Snooze

Good news for the UK - the £1bn oil contract from 2004 will avoid nationalisation. Might help keep petrol prices down a bit once the dust settles. To be honest, Gadhafi has been on the way out from the moment he threatened nationalisation of oil companies in 2009. No way was the rest of the western world going to stand by and let Libya decide what to do with its own oil.

Was offered a turbo Cayenne for ~£12k (don't get excited - it was a repaired Cat D), but I don't think I could afford to run one. They're all over the place round here - apparently the Porsche dealership in Guildford is responsible for nearly 50% of ALL UK Cayenne sales!

lol Little egrets are becoming quite a common sight in the UK now. Especially down in the south - Kent, Essex, Devon get loads. They were a real rarity twenty years ago, but flocks of 20 or more birds are becoming not unusual.

Firstly; are you sure that your premium ONLY went up because of the accident, or could the market demographics and statistics have changed inbetween? Secondly; yeah - the non-fault accident is an interesting one. Again - you'll almost definitely find that the statistics that the insurance companies are looking at imply that someone involved in a non-fault accident is more likely to be involved in a fault-accident in the future. Doesn't sound right to me, but I would be willing to bet that is what the statistics imply. Also - don't forget that after the insurance company has cranked the handle on their big algorithm machine to calculate the basic premium, the last thing they do is add/subtract an amount for marketing reasons (if they are trying to either lose or target particular demographics, respecitively, for example). And THEN they will add an amount on top of that for how much they think that YOU would be willing to pay right now. Over-charging on renewals, etc. That bit is the extra margin, and the reason that the price can come down if you haggle! You might be on to something there! I wonder how they factor that into the equation!

There used to be a website where you entered your route and date and it used historic statistics to give you a percentage chance of a crash...... http://www.amigoingdown.com if I recall correctly. Looks like it's gone now, unfortunately.

How likely you are to have an accident doesn't really figure that much in an insurance company's equations, by the way. That is why "how likely a man vs a woman is to have an accident" is irrelevant. The insurance companys only care about how much it will cost them if you have an accident when you are at fault. I would bet heavily that men-at-fault accidents cost considerably more than women-at-fault accidents. Personally, from my observation, I believe that on average, woman have worse awareness when driving, a dangerous lack of confidence, a horrible lack of spacial awareness, a shocking lack of consideration for other drivers and are generally "worse drivers" on the whole. However, I would still bet that men cause a lot more damage and therefore cost when they DO crash. Men drive too fast and too carelessly. As has been mentioned, the insurance companies really are not idiots - they would never use statistics like "100 accidents, 40 women drivers and 60 male drivers" in their calculations. If they calculate their risk to include gender, you can bet they are using a damn unimaginably HUGE quantity of back-data to base this on - because it's THEIR money that they're putting at risk. You do realise that this approach would essentially cause more mature drivers to essentially subsidise younger drivers? Under 20s insurance would come down by about 50% and everyone elses would go up by about 20%.

As Gaz says, surely this sets a precedent for re-visiting the core concept. The current system is based on the premise that an insurer can use any data they collect about you or national statistics to drive their calculations - anything from car colour to occupation - if you start setting limits on which data they can and can't use, it destorys the whole concept of the "virtual demographics" which they are trying to model. Telematics isn't really a fundamental shift, though, it's just taking some of your actual driving data and including it into the algorithm. I would be worried about the basic precedent set here.

"wrongcock". That's a fantastic word (although I've tried it out loud and it doesn't work so well).

Yes - 70s films are "slower" than their modern day counterparts. It's a fashion thing. However, do bear in mind that Apocalypse Now is NOT an action/war film. It's a wartime-based adaptation of a hundred-year-old book. A lot of the symbology in the film is married to characters, behaviours and observations from the original text, and makes more sense in that context. As a standalone film, I tend to agree with you - it doesn't deliver much in the way of pure entertainment. In conjunction with the Heart of Darkness, however, it makes for a more cerebral (still not what I would call entertaining!!) study of human nature. Good stuff. If you're into that sort of thing, of course!

Shouldn't that be "dog's view" ?

Yep - it's fundamentally a simple change somewhere to update it. The problem is that that's a "simple" change in literally thousands of pieces of software and the millions of installations using it. My company produces about 200-300 different software products, most of which do not run on "auto-updating" PCs. The software would need to be changed for many of these, completely re-tested to ensure smooth switchover and then installed and re-tested at hundreds of airport and data-centre locations worldwide. An expensive business, I'm afraid. Article here, if you're interested: http://www.csmonitor.com/2007/0307/p02s01-stct.html

Of course, another alternative is to change the school/work opening hours - just get "standard" opening times changed from 09:00 to 08:00 instead and everyone go home an hour earlier. That has exactly the same effect.

Coping with daylight savings itself is not a problem - the concept has existed for a long time, so you have to cope with it. As you have probably seen with PCs - Windows knows the daylight savings rules and can apply them automatically. The problem is that the daylight savings rules themselves tend to be coded in. It certainly could be a problem for PCs - whilst Vista has an automated update facility, all previous Windows releases have to have a new patch release. And whilst it's fine for Windows and (most) Windows-based applications, many enterprise systems are not Windows-based, and have to be manually updated when these changes happen. Most of my work is the airline industry, and a lot of these systems are still running 30-year old software in long-forgotten programming languages! These, for example, would all have to be manually updated, or planes are going to start taking off at the wrong time!

It's a nice idea, but not really worth debating - working in IT, I can tell you that the cost of updating every computer system in the world to cope with a change like this would be VERY expensive. As soon as someone looks at the actual cost impact this change would make, especially in the current economic climate, it's bound to be a no-go.

Haha - Adam's through his Disney phase and into Cartoon Network now. At least that means he won't be making me get up and do the "Hot Dog" dance with him again!

So I'm having to work at home today as son-the-younger has some minor ailment that gives the nursery an excuse not to take him for the day. As I put him on the couch next to me and sit through our favourite film for the gazillionth time, I realise that I can probably pretty much quote the whole thing verbatim by now. Any of you parents out there have unprecedented knowledge of something from your kids? (my other speciality, and now first-choice Mastermind subject courtesy of son-the-elder is Ben 10 aliens and their corresponding abilities!) Edit: PS. Bonus kiddie kudos points for anyone guessing the film!

I bought her a brand new matching bag and belt......... .......should sort the hoover out a treat.

The steering. It's woeful. It wouldn't be so bad if the Supra was just a GT car, but because it actually handles pretty damn well, the comparative lack of pointiness and feeling in the steering is a real let down.

Oh my! Was that figurative, literal or both?

For ideal 3D viewing, your line of vision should be perpendicular in both axes when looking directly at the centre of the television. So if the TV is mounted with the centre higher than eye level, tilting it downwards so that it "points" at where your eyes will be when viewing will still result in the perfect picture quality. There's plenty of room for error, as you won't get significant drop off until you are more than 30 degrees away from the "perfect" position. Just make sure it's at a comfortable height to be looking at for a couple of hours without straining your neck and you'll be fine.

Not if the previous owner didn't want or couldn't afford them. I'm 100% sure Paul would have clearly explained the limitations of such a build, but I don't think it would have stopped him going ahead with the work.

For casual play, try Guild Wars instead.

Sounds like a definite fatality. From the description, my guess would be the same as Rob - pedestrian hit.

Ouch! Sounds very nasty! For an Auto, you should be able to get a absolute mint stock or BPU TT for £7-8k. If you're looking to spend more, you could shop around for something REALLY special. Good luck with the hunt!

Ah - well if it's complete lack of use, then it doesn't matter which arm it is!