"easily driven by an AVR or PIC type microcontroller" ... Hmmmm ... the main feature of the HD44780-type alpha LCD is that it is a static device, containing its own memory. The content is scanned by the hardware on the interface board.

If you want similar functionality with a mono or color big size LCD, you have to have something in the way between the AVR and the LCD itself that is going to retain a display memory so that the LCD can be continually refreshed (and don't try to do that with an AVR). You could do worse than putting an FPGA board in the way with a VGA interface on it - that way you could drive any number of LCD monitors .. talk to the FPGA via a serial protocol of some sort and have it maintain a color alphanumeric, or alpha + limited graphic display, or with enough memory a full graphics display. Boards like a papilio (http://papilio.cc/) with a VGA wing would do the job.

In what way was the breakup reversed? Thinking of Toshiba - LCDs, Lenovo - Thinkpads, Hitachi - Storage, Cisco - Networking Hardware, AT&T (WAN), Lexmark (printers) ..all companies that took over product lines. Thinking of the manufacturing plants that were sold off.

Half of my 27 years with IBM was with free, unpaid overtime. Expected and delivered; early days I did it freely, but it became duty, then an irritation, then the weak-willed, lily-livered so-called management taking the piss. They are most definitely not the company I joined in 1977. I've been fortunate enough since then to work in a series of engagements with companies who value the greying hair and thousand yard stare. I try not to bore them with old school anecdotes, but I do try to deliver a work ethic and core values that I once learned at IBM.

When they rebranded Norwich Union, I always wondered how the marketing guys came up with Aviva.

How are we going to come up with a new name? uh ... dunno ... what was the make of your first car? A Viva. Well, there you go.

Just think, it could have been AnEscort, or AFiat.

Heaven forfend that I should try to *walk* to a petrol station with my fit for purpose container to refuel my car that just ran out a mile down the road. Can I still buy a gallon of fuel? Should I take the licence plates off the vehicle and take them with me as well?

I still have a copy of Nomenklatura around if you're looking for one ..

Those blast points are too accurate for sand people ..

I don't mind modern cinema amps .. I use sony STR-DB830, DB930 and so on around the house (all recovered from *Bay as faulty, not working). I have a pair of KEF Concerto and a pair of KEF104ABs and a pair of Mission 700s. With modern program material, delivered digitally to the cinema amp they sound so good it is scary. I just know I would have been successful pulling girls in my youth if I had this setup then.

There are so many assumptions in your question, it is scary. Why assume that a nuclear reactor be damaged by a tsunami or earthquake? What if it were small enough to put on a floating barge? Why not use Thorium?

We as a planet have no real practical alternative to nuclear fission in the short term, while we develop nuclear fusion for the long term. The only alternative is the return to the austerity of the 18th Century. Please can we all just recognise what is staring us in the face; nuclear power is the least worst option for all of humanity.

One of the confirming factors of the hiding place of a certain recently deceased was that the compound had no telephone and no internet. Do you think in the future if you tried to live 'off the net' by not having a facebook account, twitter, gmail and whatever else, you might come under more scrutiny by DHS, FBI and so on?

I already get strange looks if I pay cash for anything over a ten in the shops (but then this is the UK, competing for the title of the most-surveilled population on the planet)

I only just threw out my Keyboard D ..

I have a pair of KEF Concertos for serious listening .. a pair of KEF 104AB II for the home cinema (along with a Yamaha center and a pair of KEF eggs for the rears) and a pair of Mission 700s in the office hanging on the computer. I find that the Concertos are smooth, effortless and extended, and cost me peanuts off a certain auction site. Modern speakers are bright, efficient and punchy, but can't touch 70s KEF.

I can think of some people for whom an iPad would be ideal but for many of us, the combination of a laptop and an iPod is just ideal. I use the laptop on the train to the city to watch movies, surf the web, work on presentations &c and then to insulate me from the hoi polloi, I have my Sennheiser in-ear phones plugged into an iPod Touch for the metro. I've seen people try to read books on their Kindle on the metro, and they do seem to struggle a bit. You'd have to be sat down to use an iPad, as you need one hand to strap-hang.

I guess that the 6800 and 8051 families have won the race for the most chips ever shipped now - they get used in smartcards- but I don't know what the estimates are for how many of each processor family have ever been shipped. Anyone know? I've tried googling for obvious search terms .. thought I would ask /.

I recall back in the 80s, when we were developing graphics displays that some bunch of lawyers in California bought up some IP, and turned up a patent for use of XOR function to put a cursor on a graphics screen, and use XOR to restore the graphics again when it moved. The patent predated IBM, HP and Sun's use on unix workstations by a few years. It sounded obvious to me at the time, but they got money out of it. What they didn't realise was that they should not have accepted the first offer from the three companies of $300,000 each - since all three companies had gone to the meeting with permission to spend $30M each.