Actually, it's the same issue, since genes are information structures which are processed by the cell. Consequently, genes are software, and consequently are mathematics. The fact that we don't yet understand in detail the mechanisms by which the cell processes the information structures is irrelevant.

If you can't patent software because it is mathematics, then you can't patent genes because they are software.

Can a computer interpret it? If it can, then it's maths, because all a computer can do is manipulate symbols, which is maths. If, of course, it can't be interpreted by a computer, it may not be maths.

Wrong, on all points. Comprehensively.

• There is no such thing as United Kingdom law. There's English law, Welsh law, Scots law, and Northern Irish law. They're all different.
• Under all of them, truth is a defence in a libel case.
• However under English law, the burden of proof is on the defendant to prove that the allegedly libellous statement was true (see People v Croswell, 1804).
• Because of parliamentary privilege, no member of parliament can be sued for libel for anything said in parliament.

I know that Slashdot is now primarily a place for the immature and ill-informed to run off at the mouth on topics of which they know little, but that was a particularly clueless contribution.

This.

I don't, in general, mind apps knowing whether or not I'm in a call. I mind very much their knowing who I'm calling. That's exceedingly intrusive. It's the single thing which makes me most unhappy about Android at present - more and more apps are asking for this permission, and as it's an all or nothing thing, you either grant the permission or don't install the app. Generally, I don't install the app - because I don't want commercial companies building up a map of who calls who when. I particularly don't want them knowing who I call, or who calls me. But the problem is, even if you don't install the app, the chances are the person you're talking to has, so the owners of the app get to log your call anyway.

These tablets are being offered for sale at £549 (US $834.32) and £634 (US $963) respectively. The Kindle Fire HD costs from £159, the Google Nexus 10 costs from £319, while the Apple iPad costs from £399. Even if there were nothing else wrong with Windows RT, trying to sell tablets for between 150% and 350% of the price of the comparable market leaders was never going to work.

As it is, if you actually want a Windows RT tablet for some reason, you've got to know that there's going to be a huge fire-sale of these things, and soon. Why would anyone pay those prices?

Curiously enough I saw an idea to solve this problem this morning. It's a small bag lined with material opaque to radio waves (possibly lead foil or barium, I don't know). Whether this particular implementation works or is a tin-foil beanie, again I don't know. But the concept seems to me good. With modern phones like iPhones or my HTC One, the battery is non-removable, so it isn't easy for the user to verify that all radio transmission is in fact shut down - there could still be things like, for example, passive RFID. But if you had a radio-opaque bag in which you kept your phone, you could have a phone with you in case of emergencies, without the possibility of being tracked except when you were actively using it.

So explain to me: what exactly is the difference between the USA, and Afghanistan under the Taleban?

This stuff is lighter than helium (presumably at standard pressure and temperature) and yet not buoyant in air. That presumably means it's air-permeable in much the same way that a cellulose sponge is water permeable? In that case, in what sense is it lighter than helium? If you enclosed a volume of this stuff in a gas-tight membrane it would presumably be buoyant in air, but that - it seems to me - would surely be because vacuum is lighter than air?

I can do virtually everything more or less equally well with either hand, except write. My school insisted that I write with my right hand, and consequently I now can't do this at all; I think I am naturally ambidextrous but in practice describe myself as left handed because of writing.

Apropos my .sig, I'm prepared to bet that had this poll been set on Slashdot fifteen years ago - or even just ten - you wouldn't have seen a right handed majority. While right handedness is common in the general population, in my experience geeks a more likely to be either ambidextrous or left handed.

OK, call me cynical. How much energy will forging the steel, making the glass, and making the cement for the concrete burn? How much energy will transporting all these new materials to site, and transporting away the demolition rubble, burn? For how many additional years could you have run the old store for the environmental cost of building the new one?

Car analogy, since we like car analogies round here. Your new Prius may be wonderfully energy efficient, but creating it burned so much energy that keeping your twenty-five year old V8 on the road for three years longer is better for the environment.

Making a Prius consumes 113 million BTUs, according to sustainability engineer Pablo Päster. A single gallon of gas contains about 113,000 Btus, so Toyota's green wonder guzzles the equivalent of 1,000 gallons before it clocks its first mile.

As you're going to be wiped out anyway, it really doesn't matter whose missiles hit the ground first. Launching nuclear missiles is and will always be an act of national suicide.

The original radio series is by far the best and funniest version. As people so often say, the pictures are better on the radio. If you haven't heard it, buy yourself a present.

Don't be silly. No-one would ever do that!

Sigh. Every time you think you've made enough adjustment for the insularity and ignorance of Americans, they prove you wrong.

Questions

1. 
   How many deserts are there in Europe?
2. 
   Where does the rain in Spain principally fall?
3. 
   Comment discursively on the climatic effects of the North Atlantic Drift.

Candidates should not attempt to write on both sides of the paper at the same time.