Never say never. If you do, start your sampling with an IBM 5100. That'll be the best for debugging the big UNIX problem coming up in 2038. That model can read all the old IBM codes.

Or 125m towers on each side. That's a bit more doable. But... then there's a chance an Islander will climb Satan's ladder and glimpse the beguiling lights of civilisation. Won't end well.

Me too. Although it's not all roses. Page loads do seem to have gotten quite a bit slower since the ISP filters went in. And I'm fairly sure they've started banning sites before they get court orders. Other traffic seems unaffected though.

Wouldn't you need a 500m tall tower for LoS comms with an island 80km away? Good luck keeping that standing in an Atlantic gale.

You're assuming that the art is solely the product of the sculptor but it's not. The piece is a collaboration between Scott and Van Hoeydonck. Without Scott to commission (in whatever sense), transport, and arrange the installation, then neither the sculpture or the the plaque (Van Hoeydonck's sense of artistic fulfillment notwithstanding) would have had a lot of significance.

If you want to get all classical greek about it, Van Hoeydonck, controlled the material and formal causes of the installation but Scott controlled the effective cause and, without Scott, there could not have been a teleological cause for the piece. So Scott definitely gets equal standing weighing in on "what it was meant for".

So he broke into a secure environment, serruptitiously obtained confidential and/or classified information, and used his take to successfully gain a competive advantage over his peers? And somehow this makes him unsuitable for employment at the NSA? If he'd just 'fessed up he'd be the first new guy to start his job with an employee of the month award.

Cochineal. That lovely red colour.

On a trip from Delhi to Agra in 2010, I saw so much scary driving. Entire families on the backs of motorbikes. A tractor popping wheelies cos the tow bar was grossly overloaded. Bus passengers jumping on and off the buses in the middle of the road, in traffic going 10-20mph. Another bus driving straight at us when we were on the inside lane of a dual carriageway.

Every car journey in India was like a roller-coaster squared worth of white knuckles.

My mistake - GP is right. Just as long as he never, ever accidentally clicks on the Listen Live button he'll be fine. But if he does it, even once, then a ravening horde of TV Licencing inspectors will descend on his demise and commit inventive mayhem on him and his housemates. And he'll be liable for the licence fee.

I don't know where you're hearing that from. I've gone round with a TV Licencing officer on his rounds through Watford and I've witnessed first-hand how they operate. He never entered a home without permission, he just asked politely and all but one person said yes (the one that said no actually threatened to punch our teeth out - pity we could see the TV tuned to BBC2 from the doorstep...) As far as I'm aware, about 50% of the visits resulted in no follow-up action due to compassionate reasons. The only ones that were referred for further action were people who could pay, but thought they should be allowed to get away with it.

i.e. people like you.

Reaction time is how long it takes you to process a stimulus and initiate a physical action in response - it's not how long it takes you to notice something. Joe Human's sitting there wondering wondering why he's letting this site steal the precious moments of his life away from him loading ads for stuff he doesn't care about. He might not have time to hit the Cancel control before the page finishes loading but he knows his time's been wasted.

I loved how Notes couldn't handle daylight savings (especially when a meeting request came from Outlook). Try explaining to your manager that you missed a meeting because the reminder was automagically set an hour late. God-awful POS.

Only the Crown can assert absolute ownership of the land in England (and the seabed of territorial waters). "Landowners" in England only own estates (the estate in fee simple and the estate in land) and have tenure on the land.

Of course, it'd really kick off if Liz Windsor sent her army round to clear the peasants off her nice patch of dirt (she is Commander-in-Chief of the British Armed Forces after all). Something tells me she can't be bothered with the hassle.

Seconded. I loved how well-realised it all was. Favourite thing was the progress bar for interplanetary video chat to let you know when you could expect a response.

...Developers aren't the only software engineers on the team. Everyone forgets the test analysts. Input from the test team can improve design for testability considerably, making everything from unit tests to migrations and BI much more straightforward. A lot of developers tend to see testing as a sleight on their prowess and completed documentation as a tedious imposition. I have a tendency to believe that developers with that attitude typically have no prowess worth mentioning.

Yes, I'm fully aware that my discipline is infested with scammers, charlatans, and the completely inept. But there are also good testers out there who know their way practically every type of system an enterprise will deploy.