You still have control though which is the crucial point. If you revert to paying cash, your trips to Walmart are no longer being tracked.

Let's not get too excited, Google is looking to monetise tracking information in the same was as grocery store reward cards allow the stores to mine purchase data and send you focused offers. The NSA is not interested in your buy one, get one free selections but Google is interested in directing you to their corporate clients based on where you happen to be.

The quid pro quo is that your acceptance of such tracking does provide financial reward. This is an option of which you may wish to avail yourself.

This is not the same as the voting and the ipod analogy not least due to the vagueness of the question. Is it one ipod for one vote or for all future votes? Were the respondent congenital idiots? All important questions..

The only problem with this premise is that intentionally writing bugs but leaving a mostly functional piece of software would take quite a bit of planning.

Surely a serious coder would want to write more, useful, code and bug-fix as necessary rather than engineer a situation which may or may not produce free monies?

I choose to believe that coders would have pride in their OSS and introduce new features rather than produce bug-laden code which might be replaced by the next big thing.

Having said that I'm no coder so my assumptions are probably invalid.

FTFA: "The man was also arrested on suspicion of making gunpowder"

He was probably making coffee...

Let us not forget to mention that cars already have touch screens and numerous controls on, around and away from the steering wheel. Ironically, the simplest cars, in the UK at least, are small production cars that don't have airbags, ABS or other safety measures. They handle well but they are apt to disappear into the scenery when pushed hard on a wet road even when there are no distractions.

Incidentally, "pushed hard on a wet road" is not a euphemism. This time.

I have a laser printer in my home office so it is in it's own room. I don't see the problem.

Choosing inkjet over laser is a folly as far as costs goes. Colour lasers are dirt cheap and if you choose wisely you can buy perfectly serviceable refilled cartridges for very little. The Dell 1320CN printer I have cost around £100 ($150) and came with starter toners - good for around 500 pages.

I can get a full set of high capacity toners for £20 ($30) including delivery. The quality is great and any photographic material beyond school projects can be ordered from an online service as suggested elsewhere in this thread. You can get a similar deal for cartridges for the Dell 1765NFW which does everything bar make you a packed lunch.

Remanufactured toner cartridges are the key to low cost. The cost of ink is astronomical (I read somewhere that it can work out at £1000 ($1500) per litre which wouldn't surprise me).

Don’t give any more fuel to that fire...

Absolutely. Plus, for those in the UK, it helps defray the cost of the BBC by selling media to anybody who wants it.

In a time when content providers are being criticised for not providing content I find it a little odd that the BBC is being criticised for doing just that.

In the UK there is HS2 which is a rail link that runs North to South. Part of the project included a fund for compensation for those affected by property price decrease and for those who are subject to compulsory purchase orders.

So, it is possible to plan such a project - even in the UK with higher population density. I'm not sure how crossing the state line would effect a similar project in the US - presumably as long as each state sees a benefit it shouldn't be too much trouble?

The whole point about mortgages is that they're long-term. The rates are lower than those associated with unsecured loans as the interest for loans over 10 years is substantial.

However, if you were to use a mortgage product as a short-term loan facility you are benefiting from a lower rate. In order to prevent abuse of the system there is an early repayment penalty. It's fairly straight forward.

Before anybody gets on their high horse and says that early redemption penalties are wrong/immoral etc, the loan companies have difference products for different purposes. There is no logic in taking the risk of loaning you 50k for two weeks unless the payoff (the interest) is sufficient. Bridging/caveat/swing loans are intended for such a purpose and have much higher interest rates.

However, lending money over a long period of time with the security of the property against which the money is loaned allows the lender to offer lower rates.

The usual use of an early redemption penalty is where there is a fixed low rate for a couple of years and the early redemption penalty will apply during this period or will run on for a couple of years afterwards.

Pay your money and make your choice.

How many of those will be Pi users and how many of those users will take offence to the point that they will complain about their free software or refuse to use it?

I couldn't give a cow's twat what they call it - why should anybody care?