A typical British housing estate is "mass produced" but it isn't built on a production line. Also they're not built with anything like the tolerances and quality control you'd get on a production line (e.g. it's a hot/cold/wet day and the bricklayer just wants to get finished as soon as they can).

The only sector in British housing building that is making serious use of production line techniques is the social housing sector, where often timber frame structures are used. These timber frame "modules" are manufactured in a factory and so can easily go through the QC processes you'd find on a production line before being shipped-out to the housing estate.

I suspect the real reason for this might be the introduction of £9,000 ($14,000) pa tuition fees plus the rise of the "helicopter parent" and a US-style litigation culture in the UK. By using a system such as the one proposed they'll be able to keep a record of who attends and if they are sued for breach of contract (or something similar) when little Jimmy doesn't pass his exams they can turn around and say (with confidence) that he never turned up to lectures. Government visa controls are probably being used as a scapegoat.

Indeed, let Samsung or LG do things like integrate the "steambox" within their TVs, ASUS etc can produce their own stand-alone consoles or "steambox" compatible PCs. IMHO the only important thing is to standardise on GPU a,b or c, CPU x,y or z so as to reduce the number of different hardware configurations. Too many configurations and you'll get console users trying to cope some of the problems PC gamers have to deal with - not a good thing.

Thought I should mention the BBC Micro (aka Acorn Proton), manufactured by Acorn Computers (RIP) who gave the world the ARM microprocessor, as it also used the 6502. BBC micros equipped with a 6502 2nd processor were actually used to develop the first generation of ARM processors. So yes the humble 6502 is a pretty important processor, if Acorn had used the 6800 or 8088 then we might not have the ARM processor today.

100-odd years ago people were saying similarly daft things about incandescent bulbs when electric lighting was replacing gas lighting. I wouldn't be surprised if the same people who complain about CFL now will complain about LED bulbs in a few years time and at the same time extol the virtues of CFL.

The more things change the more they stay the same...

Go to Oxford... Have a pint or three at the Eagle and Child, where The Inklings writers' group (which included J.R.R. Tolkien and C.S. Lewis) used to meet-up until 1962 (the Rabbit Room has various bits of memorabilia.). Then cross the road to the Lamb and Flag, where the Inklings group used to go to meet-up after 1962 and have a pint there.

As the saying goes "she was never bored because she was never boring"...

The idea of a mobile phone isn't actually that new, a US patent for the wireless telephone was granted on 12th May 1908 (U.S. Patent 887,357) so the concept of the mobile phone is over 100 years old now. According to the font of all knowledge (wikipedia) the first mobile phone was introduced in 1945 - well within grannies life.

Even work on the foundations of the Internet very nearly happened in grannies lifetime as work began in the 60's on ARPANET.

Would such a system actually use ARM Linux? The reason I ask is that the ARM processor is commonly used PDAs and therefore has Windows CE (or whatever they call it now).

So I wouldn't be surprised if M$ just renamed it Windows 7 Green Edition and rolled it out for such netbooks. Joe Public would be all oooh it runs powerpoint and word and IE and they'd be happy.

VW does have a trade union, IG Metall, it has over 2 million members and is considered to be Germany's most powerful union.

Just last month strikes organised by IG Metall hit the factories of Audi, Mercedes, Daimler, MAN and Bosch.

I'm sorry but I doubt that the unions are solely to blame for the troubles at Ford, GM and Chrysler.