Let's build an Ark ship for them and send them to Golgafrincham.

Well, it would mean that, except that it's a free upgrade.

So, uh, it basically is a service pack. They could just as easily have released the same product as Win 8.0 SP1.

The reason they're calling it 8.1 rather than SP1 is marketing -- they want it to *sound* like a bigger upgrade than it is, so that it distances itself a little (but not too much) from the tarnished reputation of 8.0.

In fact, the biggest change in 8.0 -> 8.1 is IE11, which is coming out for Win7 as well anyway.

I don't get why this is so difficult.

There are a number of well known open source organisations that fit your bill with no problems at all.

Think Canonical or Red Hat.

They're well established, and well known for selling support contracts for their otherwise free software.

What's the problem here?

Or a Yaris Hybrid that gets 80mpg?

Anyone who lives within 6km of work and earns a bucketload of cash.

That narrows it down a bit further.

Still I'm sure they'll manage to sell enough of them to make some money. At least until the first fatal accident, anyway.

I know you're a troll, but really? 150 years is too much of a stretch, eh? If you're really going to be like that, lets make it a bit smaller. 100 years? 50 years? People who are alive today will tell you how much things have changed even in that time. Heck, even within my own life time things have changed. A lot.

That whole post was Double-Dutch to me. As confusing as a game of Chinese whispers.

There wasn't.

This would have became apparent relatively quickly; this measles outbreak may be 15 years after the fact, but the autism rates would have been affected within the first few years if there was anything in this. They weren't.

The research that linked autism with this vaccination was soundly debunked within a few years of being released. The original paper was fully retracted in 2004, and the researcher found guilty of misconduct and fraud.

The full sorry story is documented on Wikipedia and many other places.

The really sad part is that even a decade after the story was retracted, there are still some people who are convinced that they shouldn't immunise their kids.

The trouble is that we live in a world where these diseases don't scare us any more because we don't see them. They ought to. If you want to know what happens to populations without immunity that are exposed to measles, try reading up on what happened when the Conquistadors introduced it to South America.

Nah, if you read what he said, he only claims to own the upper case letter. We're safe to keep using the lower case 'e'. (unless someone else owns that, of course, but that would be silly, wouldn't it)

"Chaos Monkey" sounds like it ought to be the name of the next iteration of Firefox's Javascript subsystem.

Hang on.... "Chaos Monkey is a piece of software that deliberately takes out random parts of your live production system".... hmmmm.... maybe it *is* the Firefox Javascript subsystem?

It's a laudable idea. The only problem I have with that is how practical is it? Virtually every website I've seen in the last few years uses JS and makes a basic assumption that JS is enabled. If you visit a lot of sites, you're going to be spending your whole life switching the JS flag off and on.

And as for convincing yourself that any given site is safe... well, yeah. I can really see you spending hours poring over all the complex minified/compiled JS code that comes with most sites these days.

My point is that for all the earnest good intentions, switching off Javascript is not really a sensible option, even for most power users. Maybe those who are ultra-paranoid might be still using it, but even those users will be finding it a pain.

In my opinion, the decision to remove the option from Firefox is probably a good one. I don't have to deal with front-line support, but if I did, I'd be very happy that options like this are being removed.

Perhaps there's a case to be had for Mozilla to release a separate "paranoid" version that retains options like this? Perhaps. It might be popular among parts of the Slashdot crowd, but overall I doubt it would have enough takers to make it worthwhile.

The upgrade we're discussing here is from Win8 to 8.1.

Win7 users can upgrade or not as they please; the point here is that Win8 users can -- and frankly *should* -- upgrade to 8.1. Win 8.1 is really what Win8 should have been in the first place.

Win8 has had its share of criticism, and yes a lot of it has been deserved. 8.1 is a good effort to resolve some of that criticism. They haven't sorted everything, and if Win7 users still want to stick with Win7, I can well understand it. But Win8 users really should move to 8.1; It's a free upgrade from Win8, so there's really no reason not to upgrade.

This is a very clever idea.

To those making fun of it, it is *not* a railroad/railway, nor is it slot cars. The vehicle is not on a fixed track.

Railways have had "third rail" power supply systems for a very long time. The biggest issue with them is safety; miles and miles of exposed high voltage terminal that will fry you if you touch them. Ouch. The mitigating factor that makes them a sensible option for a railway is that the railway is dangerous enough even without them that it needs to be fenced off.

This invention is basically giving this system to the roads.

The important point here is that the power is only activated for very short stretches of track at once, when that stretch is directly underneath the vehicle. This makes it safe enough to put it onto the public roads where you can't fence it off.

What it *won't* do is give us battery-less cars any time soon. We might be able to get away with smaller batteries, but we will still need them. The summary states that it won't provide power if you're going at low speed. That means city drivers could go an entire journey without being able to use the system, and even for journeys where you can use it, you'll still have low-speed parts of your journey. Even if we decided to start building it now, it will be many decades before it has widescale coverage; there will be plenty of minor roads that are likely never to be upgraded (there are plenty today that are still dirt-roads). And of course, your own driveway probably won't be connected to the grid either.

The beauty of this is that it is entirely compatible with the existing road network and could be implemented piecemeal. Roads could be upgraded with the system. Cars that can use it would benefit, but older cars could carry on using the same roads just the same as they always have. Likewise, if the electric cars also have a battery, they would be free to continue using roads that didn't have the electric rail as well as those that do.

My prediction is that it will be used initially for bus routes. If all the bus routes in a city like London were converted, it would amount to a significant amount of track. The fuel savings to the bus operator would make it very easy to pitch to the city. Existing electric and hybrid cars owned by the public could then be retro-fitted with power pickups for the system, and where the bus routes are public roads, people could benefit from the same fuel savings. If this was subsidised on the grounds of reducing pollution in the city, then the public take-up for the project would likely be quite big.

As the number of vehicles capable of using the system increases, the road network could be further upgraded beyond just the bus routes.

So yes, it is a clever system. However, don't be fooled into thinking it's a new idea. This system was first used a decade ago for a tram line in France. It was the first electric tram line in the world not to need overhead power cables. Ground-based power lines had never previously safe enough for a tram line that needed to run through city streets. This system has been in use for a decade now and has proved itself well. Building it into the regular road network seems to be the next sensible step.

Here's the wikipedia page about the existing tram system: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ground-level_power_supply

Meh, Picasso already got his name on a rubbish car -- http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Citro%C3%ABn_Picasso

Awesome! Maybe in a few thousand years, someone will mine it for old copies of the Atari ET game catridge.