only levied on the profits disclosed by the company's annual return. So only profitable companies have to pay 23% of their net as tax.

But this encourages the Big Boys to simply shift their profit to other, overseas, divisions, through 'franchise payments' and other mechanisms.

Perhaps it's time to say that any company making over 1 million in annual revenue will pay, say, 5% on its revenue above that level. No discussion of profits. It is much easier to determine how much money a company took-in. What money landed in its UK bank accounts is what is taxed.

Reminds me of a line-test number that was available in BT exchanges up until the early 1990s ( wish I could remember the actual number ). It was three digits you dialled for an immediate ring-back-on-hang-up to test the line. However, certain people began to notice consistent delays in the ring-back... in terms of several seconds. Other people on the same exchange at the same time did not encounter such delays.

It was withdrawn soon after and functionally replaced with the 17070 'engineering test' menu.

Which counts for absolutely nothing. It's not as if individuals in the FAA will go to prison for negligence. There is no sanction for the FAA simply signing something off ( after all, they certified the original battery installation ).

In the backward Soviet Union, a new airliner type would be operated on domestic cargo and mail flights for 12 to 18 months before being assessed for carriage of fare-paying passengers. We didn't adopt that practice in the west because it was more important for the bottom line to certificate aircraft with fatal design flaws ( e.g. DC-10's cargo hatches ) and tidy-up afterwards.

Such accounts are very, very rare. Even the most basic debit card account at my local bank has an implicit overdraft 'just in case' I 'overspend'.

Do tell.

Ah, XKCD: making cartoons of memes that have existed for 30 years. How unoriginal.

The nice thing about standards is that there are so many of them to choose from.
-- Andrew Tanenbaum