Babbage was not "a man before his time". He didn't need more money. He didn't need a larger machine shop. He blew it!

He had the money.
The people in 1800's Britain knew a good thing when they saw it. And when small prototypes were demonstrated the British Government committed to build the difference engine. And guess what, they wanted to use it for gunnery on ships! They invested *big*. How much? One fully kited out battleship's worth. One of these: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/HMS_Warrior_(1860) (more or less). That is a huge amount of money.

The skills were available.
Have a look at a British clock from this period. Very intricate work and at a lot smaller scale than Babbage required. Sure, what he was doing was on a large scale, but the skills and tools were out there. Indeed, Babbage teamed up with them and had the money to do it.

But he committed the cardinal sin. Babbage was forever changing the design. Yes Mr Babbage, your analytical engine idea is nice but we are paying you for the difference engine! He could not stay focused to build what was paid for and required. Falling out with the machinists capable of building it hardly helped maters. He did not deliver. As a result he blew not only his own reputation but that of the whole idea, killing it for the best part of a century. That is how bad he was.

You can be the most talented man in the world, but if you are so disorganised and uncivil that nobody wants to work for you it is all for nothing. A lesson we can all still learn form.

How long does it take BT to put in an ASDL connection?
You guessed it! A month.

I'm lucky enough to know a guy now working on the OLPC project in Uruguay. In his opinion and mine it is an ideal country to try this out.
He works at roll out and technical support end with schools, essentially at the coal face of this idea.

What is his biggest day-to-day problem?
Convincing the kids not to use the laptop as a Frisbee.

Projects like this need a *lot* of work. This current idea is positively idiotic and shows just how little feedback there is in the organisation.

Which makes it all the greater same that the Beagle 2 did not land. We need a robotic chemist up there.
While the two NASA rovers have done great work, they are very specialised as robotic geologists. This is great if you wanted pretty pictures of rocks, but does leave you stuffed if you want hard data on potential organic molecules.
For it's many, many flaws, the Beagle 2 did manage to pack in a lot of science (indeed it would have provided much more interesting results IMHO) into a very small space on a shoe string. I can't help but think that if a little of the now obvious considerable redundancy (two rovers for crynout loud) built into the NASA mission had been given up for more science there would not be such a the need to send a rover the size of a car.

Internships are like poison to a meritocracy based society. Unpaid internships doubly so.

They allow richer parents to use both their money and connections to manoeuvre their children into jobs that have wealth, power or both. This comes at the expense of poorer and middle class children who can not bankroll their children in adulthood or do not move in the right social circles.

A classic example in my country (UK) was a fund raising event for the Conservative party. Internships at top flight financial and legal firms were auctioned off the party donors to raise funds for the party. No, I did not make this up : http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-1356469/Cash-internships-Tory-backers-pay-2k-time-buy-children-work-experience.html (apologies for linking to the Daily Mail, but credit where it is due, they did break this story).

These sort of actions entrench wealth and power with those who already have them. An internship via connections or unpaid work is a boot in the face of those who can not ride out life on Daddy's coat-tails.

If there was a computing discovery of true importance, it would most likely be granted the mathematics prize. In the same way that biology tends to get lumped in with chemistry every other year.
But for the most part, computing discoveries are just not 'Nobel' important.

Ariane 5, until recently, was the most successful commercial launcher.
However, the rocket is getting a little long in the tooth and things are hotting up with Space X getting into their stride.

While TFA states otherwise, Reaction Engines Ltd are most likely aiming for the forthcoming ESA review and investigation into a replacement for Ariane 5. It would be a long shot, both the UK's dismal track record in funding space flight at a national level and France's well proven track record are major hurdles. But I suspect this would be Skylon's best bet, nobody else has the spare billion or 5 to spend on the project.

I don't think that the issue is weather or not they grow back, but more a case of where or not you can damage them to a point where they will not be recognised by the scanning software.
I know I have picked up a number of scars on my fingers in my line of work which I do not want to result in a 3 hour delay at an airport. Saying that, ears are no better, for I have a chunk out of my left ear from a rugby injury.

One of these days they will come up with a better method of identification, until then, I think it would be better for all if we could learn to start trusting each other again.

I couldn't agree more. I just wish there was an effective way to mock other issues in such a decisive way.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1996_Manchester_bombing

Most Mancunians I've spoken to say it was the best thing to happen to their city center.

Why get hot and bothered about something when you can make a mockery of it?

It is usually more effective too.

It won't stop them being defeated by a the burglar wearing a hoodie.

Taking pride on one's work died round about the time that job security and pay that wasn't "How low can we get away with?" did.

I take it you are unemployed. If you are in full time education or work, in the depths of winter you will get up and be in the office/classroom in the dark before coming home in the dark having not seen natural sunlight all day. This is extremely depressing and has even been even proposed as a reason why people in the far north of a country have comparatively higher suicide rate than those in similar situations and backgrounds in more southerly locations. Anything that can stave this fate off for a few weeks in the year is most welcome.

Who most likely doesn't live in the North. I like seeing daylight every now and then.