Max? As I live and breathe, it's Max Headroom!

To paraphrase Tom Lehrer, "The Internet is like a sewer - what you get out of it depends on what you put into it".

Huh, must've been before my time!

About Mr. Krwzyk - That's about pronunciation of words in another language. What's your point? I knew a Chinese guy whose name could not even be correctly written in English, but there are accepted conventions (dogma, if you will) on how to write, in English, the phonetic representation of such names.

It's been my experience that people in the IT world are very comfortable with the use of abbreviations and acronyms and rarely "wordify" the unpronounceable ones to make them pronounceable (EBCDIC qualifies, but only just). The naturally pronounceable ones, on the other hand usually are pronounced (NAT, FIDO, IMAP, BIOS). While sequel is an acceptable, if unnecessary, pronunciation of SQL, I have found it rare except in the specific case of users of Microsoft SQL server, where it seems to be the rule rather than the exception. But it doesn't actually bother me as I am not a dogmatic anal retentive. And I'm fine with that. My shrink's got enough to deal with as it is.

The vowels in "SCUBA" go a long way to making it acceptable as an individual word. There are no vowels in "SQL". Unlike SQL, SCUBA is not commonly encountered in the areas of Information Technology and Computer Science, in which the use of acronyms is commonplace and well accepted. (Cue the story* of the IBM engineer who had to ask his client what was meant by F.A.N. in a maintenance request. Upon being told that fan was a word, not an acronym, the engineer informed the client that the correct term was in fact A.M.D., meaning Air Movement Device.)

*probably urban legend

That rumour is somewhere between a gross exaggeration and outright lie - unless Canada is using a very different polymer than that which has been in use by Australia for the last twenty odd years. Yes, very hot air will shrink Australian banknotes (I've actually done it with a fiver), but it has to be a lot hotter than anything available in a clothes dryer.

Right. Before he was mugged, he only had one Swatch!

Closer yet, but still not quite accurate. You see, religion is just fine until people get involved in it. Only then does it become dangerous.

I don't know about this particular device, but it got me thinking that, at least in similar devices, I can't imagine it would be too difficult to include an accelerometer and have it wait for a gesture to wake up the display. For example, a quick flick of the wrist through 120 degrees and back again would be sufficiently unusual to not be done accidentally, not so odd that you'd look conspicuous doing it, and very easy to remember. Yeah, you wouldn't wanna try it with a Starbucks soy chai latte in your hand, but regular watches have similar issues on that front.

Those trees really do spoil your view of the wood, don't they?

Hardly. They try to catch their prey unawares because it uses less energy and has a better chance of success to creep up 125 yards on a gazelle and then give chase at 25 yards than to simply chase it down from 150 yards.

While the meat industry may strive to do so, I doubt that there is an abbattoir anywhere in the world that has managed to completely remove stress and fear from the livestock about to be slaughtered. On the contrary, I suspect that immediately before the "What the..." moment, there is a great deal of "I smell fear ahead", and "I don't like this, it's all wrong" leading to appropriately natural levels of stress and fear hormones in my tasty burger. This $375,000 burger is probably going to be as flavoursome as a glass of water.

Are you insane? Man, tigers are bad enough with only 4 feet! Imagine the carnage they might wreak with an extra 6 feet. No, I fear 10 feet tigers are far too high a price to pay regardless of the benefits.