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

ideally that touchscreen & those knobs in the dash should accept inputs from external devices and be able to communicate back with them, then the inbuilt software in the vehicle can be worked-round if obsolete

A standard interface would be nice too

I have 2 windscreen mounts in my car - one for satnav as and when needed, the other for my android phone. The car's a 2001 Volvo V40 XS (cheapest version) without a car computer but with a full OBD-2 compliant interface - a bluetooth adapter lets me use my phone to give a constant readout of speed, RPM, engine temperature and spot fuel efficiency

If OBD could be extended so as to allow media/entertainment and car climate control over OBD we could forget standardised interfaces and just mount a portable Android tablet in a clip over the dashboard console and handle all-in-one. This would however require future Android versions to be able to split-screen and display several apps, else it risks jack-of-all-trades apps that end up the optimal tool for none. It would allow all the UI customisations you make to your personal car to be migrated to any other vehicle while you use it.

In 'Cryptonomicon' (Published 1999) Neal Stephenson introduces a character (Avi Halaby) and a few locations (a town and a pub called the Bomb & Grapnel) who are set up, created, founded in the Baroque Trilogy of novels (Published 2003,2004,2004)
- Halaby's family background is included as an irrelevant throwaway comment which jars with the storytelling trend, until 5 years later when one of his characters in a storyline centuries earlier, founds the dynasty

Mainly because melting-down failed nuclear reactors reactors arent actually as dangerous as common perception would have you believe. Comparatively safe zones can start within hundreds of metres of the breach and in many cases the radiological effects on long term health are on a sufficiently long timescale that normal human mortality steps in first. The experience of Chernobyl taught us this. Total long term deaths resulting from that meltdown were initially expected to be in the hundreds of thousands. In practice so far the death toll is less than 100 (yes, one hundred) - plus a much larger number of people living-with-health-issues

Private sector doing something about homelessness in the long term. I bet Michele Bachmann is positively moist at the prospects for this sort of entrepreneurship in America