50 years, yeah, and the rest. Flywheels were widely used in the 1930s and 1940s to store energy and cut fuel consumption.. The first car I remember (a 1945 Rover 75) had one.

An analysis of salaries and salary trends for STEM employees will tell you exactly whether there is a shortage or not.

Absolutely right about tethered balloons being much more efficient. However, drones have one significant advantage - namely, that when the NSA has got what they need, the drone can be withdrawn to leave the "bad guys" (that's all of us) in the dark.

"...the aspirations of many Americans to be gentlemen (or gentlewomen) farmers..."...And they said that was a purely British disease...what next? Will youse guys all start listening to The Archers http://www.bbc.co.uk/programme... (1950), is still running (January 2014), and is the world's longest-running soap opera with a total of over 16,800 episodes

I blame the Raspberry Pi myself. Oh, damn those fiendish Engishmen for inventing it! Nobody expected the Raspberry Pi.

..coding samples. They are jealous of the NSA capability, and want some (lots) of their own.

...why BTW beat Felix Baumgartner. http://www.telegraph.co.uk/science/space/10275552/Teddy-bear-falls-from-space-and-beats-Felix-Baumgartners-skydiving-record.html

and no successes either....it seems the NSA is an expensive boondoggle (insert link to pics of Keith Alexander's Star Trek Bridge) and should therefore be culled to 10% of the current size.

After the recent persecution/attempted then failed cull, stealth badgers equipped with low-light video systems in their backpacks will be infiltrating the controlled areas to report on suspicious police activity. They are quietly confident, being as how they can't be arrested for shitting in the controlled area, since they aren't dogs.

+we are naturally suspicious of BT, even if they are not part of the spying+

Oh yes they are part of the spying. BT have always been and still are totally interlaced with the UK government, the UK military, and GCHQ. This is one of the times that "natural suspicion" is totally justified.

You require to work remotely? Most managers cannot stand that - if you aren't there in the office so they can see that you are working, you must be goofing off, you cannot possibly be working. Judge you by your results? They wouldn't know how to do that, and they are far too harrassed/unimaginative/untrained to work out a method of doing it.

I've been in IT for more than 40 years, a contractor for the last twenty. In all that time, I have once had one contract that allowed me to work from home, and then it was just one day a week - and even then, in the middle of the contract, they tried to change it to all five days a week.

Dear GCHQ employees, do NOT ever tell me that you work for GCHQ. An incident amounting to a Breach of Public Order may result (varying from me pouring my pint over your head) to me smashing a glass in your smug little face.

Now fuck off and get yourself a Proper Job (TM).

I'm delighted.
Pity they couldn't ban GCHQ from reading any of it.

Not a surprise that a piece about dgging a storm-proof hole is written by someone called Emily Badger.

"designed specifically with nuclear decommission in mind, specifically chopping up huge pieces of metal infrastructure into bite-sized bits", which it vaporizes and then throws all over the operator (photo in TFA).

Note to self: do not apply for that kind of work, no matter what the rate.