They should give it to one of Munich's biggest banks which is having a nightmare transitioning between Win XP and Win 7.

When the hell are those damn FOSS slowpokes going to get off their asses and write their own fucking ludicrous substitute for Exchange?

What people want is groupware of some kind backed by the equivalent of Outlook. Most people don't give a monkeys about Exchange, but complain when the normal functions aren't there. The issue is that Exchange interfaces are mostly an undocumented mess. When MS fix something, they then best connectivity (even with older versions of their own clients).

Does not the supposed realibility of VMS have more to do with the hardware (VAX) than the quality of the software (VMS), afaik the VAX could hot-swap cpu:s and ram live if the hw detected a failure.

The machines were quite solid for the time but I'm not aware of models that supported hot swapping. However individual CPUs could fail as well as memory modules and the system would gracefully degrade. When the service engineer came along, you could shuffle your users onto another cluster node and continue until the node was fixed. The file system was usually structured so that the failure of a node would not impact availability.

I think the US military has been using VMS for mission critical applications - payroll!!!!

Except that to join such a consortium would have directly conflicted Google's stated policy of using patents only in self-defence. At least according to their stated policy, if they had won, the patents would have gone into their war-chest and would not have seen the light of day unless someone tried to sue them for violation.

In Germany, I see the reverse. There are many iPhones still around that I see either at work or when I use public transport, but I'm seeing more and more Androids, particularly Samsung. I think it comes down comes down to better marketing and a cheaper entry point and, of course, choice.

Blackberry Message Server. It is well liked by businesses and understood by their IT people. Yep, I know that both Apple and Android let alone Windows Phone will talk to company MSExchange servers, even offering central device management for remote wipes, but there tends to be a lot of inertia. Some of the Blackberry devices also offer a halfway decent battery life which the modern Smartphones are not.

Yep, smartphones sell well to rich people. Poor people can't afford them, and in particular they also have long working days away from charging possibilities. Old style, reliable and long lasting basic phones are still very useful.

*everybody* has a cell phone there - preferably from Nokia in the Oulu area

You know, that was what told me that Nokia was doomed. Three years ago, I was staying at the Radisson in Espoo, and I (a non Finn) was the only one there with a Nokia (E71, IIRC), about a couple of km from their world HQ. In the Espoo based company that I was visiting, the standard phone was an iPhone. My Nokia lasted until the end of that year when I went Android!

Apollo 13, the movie had a lot of footage filmed on the so-called "vomit comet", a zero gravity training plane that flies on a special trajectory. I would guess that it was green screened.

A good point. Some appartment buildings have communal garages underneath them and power can be available there.

the "International Linear Collider requires more than 1 TeV beams

Is this because the LHC is wasting a lot of power with synchrotron radiation? The LHC is already running at about 3.5TeV/beam giving 7TeV collisions. With the upgrade, they should be able to manage 7TeV/beam.

it's not the moving parts in the engine that cause most of the maintenance costs, it's all the rest of them, like suspension, steering, brakes, air compressors,

All EVs will require most of the above (but remember, the only air compressor is on the a/c). There is no clutch and no conventional auto-transmission. Braking though is partly friction but is also electric (regenerative), this should lengthen the life considerably.

I know what you are getting at but internal combustion engines certainly do need additional maintenance. The issue is at the moment is that we know very little about the total lifespan. I know someone who bought a Tesla Roadster and is very happy with it. It has received no unplanned maintenance but then it is just a couple of years old. No modern car should have a problem that early. Five or ten years on may be another story.

One of the interesting tendancies is that to balance the weight of the batteries, many manufacturers have chosen much more modern materials, so we see aluminium in the Tesla and carbon fibre in say the BMW i3/8. This costs more, but has long term benefits.

I would agree that the battery is and remains the most critical element and this has to be accounted for in any TCO calculation. Again, we do lack information, particularly on the realistic trade in possibilities for a battery. For example, whether it can be reconditioned rather than completely remanufactured? These questions will be answered over the next few years and lets be honest, not everyone is going to rush out and get an all electric vehicle and for many, it isn't even that practical. For all the indentations being made particularly by Tesla, there are many more ICE vehicles. Over time, though there will be further cost reductions and more people may decide to switch.

As more EVs are on the road, there will be an increasing need for a dealer network to provide the necessary downstream support. At the moment, we are talking niche, so to require dealers when there is such a low volume seems impractical.

Quite simply, a Tesla (or any all electric car) has significantly less moving parts. Faults will occur, but susbstantially less often than with an ICE. Some of those faults though will require very specialist knowledge to fix though.

Yes, two recent British Noble prize winners (Graphene) are actually Russian and spent most of their time there.