I have a smilar experience and I would agree that there is a central theme running through European culture most of the time. We are more similar than we like to think.

I know you cant really mean that you think America is the worlds oldest democracy and that this is a joke but just in case you believe it is, it isnt.

America is the oldest country to have a completely American style democracy as well as being the only one. Many countries have had the principle of a government elected by the people for far, far longer. The Greeks, for example had a form of it 2500 years ago.

You could, I guess, argue that not everyone was allowed a vote in the older democracies but then, in the United States, women were only allowed the vote around 1928 whereas in Norway it was 1913.

Me too.

At work I have to deal with Red Hat and SLES but I have a sneaky Slacky box here and there and they cause far less trouble!

I guess it depends on your age. My perception is that originally star trek was indeed about flying around, shooting the crap out of things and being faintly rude to each other.

It was next generation that started all the peace missions and transporting elderly statesperson from planet a to planet b stuff as well as the "well we have this horribly beweaponed space ship thing but it hurts us more than it hurts you if we have to use it for anything other than being serene". Jeeez, they even had a councillor! on the bridge!! That would have turned kirks blood green.

Frankly I donÂt need a cheesy sci-fi TV to be my moral compass so I am happy to see trek return to its roots.

For too long Trek has been doing the "boldy go where no man/one has gone before" at the start of each episode while actually mostly going to places healthily populated by people who know who they are.

I used to laugh at it. What WAS that stupid program manager all about :) I was running Santa Cruz Xenix at home at the time. I had X windows and I had a crappy window manager twm or motif, cant remember now, it may even have been fvwm but what I do know is, crappy as it was, it didnt cram everything into a little box you could resize down to a square blob and lose :)

Nice :)

Those of us who have been good friends with Unix for many years cant help but raise a wry smile these days. Not so long ago we were all dressing to attend the funeral but now our friend has returned with a vengeance. My phone, my PC and my office machines are all different and yet, somehow, they are the same and its very comforting that they can all say "# "

My prediction for the future is Android.

IOS doesnt have a consistent user interface. Consider how you go back to the last thing you were doing on IOS. Go back to the webpage you were just viewing? button at the top left. Application you were last using (bizarre but press home button twice then press application icon). Go back from a dialogue box? probably press the cancel button. On android its the back button. Its always the back button. Wherever you are you get out of it by pressing the back button.

Where are the settings for your app on IOS? Could be anywhere. Some button in the app itself maybe, somewhere in the Settings application? Perhaps buried in a sub menu there. Maybe even in the app settings part of the General settings application (I always forgot about that one). On Android they are always under the menu button. Even if you dont know if there are any settings, hit the menu button and youll find out :)

Stock Google Android even looks consistent, ugly but consistent. Samsung keep it looking consistent, not quite as ugly but consistent. Fortunately you can download themes to stop it looking ugly and in fact make it look quite beautiful but I do appreciate that many people dont want to do that.

That is one nice feature with the Galaxy S3 actually. I often forget to put it on silent but if I get a call I can just turn it over and it shuts up :)

I was like you. When I got the original iPhone, IOS updates were exciting. There were new shiny things that seemed actually useful. As time wore on each release of IOS had fewer and fewer things of interest until finally IOS 6 which actually had nothing of any use except a do not disturb button. Each time I told myself that the next phone would be Android but I kept getting iPhones because of the ecosystem. That original iPhone was my first Apple product and directly because of it, I ended up with two mac minis, a mac book pro, an iPad, a time capsule and all the other bits and pieces.

The very same day IOS 6 was released, I saw it had nothing I wanted and took away something I did. It was the last straw for me so I went down the shop and bought a galaxy sIII. I have had to buy my apps again but it has been worth it. I had no idea IOS was so far behind.

I still have my Mac Minis and I MAY buy another one at some point (having no DVD drive might put me off though) but I think in general my Apple adventure is over.

Shame, they are beautiful machines and OSX is still less of a pile of crap than Windows though it is trying hard to catch up in that regard.

By the way, the do not disturb feature on the Galaxy S3 turned out to be much, much better than the IOS one.

Actually its quite a good game.

I bought it off an Android promotion and liked it enough to buy it for my iPad as well. It was good enough to encourage me to buy a few more maps off of them and also the earlier version of the game.

Check out Galaxy Nexus ROM.

I dont have Apple TV but I do have a Max mini as a media center for my TV and Android streams to that no problem with a touch of one button. It helps that my Mac run XMBCI guess. The cloud sync for google is way more extensive than for Apple too actually. I find it a bit too "cloud" based for me and I turned most of it off so I am rather surprised at your experience.

The iPhone is nearly six years old which would seem to be a little older than you. Something can feel ten years older than something else even if it was produced at the same time.

Not difficult concepts really as I am sure you will find out one day.

It is a measure of how far ahead it is. I would have said ten years but that would have been silly :)

Regardless of the actual time scales involved, IOS has not really moved since it came out (nearly six years ago by the way). On IOS I have eagerly seen the introduction of cut and paste, folders, the notification bar that doesnt really do much, the ability to swap application by double pressing the home button and wading through all the apps that never closed, and tiny little changes that made minor though sometimes pleasing differences to the way it worked. Then Apple invested all their IOS resources into Siri which is almost useless outside the US (unlike both Googles and Samsungs offerings) and, of course, maps (which they already had). Jumping from IOS to Android on the S3 was like going through a hundred of Apples major updates in one go and I still keep finding little touches that surprise me that Apple hadnt thought of them first, let alone at all.

I have lots of Apple products and I like them in the main, I wont upgrade my iPad to IOS 6.0 as it has nothing I want and takes away something I do but I doubt I will ever go back to one of their phones.

By the way, having a low UID on Slashdot is easy. You just have to be a bit of an old twit.

I dont seem to have that much of a problem but I would agree that as I am constantly using it for stuff, the battery is perhaps a little worse than I am used to. For some reason it loses a few percent while idle. However it hasnt actually run out on me during the day and if it did Id pop in a spare battery. Never did that on the iPhone though .... oh wait!