And an O.B.E for services to humanity

We get tornadoes, just not often. Perhaps a few dozen a year - in my life I've only seen one once (I was driving at night and it crossed the road from one side to the other 100 yards in front of me - scared the crap out of me).

As a result they are much discussed over cups of tea when they occur. The national obsession with cats has made this the news story of the year

especially so if you buy one of the many chinese phones sold as carrier-own handsets in Europe (most made by ZTE) - pretty good average spec, much faster than an N900, better screens, fairly minimal Android installs

Its genuinely inappropriate for a menu to cover the entire screen

I hope that means a proper menu with expanding options off it - not the 'fuck you' compromise in Windows 8.1 where a 'start button' brings up the supershitty touch interface

the real trick is to start chrome browser, start Fabrice Bellard's javascript x86 virtual machine in Chrome, start Chrome OS on the VM, start Chrome on Chrome OS, then once you've got an infinite software defined hardware loop running, just unplug the physical hardware and put it away

Babel

Tracks, if he likes it HO-gauge

If proven true in court, this justifies a boycott of Oracle products by all us techies until Oracle produce an open salary audit proving no racial differentials between staff at the same locations. The allegation if true is disgraceful

Signature apps are what makes platforms. For an odd and interesting example, look up 'Torque App' - I wont provide a link as I'm not involved or any sort of freelance marketer - basically its an app that allows an Android smartphone or tablet to directly interact (via a US$10 bluetooth OBD2 adapter) with the ECUs of a running vehicle, allowing dynamic logging of hundreds of variables, live display of most of them, changing of vehicle settings on the fly, resetting of glitching systems, reading and clearing error codes, optimisation of fuel economy....

In the performance and economy/environmental motoring worlds as well as the home-based car repair fraternity this app has such a following it influences phone handset or tablet choice among whole forums. iPhone doesnt have a comparable app - well there's one but it requires a particular adapter that costs a lot, and doesnt do as much. Windows store also has a few apps but none of the have the following or the universal recognition, and some are reported as having problems with bluetooth adapters.

For me, what Windows store needs is the sorts of apps that are making waves already on mobile devices,not bastardised versions of Windows desktop apps. It may be too late.

Unfortunately Win8 and RT arent really compatible, they're barely even cross-compileable. Your developer would have to write / rewrite & maintain a separate RT version codebase of every app. Which has killed the main reason for Windows RT stone dead.

Incorrect I was unemployed for a month last year, claimed JSA and HB, both were paid direct to me every fortnight, separately. I am NOT in the experimental Universal credit area: You are wrong. This has been the standard for most claimants for over 2 years

Wouldnt dream of quoting that vile organ of bile - I'm well into the left of the spectrum, just more anti-gambling and anti-addiction than most liberals.

Currently, Housing Benefit (rent) is paid to the tenant by default; However, if the tenant falls more than 2 months behind then payments are switched to go direct to the Landlord.

This change was made under the last Labour government as a way of encouraging tenants to get some practice at budgeting for expenses; Naturally for a small and feckless proportion of the housing benefit recipients, the extra money paid direct was a windfall they spent on drink, gambling and drugs.

Should be added that for most recipients the total of housing benefit received is less than the total rent and they are expected to make up any excess from their unemployment or disability living allowance payments (where 'rents' include standing charges such as power, heating, council tax anyway) - so even if the landlord has a defaulting tenant and gets direct payments from the local authority, they only receive the element of the total rent that relates to actual rent, and must pursue the tenant for the rest.

this system has caused many UK landlords to refuse to rent premises to recipients on housing benefit (although of course if a tenant went from employed to HB and kept up the payments rather than defaulting, the landlord would never know, which is some shielding...)

Look up the Glasgow Ice Cream Wars - battles for control of the drugs via ice cream van trade