...And Firefox added support for that only after Microsoft demoed IE9 at PDC.

Seriously - why isn't the header for this story "Some Guy says something outrageous".

Since this guy is no-one in any position to implement this sort of policy, leave him to his distasteful opinion.

Why? About the only people left who use Fahrenheit are Americans - everyone else has been managing quite happily using Celsius for decades. The rest of the world should now relearn an anachronism to keep Americans happy?

But to follow your logic through, you're essentially telling people to carry two single-function wrenches, when one multi-purpose wrench would do just as well. Both wrenches achieve exactly the same result, but one can be used for purposes other than removing pedals. Why carry both?

It does rather sound like you are trying to justify your sentimental attachment to the system with which you are most familiar, rather than accepting it as an anachronism and moving on. I mean I get why that might be hard to do, and there's nothing wrong with being sentimental, but let's call it what it is.

I saw this. The designers claim it works out about 10% cheaper than conventional PCBs.

As they are here also, if the damage is caused by the lessee outside of "normal conditions of usage".

Lessors are responsible for repair/replacement of "normal wear and tear". If the vehicle fails during the lease period under conditions of normal usage, then the lessor would be expected to provide repairs or replacement. The same is true here of residential rental accomodation - periodic replacement of things like paint and carpet and repair of plumbing and electrical faults is the landlord's (lessor's) repsonsibility - they factor the cost of those things into the rental charged for the property.

Mind you, I'm not sure Australian law would even allow a 20 year lease on something like a car.

But it's a lease. If for any reason the vehicle fails during that time, the owner (not the lessee) would be obligated to provide a vehicle that does work, either by repair or replacement. I don't know how leases work in the US, but that's how they'd work in Australia.

I don't think they're expecting that people will commit to a single vehicle for 20 years, merely that they will commit to lease a vehicle for 20 years, that will likely be upgraded several times during that period. Committing to a 20 year lease means you are committing to the lease, not to the specific object being leased.

I used to get calls all the time from "cardholder services". From what I gathered, it's basically a scam where they charge you and then call up your credit card company to ask for a lower rate. Apparently, people who went in for this had their cards billed for thousands. I've asked them repeatedly to remove me from their list to no avail. Here's how I finally got them to stop calling.

First I pressed "1" for a live operator. Now to fuck with them and remain consistent, I made up a cheat sheet in advance. On it I wrote a fake credit card number, an expiration date, a fake "card not present" number, a fake SSN, fake balance, etc. They require you to have at least $3000 in debt and at least $2500 in available credit on at least one card to cover their fees.

One thing they ask for is the customer service number for the card so they can call your bank, which they do while you are on hold. So, I used this page of bank ID numbers when making my fake credit card number, and I also googled my chosen bank's customer service number (I picked Wachovia). Also I rigged the number to validate by the Luhn algorithm in case their systems check for that. This way we have a very plausible but totally fake credit card number which will hopefully pass any initial consistency checking they may do.

So I put this cheat sheet by the phone and waited for the call. Within a few hours, they called.

I answer their questions. First they ask about my debt. I tell them $9000 across two cards. I mention my "Wachovia Mastercard". They acknowledge knowingly and ask me to "verify" the card number "starting with the 5" thus suggesting they already know the card number. All Mastercards start with 5. I give them the fake number. They ask me to "verify" the expiration date. I give them the fake date. They ask for the customer service number on the back of the card. I give them Wahovia's number. They put me on hold for five minutes to call up Wachovia and negotiate me a lower rate.

"Wachovia says it's an invalid number. Can you re-read your card number?" I re-read the same number. They put me on hold again for several minutes. This repeats again. I reassure them that card is valid, that I just used it an hour or so ago, etc. They try again. They get a supervisor. He tries. It keeps coming back invalid. I waste forty five minutes of at least two people's time. Finally, as they apologize for not being able to help me, I calmly explain my ruse. What followed was a string of obscenities that even made my dog gag, followed by them abruptly hanging up.

And they haven't called me since.

Death threats aren't clever or funny.

It's dipshitted yap like yours that puts weight behind bills like this.

What little charm remains to Doctor Who is entirely lost to the American monster that is the American television industry - just look at that awful test pilot and you'll see what you Americans deserve when it comes Doctor Who. Anyone who suggest that the Sci-Fi channel can make it deserves another twenty years of Star Trek with continual Nazi episdodes and/or trapped in the Holodesk stories. If it wasn't for the last film, I'd say that you didn't deserve Batman after what you've done to him!

It would end up as a cross between McGuiver and Start Trek. There'd be a alien love affair in every episode, compulsory self congratualtory moral superiority and all problems would be solved by reversing the polarity on the sonic screwdriver. Bad guys would have the doctor pontify against them in each episode before sending them to space jail and the Tradis would become a flying sports car.