That sounds a lot like my experience of the tuk-tuks in Bangkok.

Replaced my HPLJ4+ with a ML-2855ND some years ago now. No problems with reliability. Similar form-factor to the LJ4, more power efficient. Our usage is light to medium - it got most usage when my wife was working on her doctorate.

"badgers are considered an endangered species" except where it's been decided to kill lots of them.

I won't comment except to say that it seems very inconsistent. J

If I owned a casino, I would consider him to be a good gambler. Not a great gambler, because his wagers are relatively modest. Seriously though, he appears to be perfectly willing to concede defeat so I can only see benefits: it motivates further research into the topic, and it adds a bit more interest (for lay people) to a potentially niche subject. You could almost think that he deliberately arranged to lose.

I mis-parsed the heading and asked myself "better at an alien invasion than what?" The economy, an aging population, terrorism?

Read the article. The complaint (at least from the family) is about the manner in which the agents approached the task rather than the task itself.

And the answer is supposed to be "42".

I think the UK is a whole load more muddled up than that. I know my car does 50mpg, but I buy diesel in litres. I'll order a pint of beer, and what I buy in the supermarket is a two pint bottle of milk (but it's labelled as 1136ml) and a one litre carton of juice. I'll buy 6x2 (inch) timber and then chop in up into lengths measured in mm. I weigh 11 stone, but I eat margarine from a 1kg tub. I took window measurements in mm and was sold fabric in yards. Land area seems to be measured in acres or hectares variously. The only thing I think we've sorted is never to mention Fahrenheit, but then we haven't got as far as Kelvin on the whether forecast (but neither have the French).

Intel's aquisitions may be changing that. See their quote on this recent press release.

Not sure what you mean by "Windows 7 Mobile" given:
- Windows Mobile - has long supported ARM, but has no version 7.
- Windows Phone 7 - only supports ARM.
- Windows CE - supports ARM.

The only thing that doesn't support ARM is "big" Windows 7, and this is changing:
http://www.microsoft.com/presspass/press/2011/jan11/01-05socsupport.mspx

I believe in Europe the proposal would violate the working time directive, and leave the company open to legal trouble. Of course, whether anyone would want that confrontation is another matter.

You might want to visit the Marmite shop on Regent Street to try some first. Also sells what must be the cheapest tea in London (£1).

Manchester airport is now using a scanner from Rapiscan Systems (ref: BBC).

Their Secure1000 system claims to be active (from here): "The Rapiscan Secure 1000’s patented technology is composed of an ultra low-dose X-ray source that images backscattered X-rays through to a remote operator’s workstation."