I do not like unpaid sick leave in some industries - particularly nurses, healthcare workers and the like. It means people are more likely to work when they are ill, forced to by financial concerns. Not good when they are dealing with people who are vulnerable. Same is true, to some extent, for bus drivers. Driving a bunch of people around while suffering from fever, etc., is going to effect their ability to drive. There's probably a compromise, such that drivers get 50% pay when ill. But would still prefer to see someone not drive me around while suffering from poor health. So what is good for workers and unions can also be good for customers as well.

If you assume the regular versioning systems work with the linux kernal, then no, it is not major bump time. This whole thing is a storm in tea cup - if Linus can count much above 20 then why not bump to 4? Although I agree the bump should mark some event.

This is not my area - but surely some of the issues could be resolved with better storage solutions together with greater take up? It strikes me that an advantage solar has is that people can pop a solar panel anywhere, from watches to houses, meaning they can be integrated more fully into where energy is needed. Storing excess well means peaks are covered.

Other than the obvious impact Turing's work had in the war effort, did people at Bletchley have any idea how valuable his work would be more generally? My computer science peers are quite good at explaining how their work might have value and impact. Indeed, a lot of scientists these days start publications by providing this context. But is the same true in the first half of the twentieth century and in the middle of a world war? It might well have been the case that his notes were genuinely believed to have more value as insulation.

In the UK we can set preferences with the telephone preference service . But another is to set up a premium rate line and rake in the money - although it might be polite to set up another regular number for family and friends.

Illarionov is a bit crazy and paid (by American think tank iirc) to spout this sort of stuff. I think the chance that Putin would seriously threaten Finland is about the same that Putin would threaten Sweden. Also, Finland is very different to Ukraine in that pretty much everyone in Finland thinks Putin is crazy. In Ukraine there was and still is very strong support for Putin in some areas.

Game of Thrones is science fiction?

There has to be a balance between the risks associated with this research and possible gains. Given the potential cost to human life it is hard to understand why this research should continue. Particularly as it is the community in which the lab is based that will inevitably suffer most should there be an incident.

I hope you never need neurosurgery.

I'm dusting off my old Motorola 8000 DynaTAC.

In particular, they have made over ear headphones popular. Which is great as those in ear things make my ears hurt. I wouldn't buy Beats but do have some nice earphones and don't mind wearing them in public.

Trying to find out whose twitter feed is causing all the commotion, but no joy. It would seem entirely appropriate to simply retweet the tweets.

IANA astro-physicist - but something bothers me about the big bang theory (or at least what I know about it). Why just one? Why aren't we able to detect other big bangs elsewhere? And another thing - we theorise based on what we are able to measure and observe. While we seem to have a theory that fits the data available, surely it is quite possible that our data are just unique to our locality. Seems like we are looking into someone's CA backyard and trying to say something about volcanic action in Iceland.

This reminds me of those signs you sometimes see in car parks "the owners will not be held responsible for any damage to your vehicle." I am reliably informed that this is not true in all cases. If, for example, the owners fail to maintain equipment or the building adequately and you can attribute cause of damage to their dereliction of duty they can be held responsible. Putting up signs does not usurp consumer rights.

If you risk infection in the course of activities you have to undertake, like driving to work, then fine. But I for one would not choose to subject my self to a risk of .2% through infection by this flesh munching turd monster. And if infected I would rather take a course of pills to erradicate it from my body, even if there were transient side effects such as explosive diarrhea.