Most of the fresh graduates we interviewed recently couldn't actually tell us what the difference between a class and an object was. And these were people with 2:1s.

A slightly better search would have told you that tender was cancelled in 2011 and a new one issued this year; they're holding the new selection process next year.

The Victoria, Central, Jubilee, and Northern lines all use semi-automation. It wasn't uncommon to see the driver stood up in the middle of the cab when it pulled in to a station, when I used the central line regularly; the train stops itself. I've been on a couple where it's overshot the end of the platform and they've had to skip the station and continue to the next (reversing a tube train means the driver has to get out and go to the other end - it delays the service too much, so they just won't do it).

It has been for years. Pretty much every business in the world that deals with defence contracts will store restricted material on their own site and computer systems at some point. In the UK there's even a designation for it List-X Site. Other countries have their own designation.

We also know not to rely on the kernel version number to work out what the given version of Windows we're running on is capable of - you ask it if has the capability.

I was actually moderately surprised by the fact that people were using the product name to work out the version - it's not even that easy to get that string. I think there's a WMI object that contains it, but it was only added in Vista. I can only assume it's generally developers using some form of helper library that maps the version number to friendly names for them.

The City of London Police are a territorial police force though; they're all (well all of the full time and specials) are sworn constables.

BT can't even offer decent broadband service to the whole of the UK, ffs.

No you don't. If you deliver something by mail you have no guarantee they got it, unless you use a service that requires a signature on delivery. Even then all you might have is a guarantee that *someone* signed for it, not that the person it was addressed to did. Our posties often just sign for things if it's something they can fit through the letterbox and no-one answers.

But then in the UK you don't have to prove they got it, just that you sent it. Proof of postage doesn't cost you anything; you just have to take it to a post office and ask for it rather than using a postbox.

I doubt it's that easy to get restricted airspace put in place. Also jamming devices are generally illegal in the UK (punishable by a two year prison term and/or an unlimited fine).

Actually it's been moderated 80% funny and 20% informative.

Or just build a new base in Cumbria and move it over the border. Shame they got rid of RNAD Broughton Moor really.

Why would you need speech recognition on a London bus? You never talk to the driver. You get on, touch your Oyster card to the reader, and get off when you get to your stop. That's it. It's a flat rate fare. You can't even use cash on them anymore - you have to use an Oyster card.

The vast majority of their users aren't especially smart when it comes to technology. They're essentially office workers - they don't give a stuff about the underlying format, they only care about being able to do their job.

There's actually a standard for writing in C++ for (embedded) safety critical systems, created for the JSF. It exists partly because they were finding it increasingly hard to recruit engineers who knew Ada (or had any interest in learning it).