Hey, we don't want a stray nuclear explosion to send the moon off on a fantastical but low budget trip across the universe, requiring some really bad acting and 1970s styles to come back into fashion!

That would be horrific :(

Uh, no, that's not what he said at all.

If the "lock in" is worth it, why not?

I'm a Sky customer, I get my home phone package (unlimited calls, any time), internet (50Mbps fibre, no cap, no quota, no limit), and TV package (HD, movies, tonnes of entertainment channels, F1 etc) for roughly £75 a month - and my opinion is that its worth paying that for the service I get.

Skys video on demand service is brilliant, and I get access to it on my PC and mobile devices as well.

I've experienced Virgin Media (had it for a couple of years after I moved to this city) and Sky is simply better imho. When I wanted to move home, Virgin wanted a load of money to move the contract, and I had to sign up for a new contract at the new location. Sky however just said "yup, no issues, your phone and internet will be activated on this date, your TV will just work, no cost to move, and no new contract", which is great because Im only in the new place for 6 months until my property is built.

I'm currently on a business contract with EE for my mobile service, but I will be watching Skys offering with interest.

Look it up, the US lost that WTO case a few years ago when those loans were declared legal with a minor correction needed. It was the US that fell foul when the WTO declared the subsidies Boeing received from Washington State and other places to be illegal.

All the 'Libre' crowd rants about the source code of the software, but somehow gives a pass about the hardware not being open ...

You haven't been watching very closely.

*I* have been ranting on slashdot about AMT for years. Look it up.

Next you know the young whipper-snappers will take "variables" and call them "dynamic constants"

In Bluetooth (especially Bluetoothe Low Energy (BLE)) they already reanamed them. They call one a "characteristic" (when you include the metadata describing it) or a "characteristic value" (when you mean just the the current value of the variable itself).

You are aware that there are still some 707 and 727s in service, right? :)

The reason they landed at Manchester was not because they burned more fuel, but it was because they thought that the fuel on the outer wing tank on the wing that had the shut down engine on was inaccessible - this turned out to be false, they could have made it all the way to LHR without issue.

That entirely depends on the use you have for the aircraft - high oil price or not, no aircraft has the CASM of the A380 (not even the proposed 777X), which puts it in a league of its own. Consequently, the 747-8 falls foul to the 777 so the sole VLA competitor to the A380 would be killed by its own sibling...

Oil can go through the roof, but if you can fill an A380 then thats the aircraft you need for the job. You can't shoehorn 600 into a 777 no matter how hard you try.

Fully aware of the KC-X contest, NG was the prime contractor but it was actually Airbus that did all the work.

The KC-X contest was only ran because Boeing got caught firstly trying to lease replacement tankers to the USAF at a rate which was several times more than they cost to buy, and then Boeing got caught in the first round buying the Airbus bid details from the US DOD procurement officer in charge of the bids.

Even with a US prime contractor and a US assembly line, there was massive uproar over the fact that Airbus had won the second round of bidding, before it got out back out to tender and Boeing magically found a way to make the 767 offering several billion dollars less than their previous bid...

There is no way the US political arena would accept a non-American plane as AF1. Which raises an interesting problem when the next replacement comes round...

The 747-8 has new engines, a new wing definition and loft, new winglets, new avionics and significant aerodynamic improvements across the board. The only thing left to do is switch construction to CFRP or another modern material, and its cheaper to do an all new aircraft for that as you have to redesign the framework completely for the new material loading. The -8 will be the last 747.

Plus, while iconic, the 747 carries a lot of unnecessary weight around due to its short upper deck (there is a lot of wasted dead space behind that hump in commercial aircraft, so much so that they considered putting a dozen sleeping berths up there), so compared to single deck aircraft or the A380 its not as well optimised weight wise for its structure.

There will be hundreds of 747s flying for the next three to four decades, so parts are not an issue - Boeing makes the majority of its money on aftermarket care and parts, they won't close those lines down fast.

Also, Airbus refused to submit a proposal for this when approached several years ago (while there was no bidding process, basic proposals were requested from both Airbus and Boeing) because they knew it was a no contest decision.

Its about the same here - the technique they are talking about here is for the (typically) bank owned ATMs which are fixed in place, in a wall.

The technique for the independent cash machines is simply to break into the store, tie a chain around them, attach the chain to a 4x4 and drive off - it yanks the cash machine off the fixture and usually breaks it open as well.

I thought the point of the charge was to make the "wooly" side-fibers of the strands wrap around the prey's limbs and/or the microscopic irregularities in the exoskeleton, tangling to it. "Tying" the fibers to the prey would have a similar binding effect to gluing them to it, without the need for glue, and lots of little fibers could make a very strong attachment.

(Stretching fibers made of long chains makes them stronger by aligning the chains along the direction of the stretch.)