That sounds more like user-error, or you've corrupted the hard drive somehow.

That said, I've had some problems with TrueCrypt:

• It falls over with big files. I found the throughput to a TC volume dropped to a few KB/s copying a 90GB file to it. I work on professional video compression tools, so I have a few files this size and larger. Google revealed a few other people have encountered the same issue
• There's a bug somewhere in the Windows version of TC that prevents it releasing drive properly. I'm not sure how people use this with USB flash drives, but when I tried it with an external 4TB USB drive, I was unable to safely eject the drive after unmounting my TrueCrypt volume

Blimey, you've put a lot of words in to my mouth and made a lot of assumptions about me. You should stop and think.

I didn't make assumptions, I asked questions. Instead of useless posturing, why don't you answer some?

Errr, what do you call this: You seem to take it already as a given that public schools are the right solution and will yield better results if only we do

Where exactly did I say this? You're making things up.

But I'll stop here, since so much math and reasoning is likely too taxing for you.

You really know how to debate or discuss things don't you?

Blimey, you've put a lot of words in to my mouth and made a lot of assumptions about me. You should stop and think.

BTW, did you notice that Finland is number three overall? Not bad for the mediocre European system.

But as long as people like Obama advocate mediocre European systems as a model, all we will produce is the same kind of mediocrity that Europe produces.

WTF? Do you just have a short list of canned sentence templates that you try to plugin in to any scenario to support some sort of mindless political agenda? Your statement makes about zero sense.

Well done, that's an impressive feat.

I also sold my car a few years ago, so I can say categorically that it helps to live somewhere that accessible on foot or has decent public transportation as a back-up option is very helpful. I cycle 11 miles TW9-SE1 in London, but these days I only do it when the roads are dry (safety and comfort), and take public transport if I'm feeling unwell, need a rest, have plans elsewhere during the day/after work. I also sleep like a baby after three days in a row commuting on the bike, which is great for an insomniac like me.

Keep up the good work, keep yourself feeling good, and keep safe.

This is the very reason why I left the US in 1999 after almost three years on an H1b, and changed my mind about returning a couple of years later after being offered sponsorship for a new visa. I did end up working 1099MISC from overseas for a bit, but ultimately my quality of life was better staying away from the US. You know what they say: happy wife, happy life. Since then I've lived in Toronto, Shanghai, Melbourne and now London, and there's no way in hell I'd go Stateside for work again under the current scheme, and besides, after all those awesome cities, there'd have to be a damn good reason.

How much interest are the banks currently paying on $2K? If you got a lump sum locked away for a year: lucky you. How about the interest on $170 saved on a monthly basis?

Probably the interest is so small it's barely worth the effort spent planning and budgeting. Getting $2K back is a nice bonus if you've already been ok with your pay cheque.

Every person in the US owes a huge amount of money anyway. How significant is the interest on $2K compared with that? Think of the amount of taxes you pay each year just to pay for the interest payments on the national debt. You would do better to vote for politicians who will both cut spending and increase taxes and try to reduce the debt.

An organisation the size of the NHS can demand better prices, which we see in what it pays for drugs.

This is political... now the problem has been pushed until after the next general election, so this government has successfully delayed a big expense whilst trying to slash the funding to the NHS.

I remember when a 10MB drive was too expensive, and had to make to with two 5.25" floppy disk drives. I'm sure there are some people around here who remember further back...

I thought this was pretty funny: John McAfee on How To Uninstall McAfee Antivirus

You're too paranoid. This has nothing to do with the customer and everything to do with the content creators being petrified of a single distributing becoming so big that they can make whatever demands they like. Netflix's customers for instance won't be happy about paying the fees Netfilx would have to charge to cover licensing that would allow them to provide all new releases.

You're right though: they are greedy. We'd all be helped if Hollywood stopped paying stupid money for actors, and if large parts of society stopped being so celebrity obsessed. There's a lot of good acting talent out there, and most of it doesn't appear in poor quality Hollywood blockbusters.

This is where UltraViolet's CFF downloads are supposed to be useful. Finally they're reaching their sunrise date, but it remains to be seen how easy it will be to get the content etc.

Huh? Log in to what websites? I see the icon all over the place, but I've never used it. It's not de-facto, but rather your own personal choice.

What is the difference between "agree" and "completely agree"? You agree or you don't.

All my scores were in the range 32-48, which seems oddly low considering I can't work without music and can get agitated or distracted without it. Yet some people's choices of music (e.g. crap like Celine Dion) also have the same effect as silence.

I don't suppose these anti-IDE people have deleted all the man pages from their system or removed their web browser to discourage looking things up online. AFAIC autocomplete is just a more efficient way to look things up, or just an advanced form of tab-completion and saves a bunch of typing.

Pissing competitions are for people who are over-compensating for other issues. This whole discussion is ridiculous. Use the tools you like, but don't be an inconvenience to your colleagues because you run in to or cause problems through your own pig-headedness and decision to work in a different way to everybody else.