I think you mean "break down".

Please hand in your geek card and make your way to the euthanization centre.

Solent Green Is People!

*BUZZ* Wrong. We do ... but it's not the same as "free speech" in the States.

From Wikipedia: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Freedom_of_speech_by_country#United_Kingdom

In 1998, the United Kingdom incorporated the European Convention, and the guarantee of freedom of expression it contains in Article 10, into its domestic law under the Human Rights Act. However there is a broad sweep of exceptions including threatening, abusive, or insulting speech or behavior likely to cause a breach of the peace (which has been used to prohibit racist speech targeted at individuals),[61][62] incitement,[63] incitement to racial hatred,[64] incitement to religious hatred, incitement to terrorism including encouragement of terrorism and dissemination of terrorist publications,[63][65] glorifying terrorism,[66][67] collection or possession of information likely to be of use to a terrorist,[68][69] treason including imagining the death of the monarch,[70] sedition,[70] obscenity, indecency including corruption of public morals and outraging public decency,[71] defamation,[72] prior restraint, restrictions on court reporting including names of victims and evidence and prejudicing or interfering with court proceedings,[73][74] prohibition of post-trial interviews with jurors,[74] scandalising the court by criticising or murmuring judges,[74][75] time, manner, and place restrictions,[76] harassment, privileged communications, trade secrets, classified material, copyright, patents, military conduct, and limitations on commercial speech such as advertising

So he was arrested by the SPELLING POLICE?

I wish I had kept the PCW bluesky issue in the late 80s(?)/early 90s it showed (essentially) a super slim iPad with haptic feedback with video tiles etc.

Of course framed tiles (icons) which updated were in RiscOS as I recall.

Seriously?

A) How was this even granted a patent in 2000? It's really obvious, to anyone with a computing degree.

B) How it wasn't picked up on a patent search.

C) Why didn't they sue two years ago when WP7 was released?

Software patents are fundamentally wrong :(

Okay, I'll get right on it.

What size would you like? 4ft,5ft, 5ft 5", 6ft, 6ft6", or 7ft?

So let's have a look at the competition then:

Android syncs nicely to their web based products with a load of immature^Wmaturing APIs

Apple syncs nicely to their cloud with immature APIs

Microsoft has a bunch of bizzaro APIs that have been around a while from Active sync to XNA.

What's common with all of these?

Yep incompatible APIs. There should be a decent OPEN standard for these services. I don't want to goto latitude on my iPhone to see where my google-based friends are and then manually request directions to them. I want to (say) ask siri, and have siri look them up and not say "I dunno where they are, they've not got iPhones"

The futures here, and it's full of shit to okay APIs with poor to next to little interop outside the fifedom of a product range. We should have put this shit to rest a decade or more ago.

PSST, this is an API called marked in such a way that only GPL modules are allowed to call it.

It's a deliberate act of douchbaggery by kernel developers to force manufacturers to open source their drivers, not to steal code from the kernel.

The GPL is a bad thing.

Not because it's viral, because it's become much worse. A religion, and alas religions have their fanatics.

APIs GPL only? Seriously guys, WHAT THE FUCK?

Disclaimer: I live in Cambridge which could be said to be the cycling capital of the UK. I'm also a car driver as well as an occasional cyclist.

Helmets:
Fracking stupid idea IMO
Protects against one type of injury - direct impact.
Other injuries like moving impact, you're actually better off with your scalp absorbing the kinetic energy - oddly enough it's remarkably good at this - your scalp moves a fair amount acting as a dampener and shock absorber. Now if you happen to be wearing a lump of plastic clamped to your head, where does all this rotational energy go to? Your neck, so if you look at the injuries of people with helmets you'll find more whiplash/neck related injuries. (I can't be bothered citing anything here, you can either trust me or google it)

They also make cyclists "braver", and car drivers mistake cyclists with helmets on to be less risk of impact they they are normally.

Stupid cyclists. More cyclists do not know the highway code, at all.
The number of cyclists I see every day is pretty large somewhere between 50 and 100 at the low end.
A sizable percentage (over a third I'd say) do one or more of the following:
Jump red lights.
Do not give pedestrians right of way at crossings.
Don't "Give way" joining a road.
Wobble all over the road, especially going up moderate inclines instead of dismounting and walking.
Do not have (working/effective/any) lights when it's dark.
Undertake when row of traffic is stationary (liable to get hit by turning vehicles, and car doors)
Undertake when vehicle in front CLEARLY indicating to turn into their path.
Jump on/off the pavement (often repeatedly)
ARE FRACKING USING THEIR PHONE/MP3 PLAYER!

Back when I was young I had to take a cycling proficiency test when I was 8? I'm pretty sure my parents/teachers coerced us into training and the exam, but it's something that should be compulsory for anyone involved in a cycling accident.

Also +1 the parent poster, he seems to sum up a lot of my thoughts on the subject.

This is true. So very true. :(

I concur, RS really haven't got their act together, but they do seem to be slowly shipping to their back order list.

After I lost my Element 14 one (it got "tidied away") and found that Cool Components got some in I ordered through them.

http://www.coolcomponents.co.uk/catalog/raspberry-model-p-1032.html

Next day delivery and they have cases too!

I've nothing against Farnell either, theirs came quite speedily.

I'm really sick of this misinformation cropping up over and over again.

The original TOS devices were wedge clipboard type things, nothing like the iPad of today.

The TNG PADD devices and those in Undiscovered Country didn't show until 1987 / 1991

Microsoft Tablet PC was announced in around 2001, GridPad in 1989

2001 a space odyssey 1968 http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZKt9ZyDmA44

A rip off? Maybe, the source correct? No

Apple had this kind of thing on their bluesky "roadmap" advert back in 1987
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JIE8xk6Rl1w

Carrier based NAT has been done for ages on mobile (cellular) telcos. I've never had any mobile device in the UK with a reachable IP address, nor have I ever been able to directly connect to an other IP in the same subnet the telco has given me.

Now cable companies could easily do NAT at the first stop upstream (another fun fact is that many* telcos don't have public IP addresses for their infrastructure at all)

Now the ip addresses I was using about 10 years ago still haven't been reused, let's not forget about all those huge companies that were allocated (multiple) /8 space, has the *thinks* DEC space been handed back? What about IBMs? Why aren't they using private space internally?

We've still got a shed load of IP space out there, it just needs to be (forcibly) repatriated.

* I last bothered to look several years ago ago, at a couple of ADSL providers and Virgin Media (Cable).

Mod parent up.

I've known QR Codes be used to hold PKI Certificate info. URLs just happen to be a common use.