The skycrane was the very essence of "ground-breaking". A bigger one could set down safely the equipment we'd need to perhaps sustain life for a bit.

Replace "broadband" with "telephony", move the year back around 50 units, does your view still seem reasonable? This is progress, and progress should be possible by all.

Since when has it been a human right to be offensive?

Shouldn't have retired the Space Shuttle then, should you?

> Who gets to decide what is, and is not, a crime? Will anything be a crime, and under what statute? How much will the "crime patrol" cost? In other words, it's a combination of the police, the justice system and elected representatives. Just like every other act that causes enough distress amongst others to be considered a "crime".

Having bad teeth matters not a jot when you're too fat to fit in your spacesuit. See, i can stereotype too!

Thanks for pointing out what he was clearly implying.

Looking for wobble rather than dimming of light due to transits or direct imaging would imply that there's nothing there at all.

Presumably you post anonymously because you don't truly believe your bullshit and have no wish to be associated with it in public.

There's an interesting tale behind the word "programme" and its use to describe television or radio shows.

When TV & radio listings were first printed regularly in the (London) Times in the 1930s, the listings were headed thus: "Television and Radio Programmes". But if you read news reports on the topic you'd see that "programme" was used in its traditional sense, i.e. this is a list of the programme of events. The individual shows they struggled to give a name to, as "show" or "series" hadn't gained wide usage (new technology after all).

But eventually that heading stuck and people interpreted it to mean "programmes" as in "a list of programmes on today". So programme gradually gained traction in the UK as the term for an individual edition of a show. Well into the 60s the Times was still heading its listings in the same way, and by then the term was in widespread use.

Of course in later years, the computer program would come into being, and as much of the theory and early development came from the USA, their spelling stuck when describing a set of instructions interpreted by a computer. That almost goes back to the original meaning of a distinct set of events addressed as a whole. But it means that in the UK we are now saddled with "program" to describe a set of computer instructions and "programme" to describe a single edition of a TV or radio show (and indeed a magazine sold at music concerts or sports events, or a set of individual events combined to make a programme).

I'm not sure but I don't think "program" is used heavily in the US to describe TV shows, and it's an interesting example of how new technology can change the use of long-established words, even in just one part of the English-speaking world.

They say tea contains caffeine and yet I can drink one before bed and not feel any effects of insomnia. The reverse is true if i drink coffee. Are there different types of caffeine or is there a lower concentration in tea?

They got the megaupload servers offline, with much publicity, even if the whole thing is overturned there's no way it's returning in its old form. I'm sure the US authorities are thinking, 'job done'.

These people are desperate and without work in their country except for criminal con tricks such as this so the most compassionate thing you could do is ignore them and continue to educate your community about the trap. Baiting them is only likely to maintain their interest in subsequent scams - 'after all I nearly scammed him there, maybe if I try again with different tactics it will work' - and possibly delays them getting a legitimate job so that they can put food in their children's mouths.

Why pay anyone? I press +1 minute on my remote three or four times, and ads are skipped. Do we really need to invent technology or pay humans to counter this very minor inconvenience?

I'm going to click that because I like your style.