And to give you a reason why I think they should plan for it: Windows XP SP1 is what they not only use on their own systems but also set as a requirement for developers to use with their SDK's (together with some custom packages and Visual Studio 6).

From my experience this is because the changes to DCOM security in SP2 break how they've written their applications. You can get it to work by fiddling in dcomcnfg yourself but this didn't seem to be something the Siemens guys had tried.

It's only temporary until you learn to make it say to give you a pay increase...

This sounds very similar to the cattle passport system that was setup in the UK after the BSE outbreak, if taken a stage further. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/British_Cattle_Movement_Service/

Joel has a interesting article on this.

PowerShell is nice but it's a single purpose tool. Arguably this is a good thing but as you can do the same things with Python (including working with WMI etc.) I prefer to use that instead.

Since Rob Grant ceased to be involved with the writing (after series 6) the quality of the episodes has been generally poor. As it's now been over 10 years since the series was on (Dave specials excluded) they would likely have to assume viewers weren't familiar with the characters and do a lot of work setting up their personas which might bore fans of the existing episodes. The writers may also struggle to come up with anything new to write about after 8 series as they can't cover "relationship humour" without adding a woman and breaking the "blokes in spaaaaaaaace" thing.

I also think they'd need a new Cat, unfortunately Danny John-Jules is getting a bit too old now to be convincing in the "Cool" role.

I feel the opposite, I don't think flying justifies people being interrogated. It might also not be that effective, there are many reasons for taking a trip that people would be reluctant to discuss with a stranger and it would be hard to distinguish between these secrets and those which did relate to airline security.

Another likely problem would be damage to the roads caused by the root systems of all these trees planted nearby.

I think you may be confusing The Telegraph with the Daily Mail :)

Anyway, the story has also been covered on The Register

Or the work could have been altered in some way, whether changing scientific data or inserting expletives into the middle of a thesis.