I seem to remember reading somewhere that Earth's relationship with Jupiter isn't always so amicable. Granted without it there probably wouldn't be life on Earth, but, if I recall correctly, objects that Jupiter doesn't swallowed up completely stood a reasonable chance of being deflected in the direction of the inner planets. Something of a devil in disguise!

I can only imagine it's referring to throughput, rather than storage, i.e. the data comes in, gets analysed and is then discarded. Even so, that would require units of time in there, like yottabytes per second or something. I don't know... any excuse to talk in terms of yottas and sound impressive I suppose.

That made me think of this, heh heh!

How about an electric scooter? Not sure if that would reduce the $500/year registration cost. And they're incredibly good fun to ride.

The other thing about electric is that they will regen brake wherever possible before applying the pads (this only happens if you push hard on the brake pedal). So you won't have to visit that pesky mechanic as often.

Yes there is.

WebOS? Heh heh, they're having a tin bath! Even Maemo would have got more hits.

It's interesting that the so called "cookie law" makes no reference to cookies at all in its original directive. Regulation 6 of the Privacy and Electronic Communications Directive talks about using "an electronic communications network to store information, or to gain access to information stored". Ok, so that sounds a lot like cookies, but it would also cover, say, storing snippets of information through plug-ins like Silverlight or Flash.

It then goes on to list the exceptions, which again sound like descriptions of cookies used to store contents of baskets or remembering logins, but worded in a way as to avoid any specific technology.

In 2011 it was amended, mostly to clarify things so that people would have to opt-in to tracking rather than opt-out, but still the word "cookie" isn't used.

It isn't raining.

Speaking of Kryten, shouldn't be long before they're back on our screens - horrays!

http://www.google.com/hostednews/ukpress/article/ALeqM5hFS7vU_arJGdpA171biqch1m1YvQ

Think lower level, like the software that decodes an analogue data stream from the antenna or a photo sensor, or software that takes in an audio signal and converts it to ones and zeroes that represent the incoming sound, or the software that regulates battery charging current, or the software that takes capacitive signals from the screen and converts it to x-y touch coordinates, etc...

If your truck is using the flux motive speed controller then it undoubtedly does have software in it. Granted, it probably runs on a PIC and there'll only be a couple of hundred lines there in order to generate a PWM signal for the motor, but it's there! Manufacturers of electric cars actually do the same thing in principle, but on a larger scale.

That might be true for an engine, but definitely not for electrics. The classic example of things going wrong (I've cited this before) is where the operation of the inverter generating the AC for the motor is corrupted, through a stray pointer or whatever, causing it to lock at DC. That would effectively lock the motor, and you'd screech to a stop as quickly as you would if you had just stamped on the brake pedal with full force. Only there would be no warning, and your brake lights wouldn't come on either.

The big difference here is that if something were to go wrong with your desktop / smartphone / tablet then people tend not to be seriously injured as a result. All it would take is for a stray pointer to screw with some RAM used to calculate PWM or inverter output frequencies and you've got real potential to lock the drive wheels in an instant. Anyone who has put DC current through an AC motor will know how much braking torque it can develop. And that's not the kind of thing you want to happen, without warning, when tanking down the highway on your bike at 70mph.

And if things do go wrong? Well, I suppose being able to lay blame on a particular company or organisation would be scant consolation for someone who has lost the use of their lower body.

It reminds me of using PCTask on the Amiga, watching it draw the windows, pixel by pixel, line by line... zzzzz...

Especially creepy if somehow your sister isn't genetically related to you.