This was (maybe still is) the fashion in UK schools for a long, long time. So long in fact that the current generation of teachers were brought up this way. The idea being that correcting grammar and spelling mistakes would somehow "stunt" creativity - and that creativity was more important than you know: being understood or communicating clearly.

Since the teachers were not taught that there was a correct way of writing, they cannot possibly pass on to the next generation a skill they never gained, themselves.

Downward spiral, anyone?

So I wonder if any of these people actually did any of the "cool projects" they claimed, or did they just pose around, with their newly aquired status (or otherwise) symbols.

Extremely well, as it turns out. You don't need weather records going back to the dinosaurs to forecast tomorrow's weather. It would simply be irrelevant. All you need is enough information to establish a valid model for NOW and then use it's predictive powers. The climate people have all of that and they've run the numbers. Guess what? It works.

So what if the model only holds for a few decades, that's long enough to forecast some rather disturbing possibiliites. Ones that may (or may not - but that's a different issue) need some people, somewhere to do something

The scientists have done the science bit. It's now a political game to actually get people to do something. Questioning the science at this stage is a bt like questioning the properties of gravity - just because it may have been different 10 billion years ago.

Only one thing: having so many offspring.

The problem isn't that we have an excessive lifestyle. The problem is that there are TOO MANY of us having an excessive lifestyle. Get the population down to a billion or so and we can all have diesels, coal-fired power stations and as much beef as we could ever desire.

It's just that all 7 billion of us can't all do that at once.

Rule #8 would be not to fix problems too quickly (and let some that you can see coming, happen).

If you fix every problem before it gets serious and avert the other 90%, your bosses will think they have a highly reliable IT infrastructure. They will then cast their eyes about for cost savings - and the biggest target will be the most highly paid admins - the most senior ones - YOU!!!

So keep the problems coming, as all that management have to assess you on are the number of fixes and the time to fix. Nobody ever got promoted for solving problems that never happened.

Finally: 60 hours a week? Don't be daft. If you're really an effective administrator you should have your work finished well inside 30 hours and/or 4 working days.

You'll never get americans to give up their guns: they're all too afraid. What are they so scared of? Yup, all the (other) people with guns. The comments about gun shops and firing ranges being the "safest" places demonstrates this very well. The gun-owners feel safest when surrounded by guns. However when they are out in the big, nasty, world they feel insecure that other people might have weapons they can't see, so the urge to protect themselves becomes very strong.

Obviously, if nobody in the USA had a gun, this level of fear should be reduced, but it's irrational and doesn't work like that. Hence they all keep their guns and that induces more fear - so they feel the need for more and bigger guns, just as a sort of "safety blanket" (as almost none of them are ever fired in the real world) - which, of course, escalates the problem.

It's all because they're all so scared of each other.

And they're welcome to it. Along with all the added pressure, politics and satisfaction

Managers also have a far higher risk of redundancy (as no-one can actually see them produce anything) and lower job security as they are more expensive employees. I already earn more than I can reasonably spend and am quite capable of delivering on targets in a sensible number of hours in a 5 day a week.

Yes, this is the point that all the electric car makers either miss or ignore.

Petrol has a massive energy density (party due to being able to use air as a "free" oxidiser). In simple energy terms it "contains" about 33M Joules per litre - or 2GJ in a standard tankful. Try to transfer 2GJ of energy into an electric car's battery in the time it takes to fill your tank and you realise just how convenient a liquid fuel is.

If there are billions of people who are prevented, by cost contraints, from accessing the internet I have to wonder whether FB and Google are executing their strategies for purely altruistic reasons, as part of a long-term (decades?) strategy, as a means of making a fast buck, or simply because the other guy is doing it - and they don't want to be left behind?.

Altruism I can understand. But making FB the home page of a continent or two ... is tht really a benefit of the people receiving free internet?

If people have no money, would there be any profit to be made by pushing advertisements to them. Would there even be retailers or wholesalers with products they could buy - given the lack of delivery infrastructure.

If the plan is, that with internet access, the people in these poor areas will become rich and will then start buying stuff they see in advertisements - would that necessarily be to their benefit? Or would the companies providing these services be more like the East India Company in the 18th century - and be indulging in a bit of commercial imperialism?

There are plenty of other single or dual processor boards that will run Linux or Android, that are out already. Some are considerably cheaper. Unless the 64-bit Intel architecture is spectacularly more efficient than the A10, A13 and A20s we have access to already it's difficult to see what this board has that the Cubies and Olimex's don't already provide.

Expensive?

Let's put it in perspective. The NHS budget is about £130 Billion yes: billion a year. £5.5 million represents about 20 minutes of cash burn.

Ahhh, yes the Ubuntu meal analogy.

Where the cooking instructions are vague, wrong and refer to an early beta version of "grub" and only work if you have exactly the same cooker as the inventor. Where you have to spend half a day growing your own ingredients, just so's it is "free". Where the size and shape of the plate you need changes every 6 months and none of the cutlery matches. As for the list of contents, all it says is:

may contain nuts

Bribing the manufacturer? They are paying £5.5 Mil to support the MS products on 800,000 computers for an extra year. At ('cuse me, this one needs fingers and toes) ... £6.87 per computer per year - wassat? about 10 US. Sounds like an absolute bargain to me.

This is just completely wrong.

The biggest thing that windows provides to the NHS is continuity. The second most important feature (a corollary) is a trained user base - one that knows the in's and out's, bug, vagiaries and shortcuts of the existing system. Following on from that is a known, compatible set of hardware that interfaces with all the other systems (after years of development, testing and debugging) and importantly: is reliable in a life-or-death environment where patients wellbeing is at stake.

Valve? Seriously? you're talking about playing little computer games in a hospital environment?

essentially mimicking nature, where lots of animals, bugs and plants take on the form of nasty, poisonous entities in the hope that looking like a badass will stop them getting eaten.

Gaming imitating life! Nice.