Utter nonsense. I drive a French car which is a 2Litre diesel and it's cleaner than either its 1.6 or 2Litre petrol engined models.

http://www.nextgreencar.com/view-car/49545/citroen-c4-grand-picasso-2.0-bluehdi-exclusive+-150-eat6-auto-diesel-automatic-6-speed
http://www.nextgreencar.com/view-car/53981/citroen-c4-grand-picasso-1.6i-thp-exclusive-165hp-s&s-eat6-auto-petrol-automatic-6-speed

From the forum poster: "The NameCheap terms and conditions state they will pass the domain on to a third party at their discretion from 12 days prior to expiry."

12 days prior, doesn't sound like any of the registrars I've used.
Sure go ahead and use NameCheap but read their T&C's very carefully first.

Email notifications aren't reliable, I keep a reminder alert in my calendar for my domain renewals.
Having said that I get bombarded by renewal reminders from freeparking, networksolutions and godaddy when I have a domain a few months from expiry.
You know, the "renew now and save 10% off" types?

Glad this wasn't one of my domains that got the chop 12 days prior to expiry and then held to ransom to get it back...

I recently came across this on a forum about NameCheap which would make me steer well clear of them
http://www.geekzone.co.nz/forums.asp?forumid=86&topicid=165962

If Apple had released a gold version of their original, and now iconic iPod, in gold with a price tag of 4 figures or more - how much would it be worth today?
Take a guess at a) still in it's original packaging b) used and worn by someone famous

Remind me. How much did that original Apple I sell for recently?

The value of anything isn't dictated by a formula e.g. (cost to build) + (reasonable margin) + (shipping/sales/etc)
Value, or price, is what someone is prepared to pay for it.
Apple obviously believes, guided by the likes of Angela Ahrendts, that $10k is a good starting price for a limited "edition" watch.

This is Slashdot -"News for nerds" right?
They aren't selling that watch to us, so quit the sniping and moaning.
You could probably make your own 24ct gold watch out of the guts of a $349 entry level for less than an extra $1000.
I'm certain there's foundries firing up right now rubbing heir hands at the prospect of scalping.

As for the laptop.
It's not for us either who are probably more advance IT users than the fashion followers who will love that gold 12" in their handbag or execs wanting the latest desktop bling.
Horses for courses.

I think I was a bit shocked at the optic drive being dropped from the original air but to be fair it was the right move in hindsight.
This is history repeating itself so it shouldn't be as much of a shock.

My only concern with that laptop is the loss of the mag-safe.
Who remembers the broken MB's before mag-safe from folks tripping over them?
We're more or less at the convergence point of laptop & tablet as of yesterday.
Same number of ports and not much in screen size difference.
How fast technology does change...

I installed an IP Webcam in my mothers family home which is in the remote Scottish Hebrides.
A local "entrepreneur" with "links" had been damaging boundary walls to try and get a through road to land he wanted to develop on.
I set the camera up, inside the house looking out over our property, for security and as a deterrent.
We had the police come round and demand that it be removed.
We refused and luckily their timing was unfortunate for them as my uncle was present in the house when they turned up.
He happened to be a court judge who, after identifying his profession, ended their demands with "Officer, I don't think so...".
Some time later someone, in the night, painted the window in front of the camera.
We also had a council notice served on us for re-errecting our wall.
Apparently we needed planning to repair it even though the wall had been there for a few hundred years.
That too got chucked out of court.
I've seen and experienced too much of corruption at government level to trust a single thing that comes out that claims to be in our interests.
Orwell was right and, sadly, will be proven so.
"I've got nothing to hide" is sticking your head in the sand.
"Security" is only being used to subvert us for the benefit of the hierarchy.

Re-occuring and repeating patterns in nature. Fractal geometry.
There's even a spiritual/religious element to it in "the wheel of life"

I get the whole red-shift thing, even the need for "dark matter" to fill in the gaps.
Yet I can't help feel that we are back to the point at which we thought the earth was flat because of the limitation of our field of view.
Back then it was thought that you just fell off the end of the world, that made sense.
Just like dark matter and all the other fillers in our current theory.

A thought that occurred to me recently was could the Universe, instead of being expanding from a single point of origin, be much like the repeating pattern of concentric rings we see at the atomic level, the solar system and galaxies?
So large that the speed of light problem masks it's true structure.

Just asking, I'm not read up on astrophysics/physics enough to see any obvious problems with this idea...

Allowing consumers to self medicate with marijuana for depression, pain, MS, cancer, etc, etc isn't in the interests of the Pharmaceutical Industry.
With it's deep pockets and lobbying power common sense just doesn't stand a chance against it's power and money.

Meanwhile in Iceland...

This is a country that jails bankers for economic fraud and protects activists like Wikileaks.

http://icelandreview.com/news/2015/02/12/icelandic-bankers-sentenced-prison

They are lucky enough to have a President who has stood up for the people who elected him.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ólafur_Ragnar_Gr%C3%ADmsson
( Read the paragraph below "Crisis of 2008 statements". This is the mouse that roared! :) )

Lots of good, irrelevant, points here which I do agree with. However Dotcom was lured to NZ, entrapped, in exchange for "The Hobbit" being filmed here - or at least that was the threat from the US if they'd didn't agree to help rope him up and hand him over.
The Kiwi's hate Dotcom for 2 reasons.
1) "Tall poppy syndrome". Kiwi's hate those who brag on success and Dotcom sticks out above everyone in NZ like a soar thumb.
2) The NZ media have savaged him and he has totally underestimated the population's belief in their media. His attempt at politics here in the recent elections was eye wateringly awful.
This recent event is just another fanning of the flames of the pyre on which they intend to burn him.
More bad PR to justify to Kiwi's why a "citizen", as Dotcom likes to remind them he is, should be handed over to the USA.
I'm not a Kiwi but I do live in NZ. Not a comforting thought....
PS
Kinda sad that professional sportsmen stand a better chance of getting away with murder in the USA than online "entrepreneur's" do of avoiding extradition there and a life time in a cell for running a business that offers much of the same as competing US business do.

Right, so finally someone understands the difference between the "innocent citizens" and the "evil leaders".
"little more than torture" is a good way of describing what's happening to the many Greeks hit by austerity.

Sorry but I don't see how Germany can take a higher moral ground here within a historical context.
Real debt? Please enlighten us on what you think "real debt" is within the context of WWII & Greek governments and banking?

The ordinary citizens of the western world had nothing to do with the economic melt down at the end of the last decade.
It was the banks to blame but they've walked away and been left to repeat the same scam again unhindered.
" Give them money or excuse debt and then in 5 years time they will be back to the exact same position. "
Yep, the banks will do it again. The innocent will pay.

No, that's not extortion that's Karma. Germans had spent 6 years doing more than just putting guns to heads across Europe...
"...their own unwise choices" would be one way of describing electing into power Hitler and his Nazis and following their lead.

I don't think anyone would care.... ;)