Most of those Beetles probably don't date back that far... Production of the Type 1 Beetle continued until 2003.

NASA doesn't just chuck stuff on a rocket and launch it on an interplanetary mission. TFA mentions that LEGO had to design them so as not to interfere with the probe's measurements. This is a gravimetric survey of the planet, so the center-of-gravity of the probe has to be a very finely-known factor. There had to have been a fair amount of careful design and testing on both NASA's and LEGO's parts. Those rocket scientists aren't cheap!

Somehow I think that if a team of astronauts is spending several months together in a cramped, hot, strange-smelling canister, eating together, sleeping together, working together, and going to the bathroom together, taking a suppository isn't a big deal.

The problem is, once you've built a tablet with a capacitive screen AND the ability to display modern web content, you've already gone way past the $100 price point and have specs comparable to or exceeding the iPad. AJAX applications and HTML5 need some pretty hefty processing power as it is.

There's two books that can change a teen's ife: LotR and Atlas Shrugged. One is a fantasy full of unbelievable heroes. The other has orcs.

There is another theory that the first theory was concocted by a wily editor of the Hitch Hiker's Guide to C Programming to raise the level of general insecurity in the industry, and thus boost the sales of the book.

I prefer to actually enjoy what's happening rather than viewing it through a tiny lens so I can reminisce about it later on in the company of people who don't care.

It's only one word in German.

I have actually written some software to plan projects this way (working backwards from deadlines), as it's basically how things work in reality.

If anyone's interested I'd be happy to hand out a few beta invites.

A photon has no mass, so if each on bit is represented by either a photon or no-photon, and assuming Cowboy Neal can carry 80kg, the total amount of information he can carry is 80,000/0.

If he sticks to 1.9g 16GB SD cards though then he can only carry 645TB, a rather shocking 100% decrease in information carrying capacity.

Places that aren't mentioned in the guide books often:

  - The Sir John Soane museum. Like the British Museum, but squashed into a residential property. 150 paintings in one (British size) room - bits of the walls fold out. A 3000 year old sarcophagus. Original plans for the Bank of England.

  - The clock gallery at the British Museum. Mechanisms!

  - Monmouth coffee in the seven dials (or by Borough Market, which is also worth visiting).

  - 7th floor bar at the Tate Modern. Second cheapest place to get a good view of the London panorama.

  - Primrose hill. The cheapest place to get a view of the London panorama.

AND incredible features like instant sleep on close/hibernate on low power that require support from both software and hardware.

I guess that would explain why my MacBook Pro (running Ubuntu 8.10) has exactly the same suspend behavior... Linus has been breaking into 1 infinite loop and stealing code from OS X! You would have thought he would have learned after the whole SCO incident.

I spent some time working in an office where all the internal walls were made of glass.

As a result I can now write mirrored block capitals fairly fluidly - certainly fast enough to scrawl messages on co-workers office walls that make them snigger before they can hang up the phone.

Because from the outside of the office they were hard to read I didn't get into trouble until I progressed onto drawings. In hindsight the realistic colours were a mistake.