Wow! Nice to hear from the "horse's mouth", so to speak. Thank you. Funny that it now seems impossible for something to have been developed for a Windows mobile OS and only later ported to Android.

It was ported to Windows Mobile, not to Windows Phone

I have the developer preview of Windows Phone 8.1 on a couple of devices and the 'Swype-style' keyboard does seem to work quite well.

I used up my mod points tonight, and well you did post AC so it's kinda a waste. That said I agree with you. Why is it that my W8.1 tablet (ok its i5) boot up in a few seconds whereas my W8.1 phone takes over a minute? Same kernel.

Possibly. What is it made of? Without the full drawings and a week to think about it it's hard to say exactly what causes the effect.

Funny how that reminds me of the day job...

I know there are examples flying, albeit briefly, but not one I can get from Target that flies me to work and back all week before refuelling with a nuclear pill...

This is simple. You are making the air near the missile move at Mach 7.

The temperature of the air will be around ten times ambient, so 3000K, which is more or less the stochiometric temperature for hydrocarbon fuels.

Read this for details of the isentropic flow relationships.

...but at least part of the future is here already.

It has many deficiencies, but MAPS? At least on the Nokia phones is by far the best out there. Bing? Yeah, I'll give you that, but half the point of WP8 is to drive Bing traffic.

At the moment most of the really useful apps are Nokia's, and mostly only available on their handsets. The basic OS without these does not compare well with Android/iOS. It will be interesting to see if with the acquisition, MS makes these apps core, either for regularly licenced copies ir these free ones. I have a high-end Lumia925, more or less iPhone quality, and a Lumia520, which for less than £100 SIM free, is almost as good. WP8 really does run well on very cheap hardware.

I still use a wince device, a very nice HP3715RX (WM2003SE) just to run the HP48 emulator (a product that HP had the wisdom to purchase from its independent developer, who now writes the software for their new calculators). I don't think it's crashed once in the last five years.

And there are plenty around still who'd take a little radiation poisoning for TWO Nobels

The examples were emotive. The real loss to the universe will be the maths and physics we've discovered, and DNA. These are worth preserving, if only so later intelligences can use them for comparison

...you don't ask a fish, how to be fished.

I refer to the BBC World Service reporting of this story, where a female psychologist explained why Daniel Craig was not attractive to women because touchy-feely. Every single girl I know, even the gay ones, just say 'phwoooar'

At least in the cosy parts. Certainly you wouldn't want to live in a Neal Asher World (The Owner Trilogy)