OK.

I said "I drive a Renault Espace". Your comment was "Why on earth did you buy an espace? You do know it's made by Renault, right?"

So why ask if I know that the Espace was made by Renault, when it is obvious that I do. Also why say "Why on earth did you buy an espace?" that is an unproductive and unfriendly way of asking the question

Next: "Was it because they once made an F1 car that looks like one?". Well if you ask anyone whether something looks like an F1 car they will not respond as if F1 commonly refers to a version of a people carrier made in 1995. It might seem clever for you to later put a url to that effect with a moniker "google is your friend". But if you think that the obscure version of a commonly used term is as valid as the commonplace usage because you can google for it, then I think google might well be you enemy.

Well your responses seem to be adversarial and unfriendly and. whether you intended them as such they appear trollish.

Renault made a car called the Espace F1, but they did not make a car that looks like a F1 car. Take a look at the Espace F1, it looks like a big van not a formula one car.

Renault Espace is a 7 seater people carrier very comfortable for long journeys through Europe. FYI there is no F1 car that looks like a people carrier. The idea is laughable.

Fault codes mainly. There is some obfuscation going on with Renault. There is no law that I know of that I can call on to make Renault give me detailed fault codes, although I do agree that they should be forced to make it easy.

And from the owner of the car. I drive a Renault Espace, when it is working. In order to get an idea of faults on my Renault I bought an OBD-II interface and bought a reader that was designed for a Vauxhall car, there is non available to the general public for my Renault.

If this proposed Android device allows the fault codes to be read from the engine so that I can phone around mechanics with symptoms of the car's problems then this will make me hugely less dependant on the dodgy big Renault garage in my area

Well at the moment I now have an interface for this car, but it was not easy to get the equipment I needed. Renault had no interest in letting me read the fault codes on my own car, they want me to go to the big Renault Garage on my town and hand over lots of money every time I get a fault light up.

Well I have a superb mechanic lives 5 minutes up the road from me who can do wonders with the mechanical side of car maintenance but cannot use the OBD-II interface, and having the fault codes is all he needs to get the car working.

So I would be delighted to have the android device connected to the car, but only if it gives me diagnostic information about faults.

I agree

TV is a system where the broadcaster pushes content at you according to their schedule

Entertainment on the Internet on the other hand is largely a system where the user pulls content when they wish to use it.

People prefer to pull content when and where the want rather than have it pushed at them. For that reason, in the long term, TV will lose out to internet based entertainment

Yes a slider would be good, you could still get a sense of history.

In fact it would add something you don't get with paper books in that you could see how information on a subject altered over time, say over 10 years. Yes I like that idea.

I think it is good that reference books change to keep up, but I think you are right to be concerned about there being a trail. It would be frustrating if information used in an essay was corrected and there was no way for the student to show that the information `was correct' at the time the essay was written

What I am thinking is that there are drawbacks as well as advantages in information constantly changing. The advantages are pretty self evident as the reference is constantly up to date.

One of the losses is the book as a historical artefact. I still get pleasure from reading my book `Modern Television' from the early fifties that would not be as interesting if it had been constantly revised.

Yes especially when there is a vaccine with obvious benefit.

Here in Scotland we have taken to a mass vaccination scheme for girls with a good take up see scotland archive for more info.

What I find most interesting is that the parents are all asked for permission for their 12 year old daughters to have the vaccinations, and there is about a 90% takeup. So happily not a lot of opposition to the vaccine here.

In the future, hopefully in the not too distant future, we will begin to utilise the moon.

Do you think that it will be possible to extend the terrestrial internet to encompass the moon? Would you envisage if that happened that it would be using an extended version of TCP? Or do you think that there would have to be two separate internets one on each body?

Same here, the biggest upgrade was the move to Linux.

I did the upgrade about 7 years ago on an old PC that spent all it's time virus checking itself and asking me to upgrade the firewall/virus checker/adware-checker software and automatically running pop-up ads for software upgrades and malware.

I upgraded it to a basic Debian Linux operating system that just worked.

I have written 0 lines of code in the last 24hrs, so I have quite correctly answered

I used to run KDE3 and it worked well for me. Had a big hiccup with the transition to KDE4 which was when Linus decided to go back to Gnome2. I stuck with KDE4 until the semantic desktop kicked in and my computer started to freeze as KDE4 began to prepare it's symantic database. I sat looking at my laptop with 100% cpu activity and the fan at full pelt for something I didn't ask for, and I thought,

So I went back to using a window manager rather than a desktop manager

If you want an extremely light window manager packaged up with a good collection of programs then choose lxde desktop IMHO.

However if you only want a window manager rather than an entire ecosystem then there are a few alternatives like fluxbox and icewm. I have gone back to icewm which I feel I have complete control of, with wicd for networking and pcman for a file manager, and a dropdown terminal guake. You can also pull in whatever KDE / Gnome / XFCE programs you might like.

The nice thing about icewm is that all your window manager settings are stored in easy to use text files in your ~/.icewm directory, and you can back these up and use them in your other PCs so you only have to set it up once.

Icewm, the cool window manager

That was the problem I had with the format. The only reason that I bought the unit is was for quick recording in the field, mainly for my wife's work. It would have been handy for her to be able to record hour long interviews and then transfer them to our computer for editing down to an interesting 10 minutes or so. However having to import the recordings through the the analogue input made the unit a real hassle to use.

I sent some query emails to Sony because I was sure that this must be a mistake, why would a company make the process of using their device so awkward? Eventually I got a reply from Sony asking me why I wanted to circumvent their proprietary system, as if I was trying to break into their property!

I have never bought anything from Sony since.

Yes they are priced too high. I have gone through the points from the article:

1) Digital preparation. The cost of changing the digital formating from original format to an ebook format. That is what computers are for it should not be an expensive task.

2) QA. Yes that is needed. Automatic convertion should manage the conversions. Ebooks are not the same as physical books, the text / diagrams / and footnotes should flow differently for each ebook magnification and for each different type of ebook. Setting the layout and typesetting exactly is for physical books, ebooks should be done automatically. However having someone give the book a once over is needed.

3)Distribution and updates. These should again be achieved using software and limited human involvement. This again should be automated via software.

I think the writter Michael Hyatt is so bedded with the process of the physical book that he is applying the same techniques to digital. I like physical books. A well prepared physical book is beautiful, each page layed out optimally on the page, great care taken that any illustrations and notes look good, typeset so that even the shape of the writing is a pleasure.

However that is not what an ebook is about. The ebook just has the material, formated for the convenience of your device. That an illustration lands on page 75 rather than 63 is of no consequence. So Mr Hyatt is either creating a smokescreen to cover the high cost charged for Digital Books, or there is a more serious problem and he does not understand what an ebook is.

And if he takes more money than is needed to produce an ebook, then his business will not survive.

Yes that is a good comment, and hopefully those smaller publishing houses will illustrate by their success that a fair model of electronic book distribution is the way forward. By fair I mean reasonable price and no DRM.