The difference between Europe and America:
* In America 100 years is considered a long time
* In Europe 100 miles is considered a long distance

Certainly true for me - I grew up on an Island where we have monuments going back 5,100 years, but is only 174 by 302 miles in size.

I'm pretty sure that the increased respiration attempts aren't enjoyable to endure either - the body senses heightened levels of CO2 as a sign of suffocation. Whereas CO simply attaches to red blood cells instead of O2, meaning there's no sense of suffocation.

The point still stands though. If he had been so public about it, then a brief visit from Flowers By Irene to explain that flying VFR over DC and landing at the Capitol would end badly *might* have dissuaded him.

Hawaii has been annexed by Kenya? /s

Probably not as much as the previous residents.

It's a warped works we live in isn't it!

I used to see the same guy selling The Big Issue (I guess it's the UK version of Real Change) when I walked into uni in Islington. Every day I would say "no thank you" and every day he would say "have a nice day mate".

But what was his answer?

I wouldn't say it's the app maker's *fault*, rather that they looked at the Google Maps API and decided it was the easiest, probably the best documented and most likely gives the best user experience. They could (if they needed to target people not having Google APIs on their device) use an OpenStreetMap backend - there are plenty of libraries out there.

I found this one after only a couple of minutes. I'm sure there are lots of other ones out there.

Is anyone surprised that a cloud based note system needs you to log in? If you don't want to sign in to google, don't use keep - it's not like it's the only way to store notes - there are hundreds of alternative note apps out there on 3rd party market places.

You don't need a google account to use android, you do if you want to use google's services. A bit like you need a Live account to use Microsoft's cloud services, and an iTunes account to use Apple's cloud services.

Granted, people such as Ray Comfort just give themselves very generous perks from their "ministry". I imagine that other religions would do the same if they wanted to, which again brings us to the fact that removing the tax exemption wouldn't be an issue as they shouldn't have to pay tax if they're actually non-profit.

As for your two examples:
If you tax parking, then you're taxing everyone, and giving the rebate to a specific sector. This already happens. Everyone has to pay sales tax (for example), and the state tends to throw money at organisations they like anyway.
As for halal butchers, surely they're already taxed because they're businesses (at least they are in the UK). Similarly, I imagine Christian bookshops have to pay tax.

The irony is that out of all the religions you could have chose, Islam is the worst. They're [generally] pretty particular about money - for example not being allowed to charge interest, etc. Out of all the religions I'd been concerned about not paying tax, Islam isn't one.

Doing a quick google about Islam and paying tax I came across this nugget - it's not exactly related, but it show's how dodgy some people are and how they'll try using their religion for any reason:
Is it permissible for him to cheat a kaafir government and take money from them? - I'm glad he was put in his place by the people answering.

Bloody hell - 2001 - I didn't notice that part. So it wasn't Dice lawyers, it was some other lawyers. Surely the point still stands though?

Luckily I live in a country where CoS was described as "pernicious nonsense", "dangerous material" and "immoral and socially obnoxious". And that was by our courts.

Some might observe that it's doubtful there's been a time in history where the two were mutually exclusive.

From the post, it appears that CoS was within their rights to demand the take-down - if the post was their copyrighted material, and Dice's lawyers thought it didn't constitute fair use, then it was legitimate take-down. A shitty move that only a fucking dodgy organisation like CoS would to, but a legal move none the less. Don't like it, then complain to your representative (holding your breath is not recommended).