Whether for happiness reasons or Seligman's optimism ratio, optimism is clearly better for almost everyone. It doesn't matter if you're an idiot who doesn't know any better... or someone who creatively finds an optimistic way to perceive the tragic mess that is life. ;)

With AAC. Last I checked, MP3 even at 320kbps has artifacts.

In other news no-one should care about, Cheney has blamed Ukraine's invasion on Obama and George Zimmerman has released a video about how he's a great guy.

If you come off a diet then it's not really the diet's fault, is it?

Not as I understand it.

Carbs:
1. Boost insulin which promotes fat formation.
2. Make us lazy.
3. Reduce satiety.

Such is the effect, it seems you can eat more calories via Atkins and still lose weight.

A fair point, my friend.

It is possible to:
a) pour water everywhere but the cup
b) overfill the cup
c) put the wrong amount of coffee in ... under my method.

If you're not up to it, who am I to judge.

Re: Starbucks, I think it's more about cognitive simplicity than mechanical simplicity . The less thought that has to go into something, the more successful it is. And perhaps emotional simplicity ie can't deal with the minor discomfort of going somewhere new.

I would say potentially, but it is easily compensated for by using a darker roast such as the one I recommended and more of it. It is notable that if I use the same grounds a second time, that's a piss-weak coffee with negligible caffeine content. Normally, I just add new grounds on top.

More of a perfectionist complaint is that espresso machines produce a deeper, bitter-sweet coffee. This is not true of french press, percolator or dripfeed filter. It is why I prefaced my suggestions with 'if you use milk & sweetener'.

It seems a reasonable proposition that the pressure produced by an espresso machine is somewhat equivalent to a darker roasting. The former may be preferable, particularly if you drink it neat.

Firstly, so many people drink shit coffee that how you make it is irrelevant.

Secondly, if you have half-decent coffee but put milk & sweetener in, paying double for the coffee won't help.
There's nothing wrong with putting milk & sweetener in, just like there's nothing wrong with eating milk chocolate.

If you drink it neat, then yes, feel free to spend a fortune on the beans, hand grind them and use an Aeropress.

Otherwise, here's what I do:

1. Scour supermarkets for decent pre-ground own-brand coffee. Why? Because it will always be cheap and available. If you're in the UK, I can recommend Sainsbury's TtD Columbian Quichia.
2. Buy hot chocolate (or make your own using cocoa powder and sweetener) if you like the sprinkles.
3. Buy decent milk (of the big 4 UK supermarkets, Tesco's organic is the best, surprisingly).
4. Buy a cup-sized steel sieve from eBay.
5. Buy a milk-whisk from eBay.

Serving:
6. Microwave about 75ml of milk for 45s.
7. Put sweetener in the bottom. In my opinion, Nutrasweet and clones are better than even sucrose -- the bitterness improves the coffee.
8. Put a couple of teaspoons of coffee in the sieve and poor boiling water over it.
9. Whisk the milk.
10. Pour in and add chocolate sprinkles.

The sieve doesn't need cleaning. You don't even need to empty the coffee out except after a couple of days or when it's too full. Literally tap against the side of the bin and you're done. No cleaning, no clogging up the sink, no blowing $hundreds on coffee and generating a ton of plastic waste.

My coffee beats the shit out of Starbucks et al. Indeed, unless you drink coffee neat, it beats all the local independent cafes bar who charge 15x more.

I tend to make a whole jug of it in Summer. Can take the first draft after a few hours, top up, another draft after 6 hours, top up, another draft after 6 hours, don't top up and drink the rest after another 6. Of course, sleep usually intervenes.

Make is strong and add lots of milk & sweetener.

And the second biggest is that everyone knows Microsoft makes it.

People want phones that are chic. Microsoft are about as chic as homophobia. Looks, both of the phone and of the UI, are even more important.

Apparent price/performance is another factor. Probably the main reason Android is doing so well is because those phones look good value in comparison to Apple (not hard with their 200% markup). The fact that interpreted Android apps make those quad cores as slow as dual cores doesn't come into the equation.

Lastly, some people really believe they need 100,000 apps.

... since ~2009. The community, who seem to be in love with Qt, have ported Qt5: http://talk.maemo.org/showthre...

You have nothing to lose by keeping Classic Slashdot as an option. Nothing apart from pride that is.

Is there a single comment even complementary to Beta rated above 3? Even if there was 30%, Dice should scrap beta.

But there are none. Never have I seen anything like it. I've seen a few obvious disasters that a company were set on driving headlong into.

But I've never seen mass, universal condemnation for a change. Not even in politics.

Whilst the Tories are 6 points behind in the polls, what it really means is that they're 12 points behind in terms of seats.

We saw a 7.1 point lead by the Tories turn into an ungovernable minority. In 2005, Labour's 2.8% lead gave them an almost unaccountable majority. There's both an electoral system bias against the Tories and a pool of potential Labour voters who don't usually bother voting. I'd estimate the actual bias to be 3-4%, but in polling terms it's about 6% ie, if the Tories win by 6, they'll scrape an even smaller win than in 2010. They'd need a 9 point win to get a majority.

For what it's worth, I got £250 back on a £100 bet for the Tories to win in 2010.

Firstly, Cameron didn't say it was necessary. He merely used that example to illustrate what he was saying.

Cameron's first act as PM was to repeal Labour's ID Cards Act (which was compulsory fingerprinting, numbering and recording on a national database to hook up all govt databases) and destroy the hard disks Guardian-style. Maybe this is where he got the idea.

He also attended the inception meeting of NO2ID, the immensely successful campaign that Labour's Home Minister Secretary at the time, David Blunkett, acknowledged in his final speech.

The Tory Snooper's Charter was a mess. Expert after expert (including industry data-rape experts from Google et al) slagged it off in official proceedings and even an open letter. We're kinda used to Govts being clueless about IT but what was properly disturbing was how the Home Office ignored all this clear and helpful feedback. So certainly, Theresa May should be sacked.

I'm not sure Cameron ever stepped in until now. Under pressure from his party, Clegg eventually said he wasn't going to support any such Bill and so that killed it for this Parliament.

We badly need an Act clawing back some of the surveillance powers of the state. They can do already do any surveillance at the ISP level they want as well as lock up people for not disclosing their public keys. There are no checks on that power whatsover in this country bar possibly The Guardian.

So that's a summary of where we are. The debate I wanted to highlight is how do we assess Cameron's views on this:

Few people know this but Cameron used to write a column for the left-wing Guardian. And he was far more liberal a couple of years before he got into power.

Has he gone from liberal to totalitarian in 3-6 years? If so, why? Is it merely scary-sounding intelligence reports or is it possible that our secret services are blackmailing him?

Or is he merely trying to shift the cost burden of surveillance from the state to the ISP/customer? And if so, why is he talking about a dead Bill which he has almost no chance of reintroducing (since he'll almost certainly be kicked out in 2015)?

They're working on a new mega-component as I understand it. Something like a cross between sidebar and the tab cycler popup.

The only feature I doubt I'll ever get it putting the address bar et al at the bottom of the window.