learning to type is a waste of time

Seriously? Do you also think that teaching children to write is a waste of time? Being able to type quickly and accurately is a huge plus in any office based job.

This is why scientists need to figure out a way to make non-sentient clones that are highly genetically similar and highly physically similar to human

The problem with this is that it is the complexity of the human brain that makes a lot of drug complications difficult ascertain, requiring large medical trials and years of testing. Research can already be done on animals to make sure that a drug almost certainly works but testing for side effects and interactions with other drugs requires human trials. Testing on almost human clones with a radically altered brain wouldn't give any insight into this so actual human testing would still need to be done.

The list of side effects given by the parent were an example of standard side effects that are listed for practically any over the counter or prescription medication. Common over the counter painkillers often list possible side effects as scary as 'difficulty breathing' or 'potential kidney failure'. If someone somewhere in a trial had a side effect then it will probably end up in the list just in case. Neither of the two links in the summaries list out any side effects of the vaccine. This isn't to say that there won't be any though. Even dead vaccines work by tricking the body's immune system into believing it is being attacked so may prompt a variety of side effects as the body reacts to the 'attack'.

Just as s's is now considered acceptable (I consider it gross and a sign of mental fragility), comma rules aren't considered important any more outside of formal writing.

I am not sure who deems misuse of apostrophes and commas acceptable. I can safely say that if anything went out from the company I work for with sloppy incorrect punctuation then whoever wrote it would be slapped down pretty quick. I am not sure what you define as formal writing but the main job of punctuation is to make written text easier to read. I can't think of many places where ease of reading is more important than on a website, especially one as high profile as Slashdot.

to drink tap water, even after boiling, is inviting a visit to the hospital.

As has been said elsewhere drinking water across Europe (and most other holiday destinations) is perfectly safe to drink. That said because the amount and type of dissolved minerals may be different from those at home it is sometimes wise to drink bottled water as the minerals can cause mild stomach upset. This doesn't mean there is anything wrong with the water it is just a case of becoming acclimatized.

It is a similar situation to people complaining that they got "food poisoning" on holiday, or after eating in a particular restaurant. People eat very differently on holiday, normally eating out more which means richer food and trying new things. The same is true when someone goes to an Indian / Thai / Mexican restaurant and eats hot curry, chilli etc. What is usually the case is that they ate food that they don't usually eat and their stomach wasn't used to it which gives them a mild case of sickness / diarrhoea.

Obviously this is very different from actual food poisoning where you can expect to be severely ill and completely debilitated for several days.

This is the entire business plan of these new TLDs.

While this is true to a certain extent at least the .xxx TLD allowed trademark holders to pay a one-off fee during the sunrise registration period to permanently reserve a domain name. Domains reserved in this way don't resolve they just show a plain white page indicating that the domain is not in the registry. What the article seems to imply is that these schools didn't both to do this and now the sunrise period is over they are having to buy the domains.

Buying up huge ranges of domains just so that others can't use them should be discouraged, not helped.

They aren't buying them up, or at least they shouldn't be. The process of the .xxx tld being brought in allows for companies to pay a one-off fee for domains they hold the trademark for. These domains are then removed from sale and never offered again. The reasoning behind this is specifically to prevent the need for companies to buy up the .xxx version of their domain names and shell out money year on year to renew them just to make sure that www.disney.xxx isn't hosting a porn site.

"Oh Dad I'm still playing it and if you pull the plug I'll lose all the virtual toys that I've built up"

I would be very surprised if cancelling an account deleted all progress. In every MMO I've ever played you can cancel your account and go back years later and pick up right where you left off. This is a big marketing tool for bringing players back, if you had to start from scratch every time then once players cancelled there would be pretty much no chance of getting them to resubscribe.

Open sourcing the game would be nice.

Why not?

This would never happen, LEGO are not going to open source a game that is entirely based around their central brand and IP. This isn't comparable to an MMO with an original IP being open sourced, LEGO is a worldwide and very tightly controlled brand. They aren't about to hand control of part of that brand to all and sundry to do what they want with.

See I hadn't realised from reading any of the reviews that it was actually a two-way communication and that Siri would respond with questions for clarification. I also hadn't realised but found out today that you need network connectivity for Siri to work at all. How does this work in practice, is the amount of information that needs to be sent back and forth sufficiently small to work properly on GPRS / EDGE or does it require 3G?

I imagine that it's pretty useful to be able to press a button and say, "Text my wife and tell her I'm stuck in traffic, I won't be home for a half hour."

Can Siri do this? Is it clever enough to know what you only want to send the part after "tell her" and how does it know which of your contacts is your wife?

The problem with using natural language for voice control is that by it's very nature it isn't very precise. If the phone interprets what you have said slightly differently from the way you intended it then becomes a much bigger hassle than doing the task manually in the first place. Especially in a situation like using it while driving. Trying to frantically cancel a phone call to the wrong person, or respond to a confused text is not going to be very easy when driving.

I haven't used Siri and most of the reporting I have seen doesn't really delve into what does work and what doesn't, apart from it having a few issues with strong accents. For instance if Alice said "send a text to Bob saying that i'm on my way" does it send "I'm on my way" or does it send "Alice is on her way". Can you configure it in any way to tell it how you want it to respond to certain commands?

Does it work at all with non first party apps? If I say "Play the latest album by Passion Pits" does it just assume I want to use the iPod app despite all of my music being on Spotify?

5. Hypothermia

Having come near death through hypothermia I can tell you that it certainly isn't a nice way to go. It is true that you get to a point where your brain is so addled that you don't know what is going on and therefore aren't scared about what is happening but the lead up to that is absolutely horrible. Feeling extremely cold, knowing that you are on the road to death but not being able to bring your muscles or your brain to do anything about it, hallucinating that everything is ok and then coming out of it to find that it isn't. It all adds up to a horrendous and pretty traumatic experience.

I think the myth that hypothermia is a painless way to go comes from people being found curled up looking like they just went to sleep. That does happen, but only after you have been through everything else.

Doesn't CostCo have big plate glass windows or is it more of a warehouse place with shutters? Anywhere with plate glass is off my list as the chance of boarding the windows up before you get eaten is pretty slim.

Better to take the risk once to get your hands on some good equipment than take a risk every time you go out because you don't have any.

SO19 is the firearms unit for the Metropolitan Police, other police forces around the country have officers trained in the use of firearms and their own teams in place. There are various different levels of firearms usage by the police in the uk.

Of course if it is a little village police station you are out of luck but the main station for a city will almost certainly be the base of operations for any Authorised Firearms Officers in the area and have a wide range of firearms on the premises.