Indeed.

I think he means Tippex or Liquid Paper.

Shouldn't be too hard, you west-coasters are all obsessed with American culture anyway! :-)

We're fine with that (*), provided that Westminster returns every penny of revenue relating to North Sea oil and gas from Scottish waters (i.e. most of it) received, adjusted for inflation, since the 1970s- all the time they've been bleating about Scotland being unfairly subsidised and scaremongering about how the oil was about to run out.

So on balance, it looks like.... you're in the red. Never mind! You can deposit those billions in our Royal Bank of Scotland account. :-P

(*) So long as you're happy to deal with the problems caused by the English and English-derived parts of these "Scottish" banks :-)

The "Unionist" in the "Conservative and Unionist Party" refers to the fact they merged with the "Liberal Unionist Party" just over 100 years ago. The Liberal Unionists were formed in 1886 as a breakaway from the Liberal Party who were opposed to Irish home rule (which William Gladstone, the Liberal leader, came down in support of). That's essentially what it refers to.

Despite the fact that the modern-day Conservative Party is ostensibly unionist, the "Unionist" in the official party title is therefore a bit of a red herring.

Some do, but not the flatbed types I had in mind. (Sorry, should have been more specific in the first place).

True, but I was thinking in terms of what would have to be done to modify an existing computer-controlled plotter with as little work as possible.

If it was one of those models that changed colour by grabbing a different pen from those stored at the side, you could (perhaps) replace the pen tip on one of those with erasing material instead. Your suggestion would obviously be better for large-scale erasing, but would also require a whole new mechanism and interfacing.

What you're describing sounds like a vertically-mounted computer plotter with a whiteboard instead of paper.

I guess the two issues are that plotters might not be designed to work vertically(?) and that one would also have to include an "erase" facility. The latter would probably just replace one of the pens with a piece of felt mounted onto a pen-holder that could be "drawn" in the correct order to erase previously-written text.

This has nothing to do with the (first) post you were "replying" to. But I guess you realised that as a top-level post placed in its correct chronological position it would have appeared further down the page. And what *you* had to say was so much more important than everyone else that it justified cheating your way into a more prominent position near the top. Right?

Essential communication from those guys in the Darmstadt office, perhaps?

Surely the bomb will "diffuse" itself when it explodes? ;-)

I think I know why they're selling. It's the cost of maintaining that huge worldwide network of free, open wireless access points under the "Linksys" SSID...

We can do both. The fact that we should be looking after our privacy doesn't let the stores off the hook or excuse them from criticism of their behaviour. Nor does the fact that they're only in it for the money (duh)- that explains why they're doing it, it doesn't excuse it.

And to pre-empt another argument I can see coming from someone; no, the fact that we're free to shop or not shop at a particular shop *doesn't* change the fact that we're still entitled to criticise them as much as we like for that behaviour. (This one's a close relative of the flawed "don't like it, don't buy it" argument dismissal.)

The Amiga 500 (i.e. the first "affordable" Amiga and the one that people remember as the "classic" Amiga) came out in 1987, and I assume that's what you had.

I suspect that the original 1985 Amiga 1000 might not have come with a modulator. Then again, the list price for that was apparently $1300, and if you had the money (and inclination) for that, the $300 cost of the monitor probably wouldn't be an issue, especially as it was probably being bought by professionals and hobbyists who wouldn't spend $1300 on state-of-the-art media computer and compromise it by shoving the display through some crappy RF. :-)

Apparently Midway Games West (the renamed Atari Games) shut down completely in 2003 and only existed as a holding company after that. So even if they bought the "company", it would mean little more than IP and a name in practice.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Atari_Games