Also my strategy. I got a new Galaxy S III recently, and as usual was offered insurance... at the prices the mobile phone operators are asking, you'd be paying around 50% of the cost of buying a new phone SIM-free over a 24-month contract. This means that the chances of me losing or breaking my phone in any 24-month period needs to be above 50% for it to be worthwhile. I've had three previous smartphones over 5 years and haven't lost or broken one yet, so insurance doesn't make any economic sense for me if I'm paying the cost of a new phone every 4 years to insure them but the interval between my insurance claims is >4 years (based on the trend to date). I'd have to need to claim twice in the next 3 years just to break even.

Cash works here, but I'd rather use a card if the store accepts one, because it's more convenient for me. Cash involves trips to the ATM, bulking out my wallet with coins, and hopefully having appropriate denominations for the purchase at hand (a £20 note seems a bit much for a 60p purchase, while a collection of 10p and 5p pieces is going to be annoying if it's £5). If it gets stolen, it's essentially guaranteed lost, which means I shouldn't carry a lot of it at once, whereas if my card gets stolen, I can hopefully cancel it before it's used by the thief, which Chip and PIN makes more difficult. There are also additional protections afforded for purchases on credit cards, and my credit card offers 1% cashback. Yes, it would be stupid to run up credit card debt, but that's easy to avoid by paying the full balance each month.

I'll pay by cash if I have to, but I'd much rather pay by card, which means I always have the right amount to hand and I get nothing back but a receipt.

If this story is to be believed, you can get away with signing pretty much anything and it's highly unlikely that anyone will even look at your signature.

Chip and PIN might not be perfect, but at least it makes it more than entirely trivial to use a card that you've just found somewhere in a store.

It's close, but 640 isn't actually divisible by 9, so by sticking to that width they can't get a true 16:9 ratio.

I would have thought that anything that has more than the single required mark would be discarded as a spoiled ballot paper, as it becomes ambiguous as you say?

The system is similar in the UK. You go to your assigned polling station (of which there are many - probably no more than a few thousand voters per station, at least those I have known). You hand in the polling card that was posted to you in advance, or provide ID, and your details are checked, marked off, and you get a paper card. You walk to a booth enclosed on two sides, place an X next to the candidate you want to vote for, fold it and place it in the box. When the polls close, the boxes are sealed, and then that night or the next day the votes are counted by hand. I don't know exactly how the scrutineering is performed, but the low numbers of voters per polling station makes this feasible.

"Promiscuity Alters DNA" makes it sound like promiscuity directly causes mutations. It seems, rather, that it results in greater variation in vaginal bacteria, a state which creates selective pressure favouring increased diversity in genes involved in the functioning of the immune system... which isn't quite the same thing.

I believe that torque converters are generally less efficient than the use of a mechanical clutch, due to the inherent losses involved in having a heavy additional piece of machinery that transmits torque through a fluid bearing compared to the relatively simple and direct clutch mechanism. No matter how intelligently the car shifts, the simpler transmission in a manual is inherently more efficient. CVT might be better than manual, though.

Yeah, I had an account on UKNova several years ago, and I was always impressed with their principles - okay, not exactly abiding by the letter of the law, but doing it in a way that always seemed like nobody was losing out. It did nothing that you couldn't personally have done with a TV card/VCR/appropriate set-top box, if only you'd had it set up at the right time. It's a pity.

It's Apple's right to ask for one, then. Thanks!

One iPhone, no Samsung smartphones (but two Samsung feature phones), and three LG phones, apparently. Overall, two had Android smartphones, and one didn't have a phone at all.

I admit that I'm no expert on US trial law, but it seems strange to me that this would be a matter for a jury. Could someone explain to me why this was assessed by a jury rather than by judges, as previous cases have been?

I was recently linked to a page on the BBC website which was blocked to visitors from the UK. We're not even allowed to look at anything that BBC Worldwide has made, apparently.

I've seen that - a relative of mine refused to take any of the film off her new laptop. And some people use that plastic film on touchscreen devices as a "screen protector" (here, for example). Utility of protecting a toughened glass screen with less-scratch-resistant plastic aside (I guess it works as long as you replace the protector sometimes, but I haven't found the need for one since we moved away from resistive touchscreens), it's designed to come off easily, not to be optically clear, an appropriate texture or to be permanently attached.