And then Apple will sue on the grounds that they the purple flare is their copyright/patent/trademark/whatever.

Mind you, I expect Cadbury to have something to say about this - they apparently "own" a shade of purple.

OK, bad choice of word. It exists therefore it must be natural, I get that, but our basic genetic programming is to pass on our own genes to another generation.

Words like pointless and unnatural may sound perjorative but I mean them only in that technical sense. How we, as a society, deal with those who have those sexual preferences is another matter. As it stands, we determine a fairly arbitrary age after which we deem individuals capable of giving informed consent. It's far from perfect - in both directions. There are plenty of over 18s being exploited because they lack emotional maturity or just plain common sense, but the law does not protect them in the same way as under 18s. There are also under 18s fully capable of deciding what they want. Unfortunately a line has to be drawn somewhere - taking every case on it's merits would be too complicated and open to other kinds of abuse.

And another thing... it is a critical distinction in some ways.

Pedophilia is biologically unnatural - sexual attraction to pre-pubescents is pointless from a reproductive perspective and is therefore an unsuccessful mutation, if you like. From a purely biological standpoint, the same is true of homosexuality.

When it comes to post pubescents - i.e. those capable of bearing children - the line on age is drawn entirely by society.

The whole thing is probably a bit of a hot topic in the UK at the moment, as there's a current case in the news of a 30 year old teacher who appears to have eloped to France with a 15 year old girl.

Further to that reply, googling the terms, as I did to confirm my recollection, is probably not wise. Especially at work.

I hear sirens, why is that?

Try hebephile for pubescent, ephebophile for the slightly older.

Playing devil's advocate, but that would make for a good excuse - "ah, see, I sent it to my mum as well, must have been as mistake"

I would like to think there was enough doubt about his story to get the conviction in the first place. On the other hand I would like to think a lot of things, so, meh.

I don't think I particularly take the numbers into account - once you're used to a car it's much more about where the needle is pointing - you kind of get a feel for it visually on that basis. Thinking of it as a clockface, 6 would be 0mph - if it's in the 9ish range I'm within the limit for town, 12 is about right for out of town, maybe 1, even 2 on the motorway.

There's a surprising amount of wastage there - my speedo goes up to speeds way beyond legal, which wastes space - and therefore precision at lower speeds.

My previous car had a digital speedo, which made it impossible to get that rough glance "am I in the right ballpark" view of speed. On the other hand, the (illusion of) precision probably kept me under the speed limits due to the difference between being able to tell myself I was doing "about 30" and the car telling me I was doing exactly 34...

If you have SAP installed, on Windows at least, it's worth giving "Arial Monospaced for SAP" a whirl - I found it simple and clean but more modern than Courier. I've switched to Consolas now I'm on Windows 7, but it was my monospaced font of choice for years on XP.

Agreed, I installed it to see what it looks like and much prefer the narrower look of Consolas

Why not just throw in a free copy of this and refer to the page numbers!!?

Seriously, I can walk into any local bookshop and browse through any number of books with reproductions of famous artworks, most of which are pretty cheap. They could do worse than picking up a copy of "The Story of Art" by Gombrich.

Failing that, could they not take the position that Wikipedia do: 'The official position taken by the Wikimedia Foundation is that "faithful reproductions of two-dimensional public domain works of art are public domain, and that claims to the contrary represent an assault on the very concept of a public domain'?

Thank you for saving me the read. Seriously? A single kiss?

I've seen plenty of casual hookups in the office, many of which led to no complications afterwards - it was just a thing at the Christmas party or whatever. The younger people (I'm over 40, so we're talking 20 - 25) do seem to have a more casual attitude to it than most of my generation. In my experience at least - maybe I just had a sheltered 20s, but it was quite a politically correct era when everything seemed to be taken very seriously.

Bring back the red flag laws!!

Price of fuel is a factor.

I've been driving for over 20 years (not continuously - I take breaks every now and then!). In the UK the speed limit on motorways is 70, and when I was first driving you couldn't get into the outside lane at that speed for the solid wall of 90mph+ drivers. I'd regularly drive at 80, and be overtaken constantly.

These days, it seems that fewer drivers are going over the limit and it's far more common to find drivers sitting at 60 - 65. I'm sure this is a cost thing - enforcement hasn't really increased, at least on motorways, and there's next to no chance of getting fined for doing 80. There are still a few "ton up" (100mph+) drivers, but they tend to be in the £40,000+ cars so I guess they can afford the fuel bills.