.......This was the best keyboard they ever made... http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:IBM-3279.jpg One of the first products I ever worked on, over 30 years ago.

...why do all the Germans decamp to Spain in August and leave their towels on the sun loungers?

I'm Scottish, and while I was growing up RBOS had a branch in every Main Street in Scotland. They had a history hundreds of years old of being a solid reputable institution with a high degree of social responsibility and integrity that ensured that in the global finance world, my small country of 5 million people could punch above its weight. The word Scotland was synonymous with prudence and fiscal excellence and businesses such as RBOS were large profitable concerns employing many thousands of my fellow countrymen. The actions of individuals such as these have dragged the good name of my country into the dirt. Part of the collateral damage is that many blameless employees of the bank have lost their livelihoods, and the damage done to reputations will take generations to expunge. But what really pisses me off is that RBOS have the gall to hijack Flower of Scotland, the semi official Scottish National Anthem on one of their radio adverts. After all the damage that's been done they try to appeal to our patriotism (apparently they sponsor the 6 nations rugby competition ). Sorry but in RBOS' s case I feel anything but proud and patriotic.

Go to bed...FFS

Appreciate the info..trouble is for many large organisations (like the one I work for), you have to go with their approved vendor list, which RS are on, and getting a new vendor approved is a non trivial task.

Ordered two from RS early October, along with peripherals. Other parts arrived with back order notice saying they would ship 26th November. Still hadn't arrived today so phoned RS who said shipping date was now 22nd December (a Saturday?). I'm sure the Raspberry Pi folk are a very nice group of people but honestly they just come over as a bunch of enthusiastic amateurs when it comes to global fulfillment.

I'm Scottish and worked in Austin TX for a couple of years. We had people there thought we were Austrian. Something to do with the fast monotonous way us Scots speak. BTW I loved the boy in "Brave" with the Doric speech...then again I could understand what he was saying (well most of it)

Jimmy Savile much loved? By whom? Still to find anyone who liked him even before all this came out.

You heard wrong. Everyone I know who's seen it say its the best yet, critics generally very favourable too.

Used to do this kind of stuff when I was with IBM about 10 years ago, we had a group in XSeries Manufacturing who specialised in quick turnaround configuration of HPC rack systems just like this. Funnily enough, one of the major logistical elements was dunnage, ie the empty cardboard/foam and plastic that all the option parts arrive in. When running full out we used to have 1-2 guys per shift just to move the rubbish out to the big compactors out back. You wouldn't believe just how much packaging even a comparatively small cluster like that can generate.

In Scotland in the mid/late 70's you could do computing as part of a maths course, so we all signed up as "Computers Were The Future".... Got taught Fortran by the simple expedient of handwriting code on gridded paper. These were then gathered up and posted once a week to the county computing centre where they were transferred to punch cards, the job ran, and the program listing and output printed and mailed back to us. Whole process took 2-3 weeks and if you missed a quote mark or comma and the job bombed, you had to rewrite the offending page, resubmit the following week and so on. One time I was about 8 weeks trying to get the one 20 line program to run.

My wife's a much better driver than me. What's to stop me putting my phone in the back seat of her s 1.2L runabout that she rarely exceeds 50 mph in and letting her drive about for a while?

Girl in question lives in Lochgilphead, fairly rural area, even by Scottish standards. No unusual for kids round there to get bussed 20-30 miles to school each day.

This is an even better use for a dead cat than speed bumps OR boat fenders.