Uh, what about your stupid country that gave you a possession misdemeanor? They apparently cared enough.

Erm, no, it goes higher so it's more fine-grained. Spinal Tap's amp was also (very slightly) more fine-grained. This is hardly rocket science.

Agreed. And the iPhone would be so much cooler if Apple weren't wasting money on advertising, right?

On the other hand, I find it impossible to blame him.

One was a 'pseudo-transparent' iPhone-like device called nanoTouch, which has a trackpad on the back rather than a traditional touch screen and gives visual feedback in the form of a simulated image of the user's finger (the effect is like looking straight through the device). The other was a folding dual-screen device called Codex that can switch automatically between landscape, portrait, collaborative, or competitive modes depending on its 'posture' or orientation.

The other was not called 'Codex,' but rather 'shuffleClassic.'

"How many bloggers are embedded in Falujah?"

Here's one who's doing at least as much hot-spot in-country reporting as your typical NYT correspondent: http://michaeltotten.com/ There's no particular reason you need to be a full-time employee of a print publication to report from warzones.

David Simon is probably right that there will always be major media organizations who maintain pools of employed reporters to deploy to newsworthy locations, but why "large" has to equal "print" I'm not quite so sure.

You wouldn't give the Kwik-E-Mart your checking account number. You use a credit card (if not cash) because it has fraud monitoring and the ability to dispute charges.

What you were missing in your GP comment is that in this particular scenario, the OP only needs to give govtrip.com access to his account for deposit reasons. Therefore, if someone were to steal his information under the multiple-account-number system, all they would have is the ability to deposit more money into his account. He's not using his checking account to pay for anything on that site.

Should the British government have laid twenty parallel tracks before privatizing British Rail, so there could be real competition?

From my post:

For goods like train service, it's probably not feasible.

Every single one of your examples is, not coincidentally, a privatization where the government granted a monopoly or oligopoly to providers. It should not be surprising that a private company with no competition is as corrupt and inefficient as a government.

I think it's time we saw more nationalization of what's important, not privatization. Leave the non-important stuff to capitalists and market forces

'Importance' has nothing to do with it -- availability of competition does. For goods like internet access, we can improve quality by loosening corrupt, good-ol-boy licensing/franchising deals that lock customers into Comcast-or-dialup. For goods like train service, it's probably not feasible.

Food, though, is certainly more 'important' than either of those two, and every instance of nationalized food supply seems to result in famine.