This is hardly his highest profile ever case. Perhaps for the geek community, but for him it's small change.

Your figures are meaningless in context without knowing how many were lost, and what the operational cost was per tonne of ordnance.

In WW2, after the Battle of Britain the most successful British aircraft was probably the twin-engined Mosquito, an early stealth fighter/bomber. I was taught at school by the former wing commander of a Mosquito wing, and he told us that flying Mosquitos was considered a real privilege because you expected to survive the War. Mosquitos could fly to Germany, pathfind for heavy bombers, do a little precision bombing themselves and be back in time for breakfast, even if someone put a shell in an engine while over the target. Single engined fighters and 4 engined bombers had far higher loss rates.

The significant point is the kind of opposition you could expect. Bombing Third World countries is a bit different from bombing First World countries.

Oh that's cynical. Meanwhile in the UK, the Labour Party has just announced that if it wins the next election it will replace the Trident nuclear submarines, which has absolutely no connection whatsoever to the Labour votes from the Scottish shipyards, and sabotaging the campaign for Scottish independence. $40 billion for a useless piece of kit that cannot influence any foreseeable wars, but keeps the Scots onside. Perhaps that's it: it's called a strategic deterrent because it strategically deters the Scots from becoming independent and losing the work.

Analysts usually don't have to fly combat missions.

Had the Spitfire not been a newer design that the German equivalent, this post might be in German (well, actually it wouldn't because my father would have gone to a concentration camp, but you know what I mean).

Unfortunately I make it the Saving HIgh-Tech INnovators From EgregIous Legal Disputes, or SHIT IN FEILD Bill. Spelling error apart, this is indeed likely to be as successful as trying to persuade bears not to poo in the woods.

It is in much of Europe. You're not suggesting that the freedom loving democratic USA has more corruption in Government than us Euro-weenies, are you?

The last British government (you know, the American(Murdoch)-Australian(Blair) one was heading down the same route, but amazingly most British judges are rather sensible and tend to discourage frivolous and exploitative lawsuits; companies that have tried it have gone bankrupt or even had the Law Society feeling their collars. Perhaps we should send you some redcoats like we did in 1814.

Yes, this is not intended to be taken seriously.

You must be awful fun when talking to customers. They tend not to understand the distinction between "shall" and "should".

"there may exist valid reasons in particular circumstances to ignore a particular item" - in other words, this is a case where the feature should ALWAYS be applied to generic software because that must deal with all circumstances, not just "particular" ones.

It really should not be hard to have a popup that says "This web page wants to create local storage on your computer allow/disallow", for instance, and then let the user decide if this is a particular circumstance.

Indeed. And, since marketing persuaded the world that they wanted all-touchscreen phones, BlackBerry has been in the doo-doos. Yet I played with the most basic BB the other day - the 9320. It's built like Nokia used to be and it has a surprising amount of functionality. I didn't expect the GPS to work on such a cheap phone, but it was accurate. It's a little bit slow, but far more capable than a cheap Android phone. I now want a Q10, when it comes out.

The volume industry is driven by fashion, not function.

At one point in a voyage, at night, the Matthew was intercepted by a military ship - probably American - who demanded to know what she was and got the reply "Sailing ship Matthew, on a voyage from Bristol to Rio". The immediate reply was "I don't believe you, identify yourself correctly or we will board you".

The captain instructed that the Diesel be started and then had all the display lights turned on - it must have been quite impressive out there in the Southern Atlantic. Very soon after a one word message arrived: "Sorry".

Auxiliary Diesels on sailing ships can come in very handy at times.

No, that wasn't the reason. It was the phrase in the GGPP "could not dilate more than three inches". Ships don't dilate, they expand. I was commenting on the abuse of English.

Prostitution yes. Affairs, no.

Upper class women were often left at home for long periods while their husbands went off to rule the Empire. The result was a culture of affairs with men of similar social standing, and also of sex with the servants. The latter was in some ways a form of prostitution; in exchange for a clean indoor job involving standing around handing out food and drink and shifting luggage, all board, lodging and clothes provided, a footman was expected to service the mistress and perhaps her friends. In a divorce case (which was really considered scandalous) it was not done to cite other parties lower than one's own social status, i.e. bonking servants didn't count.

Not in all cases obviously, perhaps not in a majority, but the rules have been well documented.

A friend of ours who died a few years back was the son of a West Indian jazz musician and an upper-class British woman.

His mother used to tell the story of how his father went to ask for her hand in marriage. This was early 1920s.

Daddy: "So, er, how much exactly do you earn? Will you be able to keep my daughter properly?"
WIJM: "About £65" (roughly an average annual income for a worker of the period)

Daddy: "That isn't very much"
Daughter: "That's a week, Daddy."
Daddy: "Oh. Er...where were we thinking of for the ceremony?

The past is often not how Hollywood imagines it.

What makes you think modern cruise ships are any different? A hole in the bottom and the thing nearly capsized in shallow water. Many of those cruise ships cannot use the North Atlantic in winter.

Airships have to have light superstructures to be able to have adequate lift, and they have a very large surface area. To the best of my knowledge nobody has come up with a convincing way of safely landing (or taking off) an airship in high winds. Modern materials, good as they are, are still not sufficiently stronger than materials available in the 1930s to make a safe airship.

I wasn't aware that hydrogen was corrosive.It can cause embrittlement of steels, but that is quite a separate issue.