Lots of HUGE assumptions about DPRK's capabilities. Even if they had no artillery pieces, they certainly could deliver an atomic payload to Seoul- doesn't have to be on a missile.

So the US is suddenly willing takes a chance on millions of people's lives in Korea, plus hundreds of thousands more as DPRK could theoretically nuke the US, for what gain? To stop him building ICBMs? Too late. To stop him going thermonuclear? Too late. So why? Because he's rude to the government? 'Regime change', a sudden concern for the North Korean people after 60 years of this bunch of gangsters running the show? Or because of the all to familiar 'Wag the Dog' scenarios?

Bang on, especially that they were seen as only way to do things. Several threads to pick up.

Firstly, unless you've a graphics-heavy job, why buy an expensive Mac? If you are a light internet user, why live your life in fear of Windows viruses?- recent ransomware headlines have underlined this.

A _decent_ tablet costs 50% of all web traffic now non-desktop. So you don't literally need a p.c. somewhere in your life to be able to fully interact with the web, which was the case even in 2015.

All that you write is correct.

My complaint really was that if even if it doesn't 'update' (i.e. automatically reboot), the upcoming change makes itself so unstable that it has to be updated, as the OS is now not functioning correctly. You'd think that when it asked you when you wanted updates not to occur, instability caused by the binary clashes would be part of that choice, not just an afterthought.

The timings of the updates are only part of it. I'm running linux at home, but previously used Windows 7 and still do at work. When an update is due, Windows goes all wobbly. Last week's update, which didn't reboot, left me unable to connect to the interweb due to a 'socket error'. Updated, rebooted and all fine.

Now this could be good ol' coincidence, but it follows on from years of similar flaky performance when delaying an update. Not all of them, but plenty enough to plot on a graph and have confidence in a line of best fit.

Reminiscent of the remark made regarding firing $1 million cruise missiles at Afghanistan in 1998. "I can't think of anything in Afghanistan worth $1 million".

Yes, agreed, it's unlikely that plates can be read and illumination angles of 30 degrees make it much more difficult. But this received wisdom allows information more realistically obtained from in situ personnel to be helpfully explained away.

There's an odd throw-away line from a book on the construction of the Hubble telescope, purportedly from someone at Perkin-Elmer, who made it and the satellites who point the other way. "Turns out things are a lot clearer looking into the atmosphere than looking out of it."

Really, troll? Massive net contributors. Only positive side is we actually get a lot more 'cash', especially when there's pressure to stop paying farmers 1/3-1/2 the budget (apparently market forces don't count in agriculture).

Otherwise, today is a huge loss socially, culturally and, as warned hundreds of times by the Remain side, economically.

Slightly off topic, but China Lake related. My rusty memory says that there was an odd series of tests in the eighties where scientists on the west coast thought that they were hearing infrasound from meteors and such like, then realised it was happening once a week at the same time. Speculation was it was related to the testing of a SR71 replacement, but unless I'm much-mistaken. nothing came of it. Thirty-plus years on, can anyone say what it was?

I didn't realise Alfred made a car driven by TNT. Thanks for the tip, I'll pop down to the garage and stock up on a few kg.

Widespread and common storage of hydrogen peroxide won't be welcomed in some quarters, as it's is a very well known agent of homebrew bombs.

URL:http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/uk/6274299.stm/

They got 33 years.

See third 'before and after' photo here:
http://www.theguardian.com/cities/2016/may/10/china-pearl-river-delta-then-and-now-photographs

Really? You're bright enough to read this article, or at least the headline, to type words in, and what you bring to the discussion is supporting Black Lives Matter, i.e. being politically active, is the problem?

Mindless, knee-jerk idiocy. Please depart and leave the discussion to grown-ups.

Realistically, what more do you want one to do?

Peak smartphone may be here for people willing to stump up the moolah, but the world's becoming more and more connected because of cheaper, better devices. For most of the seven billion people, $700 isn't what they can splash on a nice phone, it's over half their annual income. Better value smartphones are bringing capable computers to the masses.

Before before home internet made NTP possible, my £5 (US $7) kitchen analogue quartz wall clock from IKEA kept perfect time. Changed with the seasons, twice year as necessary, but it never needed correcting. It always felt ironic with all the other digital equipment (especially the pc) that this cheap and relatively unsophisticated AA battery-powered mechanism was superior.