Android's nature counts against it where advertising and mind-share come into play, I fear. Apple has a huge marketing budget and a single device to push. Individual manufacturers of Android phones usually have multiple devices to advertise at any one time, and want to drive customers towards their own specific Android phones rather than Android as a platform. Google don't advertise Android much, but even if they did, it's a vague concept to sell to consumers, especially when there are so many customised versions. Samsung has started to develop the sort of recognition and identity with the Galaxy S series that allows them to compete, and they're doing very well out of it.

But, yes, I know what you mean. I've tried to persuade people to look at everything on offer and decide what they like the most; if that's the iPhone, great, but at least consider your options. But Apple's marketing is so successful that they're not going out to get a phone, they're going out to get an iPhone, because that's what you get when you want a smartphone. Credit where credit's due I guess, but I wish people wouldn't swallow it up so wholeheartedly.

Apple were first to commercialise them, but mouse-driven graphical user interfaces were first seen on the Xerox Alto.

I own an original Galaxy S, and I do think it skirted too close to the line in looking like an iPhone 3GS. The chrome trim did it. Both the Galaxy Nexus and the Galaxy S III look distinct from Apple devices to me, though.

But the design points that Apple have tried to push recently: devices which are flat, thin and rectangular and have a large screen? There's no sensible design for a hand-held, touchscreen-controlled device that doesn't meet those criteria. No-one would buy a bulky, square tablet/phone with a small screen and an cluttered appearance, which Apple know perfectly well and so are trying to prevent other manufacturers from competing with them at all.

I'm really getting tired of tech news consisting almost entirely of mobile device manufacturers suing each other over patents for general concepts and design principles. Technology progresses and consumers benefit when ideas and concepts can spread. This isn't the same as, say, drug development, where millions of dollars go into R&D, and that massive investment must be recouped to protect innovation. These are just relatively obvious ideas where the real work is in the implementation, integration and promotion, not in dreaming up a UI concept.

Maybe this would be a good place to mention the EFF's new campaign to reform software patents?

The counter-argument would be that less than £1/year/person is a small price to pay for the international relations and tourism benefits they and their properties bring. That, I suppose, is up for debate.

I wouldn't be surprised if a lot of criminals weren't very technologically savvy, to be fair. Not that that should mean the authorities have the right to intercept communications without good reason.

The previous Labour government would have done the same - they hurriedly passed the Digital Economy Act in their last days in power, requiring ISPs to cut off users' Internet access if companies accused them of unlawfully accessing copyrighted material. That hasn't actually been done yet, but the authority is in place to do it.

Unfortunately, it's difficult to successfully stand up against these measures on the grounds of censorship - it's all too easy for those in favour of the laws to cast their opponents as thieves and pornographers who want to wreck the economy and corrupt poor innocent children.

Yes... provided that they die prior to reproducing. In the Western world, few people die of disease before they reach reproductive age, what with modern medicine, so there's not a lot of selection pressure exerted there.

Automobile accidents, on the other hand...

I'm really quite sure that this disease is not imaginary - because people and animals fall ill and die because of these conditions, and because cases fall once transmission vectors are removed. People didn't start randomly dissecting cows' brains in the UK because of mass-media fears, it was because of an epidemic of a neurodegenerative disease in herds - they didn't know of BSE before then, and it took several years to appreciate what the problem was. When controls to eradicate infectious animals started, the incidence declined; correspondingly, human zoonoses peaked (after a delay due to the incubation period) and then declined. 176 people have died from definite or probable vCJD in the UK, though there are few new cases now. BSE/vCJD is hardly the only prion disease around either, with scrapie (affecting sheep) also being studied and monitored, and kuru having affected humans who engaged in cannibalistic practices.

It's not a reason to panic, and it's not going to destroy civilisation. After all, it doesn't seem to be very infectious anyway, at least cross-species. But it's not imaginary.

Yes, they are. And why does that invalidate anything the parent said?

Just what I was thinking... it's ridiculous to write off entire populations for an incredibly remote risk that has all but passed.

Not that anyone is willing to accept me as a blood donor anyway...

Naturally my analogy was an exaggeration, and like most analogies has its flaws. But I do understand stem cells; I'm currently doing a PhD in biology that relates to stem cells and differentiation. I'm certainly aware of the potential that stem cell-based therapies have, but they ought to be done in a controlled and experimentally-validated manner, not just injecting some cells into humans and hoping they help. They might be beneficial - this needs to be properly studied - but they might do nothing, or even risk causing other pathologies or even cancer.

This gives some thoughts on the subject, and this is a recent review article on the risks associated with various therapies.