I was going to comment...

...but I've drunk so much tea I need to visit the euphemism.

Bus-powered?

Handy to have drives powered by the firewire connection, saves yet another cable and power sockets are in short supply in my "office" (2-bed Victorian terrace). Any ideas which of these might be?

MPG?

For a comparative round-up, why no comparison of MPG figures (at least for the hybrids)?

"repeated digits"

The article mentions "repeated digits" as part of the "not-so-random" codes. Why? Surely random codes would occasionally* lead to repeated digits, and forbidding them would reduce still further the available pool of numbers.

*someone with better stats than me can work out the frequency of occasionally.

Lifelogging a dead horse...

after the stable door was bolted in mid-stream, to mangle a few metaphors

sample of 2,002 in fact

A footnote at http://www.crimestoppers-uk.org/media-centre/news-releases/2011/identity-fraud-continues-to-rise-with-4-million-victims-in-uk-alone-65446565446

says "For this report, quantitative research was carried out with 2002 Great British adults aged 18+ as part of an online consumer omnibus survey"

and it was weighted for sampling deficiencies.

Still don't know what it actually asked though

and another thing...

how do you adjust for the probability that it's the more gullible/susceptible to fraud who will fill in surveys and the paranoid who won't?

Isn't that what the banking home page is for?

or whatever you call the page you get to after logging in?

Surely better to remind people when they log in, as my bank repeatedly does (we haven't got a mobile number for you...).

"quite reliable"

puts space travel into perspective against other kinds of travel when "quite reliable" is used to describe a rate of ~1-3% catastrophic failures.

(using the figures from earlier posters in these comments)

Minor point on the pie chart...

it asks "Are you planning to buy one this year" and **all** the answers are variations on "Yes".

Credible?

translations

"bit like reading a book in a language you don't speak by looking up every single word in a dictionary.

It works, and with a good enough dictionary, you can understand it – this is how online translators like Google Translate work"

I beg to differ. You can look up every single word in a dictionary and still be none the wiser.

Source of freelance income

I subscribe to a freelance job marketplace site which has had jobs posted to write reviews. Best one was for "experience days out" - hot air ballooning, drive round Brands Hatch etc.

You didn't have to go on the day to write the review.

We have to reduce square footage with our existing stores by shrinking the footprint

... or make the shops smaller?

policy, procedure, implementation

"our policy is to manually delete the data from laptops after the records have been processed"

"The machine was one of 20 lost from a storeroom"

It was in a storeroom, waiting for records to be processed?

How did he get a signal underground?

Should London Transport investigate?

"...a problem occurring in men as they get older."

Who says baldness is a problem? Next they'll be telling women they can eradicate the visible signs of ageing or something. Oh wait...

Hair on mices' backs -> human heads?

Or will the this just cause any remaining hair in humans to grow, like those annoying bristles coming down your nose and out of your ears?

Speaking as a translator...

...who makes use of google translate to look words up when I can't remember them, one thing to worry about is the implied assumption that there's a one-to-one correspondence between words in the source and target languages.

They only suggest one answer, when in fact there could be many answers, some subtly different, some very different in meaning.

Bizarre Comic Sans sighting no342...

...labels on the on-screen buttons of the industrial control system for the hydraulic jacks used to launch the 1000s of tonnes of bridge deck for the Millau viaduct (source: Channel 5 documentary last night).

I make no judgement.

Playmobil operator?

Does it need a playmobil figure to operate it?

Inky blackness of space

Liked the glimpses of the inky blackness of space as it spiralled down.

glueing together three sheets of bog-standard paper

... happens to me the morning after a curry

2+2 = ... 2

Is the car industry the only one where 2 plus 2 equals 2, for all practical purposes?

Pie chart?

The BBC teletext version of this earlier this morning had beef pies with 56% of the market and sausage rolls with 53% (or similar figures that add up to over 100). Either they're taking into account the amount of air in the pies, or they need someone to put that on a pie chart.

Might only be 2 hours a day, as...

... "The court and cells are open from 2 August – 31 August with tours at 2pm and 3pm, Monday to Friday (excluding bank holidays)." (http://www.dorsetforyou.com/387120)

There, I'll do some "research" for you. Took all of 2 minutes. Can I have a pay rise?

Heävy Metal Ümlaut?

Is thät a heävy metäl Ümlaut I see? Öh dear.

Monty Python flashback

"Anaerobic Digestion and Biogas Association (ADBA) Chairman Lord Rupert Redesdale"

sounds like an interviewee on a too silly Monty Python sketch. (Nothing personal Lord Rupert, I don't suppose you chose the name)

"It's unclear weather..."

Foggy is it?

names

"Why do ALL American computer people seem to have weird names? Wozniak, Kernigan, Zimmermann..."

Suspect it's not just computer people. Many people emigrated from all parts of the world to America.

£500 and you can't switch from yards to metres?

See title

Or get Visit London involved?

they have a "complaints" page at

http://www.visitlondon.com/complaints/

where they say "At Visit London we are committed to promoting London as a world class city that provides you with the best possible tourist experience. However we understand that mistakes can happen. If you are unhappy with your experience in London please send us your comments by using this online complaints form."

Power supplies?

You didn't tell us which of these are bus-powered and which need a power brick. Makes a big difference to portability

unless...

unless the sentence "Users of desktop computers too like their bus-powered plug-and-go convenience" means they are all bus-powered. Doh.

Metaphor overload

"The DHS vid-quilt tech is called the Imaging System for Immersive Surveillance (ISIS), and uses a "discreet, chandelier-like frame — no bigger than a basketball" holding an array of HD cameras pointing in all directions with their images seamlessly "stitched" together to form a single mighty goldfish bowl style image"

quilt, chandelier, frame, basketball, goldfish bowl - sounds like a road accident with the removals truck.

Anyone know what this is about?

Font managers?

So if I've got a font manager, often turning them on and off for different clients' projects, does that make my ID change every time? Or does it only see the relatively static non-managed fonts?

So I can't be altruistic then?

and offer my wifi connection for passing users?

How do you pronounce it?

Seriously. F sharp or F hash or something else

and another thing

you don't get the energy for free, so why not just give people a hand-held wind-up torch, so they can generate the power they need for when they're there.

should not put off authorities in cities where the political will was strong.

So political will can overcome scientific impossibility. Gets my vote.