I'll second this. The Open University is not a degree mill and has an excellent academic reputation.

You can (or at least certainly could when I did it) go straight to a Masters Degree in engineering at UK universities by doing a 4-year programme, missing out the Bachelors degree on the way. It's marginally faster than doing a BEng/Bsc + MSc combination, and academically equivalent.

This is currently getting coverage on the front page of the BBC News website - both the domestic and international front pages - ( http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/ and http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world/ respectively). Coverage doesn't get much more mainstream than this.

The hurdle of creating an application and getting it accepted is a much bigger factor than the cost of a developer subscription.

Whilst you can of course submit variations of some generic application, Apple is taking an increasingly hard-line on apps with little apparent customer benefit, so they may well get rejected, the whole process taking about a week for each iteration.

I would also not be surprised if Apple rejected developer account applications paid with pre-paid payment cards - they certainly check the bone-fides of corporate applications quite thoroughly. It's not hard to use a credit reference agency to validate a customer's identity once armed with a name and address.

The termination clauses of the contract will probably be considered unfair and thus unenforceable in situations like this.

Service providers and utilities rely on customers not being sufficiently aware or motivated to exercise their rights.

I wonder whether ACS:Law's behaviour approaches the legal definition of Extortion?

There are really only two explanations: that they were incompetent or, alternative, entirely competent, and trying it on.

The judge in fact refused all 8 requests for default. Of the eight, 3 had in fact filed defences, and there was no evidence of service in 3 more. The remaining two were technically in default, but the judge found the case lacked any legal merit due to the plaintiff not actually being the rights-holder or exclusive licensee, and therefore incapable of bringing a copyright infringement action. It looks as if ACS:Law's business model of speculative invoicing is holed below the waterline and sinking rapidly. The question I have is whether launching actions with such fundamental errors in law and procedure amounts to mal-practice? It certainly wouldn't be the first allegation of this type for ACS:Law.

EA is excellent value for money, and a very competent CASE tool with some additional bits bolted on the side to aid process. It's what we use (small R&D team in a big corporation), but I don't think it meets the OPs needs as it doesn't offer the end-to-end package with full traceability. IBM Rational's offerings are a mixed bag - they do offer a full solution, but one made up of disparate parts, generally acquired piecemeal by Rational over the years. Some parts (Clearcase, ClearQuest) are well thought out and implemented. Others were (the last time I used them a few years ago) a complete abortion (SoDa- the documentation generation tool for Requisite Pro being the obvious example). The Rational Unified Process (RUP) which binds them all together is well thought out and designed to be tailored to organisations with varying degrees of agility and ceremony. Rational Method Composer - the tool for tailoring the process is best avoided however. You definitely don't need Rational dog-food to use RUP (or one of the many other Unified Process derivatives). One thing that's consistently been true over the years is that IBM Rational is expensive and they will encourage you to buy the entire suite. Round-trip engineering is a feature may vendors tout. For most, it's a chimera, only really working well for certain types of applications built in a particular way, against particular programming languages and frameworks. It also tends to rely on the idea that you will do a significant amount of design in the model and then turn hat into code.

No. National Rail is a trademark of ATOC. They are already a private company - otherwise the data could be liberated with repeated FOA requests.

Most thieves steal precisely *because* an opportunity present itself to them.

Not sure how it is in the US, but in the UK the pawnshop is the probably the cheapest and most reputable source of credit open to many poor people. They are certainly the most regulated, and tend to have an excellent relationship with their local police force. Not a good place to attempt to dispose of stolen goods. None the less, the interest rate is quite eye-watering.

I'd say incineration is a likely is a highly likely (and permanent) outcome for for copper thieves who dabble with power lines.

Here in the UK, lead is commonly used as a roofing material on historic buildings - particularly churches. Predictably enough, it's also frequently stolen. Zinc is also used this purpose. Copper theft is also common from the railways. On 3rd-rail electrified lines the power cables are rates at a couple of kA, so quite substantial, yet only 700V DC when live.

Steeling copper telephone cables for their copper content is a pretty desperate crime - even at the spot price of copper quoted (the thief will be offered far less by the scrap-merchant) - they'd need to pinch an awful lot of it. There are surely much more lucrative metals to steel than this?

Or more likely, a small number of crooked customers who have a vested interest in keeping the whole thing quiet. Note that the a landlord of 22 properties got a longer sentence than the electrician.

The deeply religious? Certainly lots of parallels: faith in spite on scientific evidence, hatred of scientists.