You said what I was thinking. But as someone above mentions, it would effectively trap people in if it were not good enough, since the rescue teams wouldn't be able to break it either.

I don't mean to be flippant but I can't think of any practical application for this motor that isn't somewhat confounded by the requirement for the lasers and the magnetic field generator... TFA seems fairly proud that they've come up with this thing but doesn't really tell us what good it does.

I mean, does it have some massively superb output per unit size? Is the amount of motive energy it creates so great that it massively outweighs the amount of energy put *in* to the system by running the lasers and the magnetic field generator? This all assuming that they succeed in harnessing it, of course.

Nonono.

They always quit. There is a world of difference!

Well done, we slashdotted twitter

This would make it the best sunspot I'd ever seen too.

Every single scare story so-called scientists and nutrition experts have come up with so far have proven to be bollocks.

I have proven this by ignoring them and I am still not dead.

Apparently we're only allowed 6g of salt a day. I have no idea how much salt I eat.

Apparently we're meant to drink 8 glasses of water a day. EXCEPT in fact we're supposed to *have* about 8 glasses of water a day, and most of it comes from food. So that means that people who have been drinking 8 glasses of water *and* eating every day are unhealthy. Otherwise, the amount of water above this should have no effect, right? Logically I mean. But it seems that people who drink more water than that pee a lot more, and people like me who don't drink much at all during the day should be ill or dead or something.

I'm not dead or ill.

I didn't stop ingesting sugar and I didn't stop drinking caffeine and I stopped drinking milk because that turned out to be bad for me as well, even though it's meant to be good for you.

Similarly, I have been ignoring all things that tell me what over or underweight is. I'm still alive and so is my wife. She is, apparently, 'morbidly obese', but she looks a perfectly normal shape to me. I am overweight, apparently, but I look quite thin.

And now! And now these bloody scientists have turned around and told us that "slightly overweight" is better for us than "normal weight"! By what measure, then, is "normal"? It's certainly not average, because most people I know are overweight, and, as a previous poster has said, even healthy people who go to the gym and bike every day are "overweight".

Perhaps those people who give false targets to people by printing pictures of photoshopped buff people in crappy magazines are in cahoots with the scientists, who have lowered the bar for 'normal' weight from 'healthy' to 'a bit too thin'.

Strikes me that if slightly overweight is healthier than normal weight than slightly overweight IS normal weight and normal weight is unhealthily thin.

Of course I am not going to believe any of my own logic here: it merely amuses me to point out logical inconsistencies when people are talking absolute bollocks. I'm sure there are dangerous levels of weight that can cause people to die prematurely but I am equally sure that there are many other factors involved that will shorten someone's life, such as how strong their heart is, how much shit they eat, and how often they get run over by buses.

Granted, as long as you post a warning sign in advance.

Or display a EULA after they've been trapped.

Both are valid.

The only lack of apps I've come across as an Ubuntu user is a lack of the same games that everyone else is playing, and I don't play any of those, except for one, which works. For free.

It seems to me like there's an app for everything and, best of all, I don't have to pay for or crack any of them to get them to work.

And those that suffer from issues (Openoffice, Firefox...) suffer them in Windows too; as do their MS equivalents.

I regret nothing!

Memorex make some of the better DVDRs I've used in the UK. I presume they sell the same ones in the USA.

Toshiba, OTOH, sell expensive ones that don't seem to last quite so long.

I presume therefore that it is cheaper to file a lawsuit in the US these days than it is to invest in R&D.

This actually leads me to consider whether a record company or similar could file a patent on a pop group they artificially injected into mainstream, and what the concequences of that would be.

Or indeed to file a patent on the concept of a "manufactured" pop group. Would other record companies be prepared to admit that they have effectively created groups from nothing in order to claim prior art and stop the patent in the first place?

You all seem to be missing the point that MS will start shutting down your computer every two hours three months *before* your trial period expires.

So what this means is that Microsoft is exercising its power to turn off your computer at will while you are still within the period in which you are entitled to be using it.

Start turning the PC off afterwards, sure. But not before.

Continuing the trend of poor analogies: that's like them kicking you out of your rent-free house twelve times a day for a quarter of your tenancy period.

Upkeep notwithstanding, my car costs half the amount it takes to take the Underground, and takes half the time every day.

That's if I get the reduced rate of a yearly Oyster card.

But Boris has better ideas about keeping the cars out of London.

Let's have today as Linux's official birthday, and this suggestion as Linux's actual birthday.

Then we get to celebrate twice, like the queen.

This seems debatable. I would consider any operating system that periodically required a reboot, had security holes and was notorious for crashing to come under the heading of 'not working'.

This is why we have release versions. 1.0 means "it works now". A version of 1 means "might go wrong".

What version is Vista, then, given that it "might go wrong"?

Or, hum, hey, how about leave it idle and advertise *maximum* battery life?

Just an extra word to sate the masses' appetites for accuracy.