Let's also be fair the practice was common place in Europe long after Muhammed was dead.

Being British I would point out that Margaret Beaufort was married off for the first time aged one. That was later annulled so she could be married off to Edmund Tudor, the half brother of Henry IV aged 12, he was literately twice her age, aka 24 at the time of the marriage. The future Henry VII was born less than a year later. Lady Margaret had a difficult birth with the future king, largely put down to her young age and size, and would never give birth again as a result.

At this point Mohamed had been dead over six centuries.

Actually Disney would never argue for that, because they would be on the hook for billions of dollars in back copyright payments for all the works that they have "used" out of copyright.

Personally I feel that if a firm or body wants to make use of a copyright extension, then back payments would be applicable to people who's copyright would not have expired had that extension been in place when they made use of the work. So Disney for example would need to payout on Pinocchio as Carlo Collodi only died in 1890, so in 1940 it would still have been under copyright by modern standards.

The castles where mostly abandoned because they became obsolete. A canon will punch a hole very easily in most castle walls. Secondly the majority of the castles in the United Kingdom are close to the border between Scotland and England. Even prior to the union of the crowns in 1603 the border disputes had faded away and you no longer needed a castle.

To be honest unless it was deliberately pulled down, almost if not all the castles in the United Kingdom still survive if only as ruins. The Victorians pulled lots down unfortunately.

The churches have survived better because they tended not to fall out of use. Though a good few where rebuilt bigger.

Growing up I could look out my bedroom window at a castle over 900 years old and a church over 1000 years old. Within walking distance was a Roman wall that was close to 2000 years old.

In what definition of western is Germany and hence Von Braun not included?

You want to disable passwords and use SSH keys when your worry is the NSA? Are you retarded? You will have to store your SSH keys somewhere and that immediately becomes a target for the NSA or other security agency. I have tried the SSH keys thing and it sucks from a usability point of view, and you end up with copies of your keys all over the place.

On the other hand I have a sufficiently long random (and I mean random) password that exists only in my head. If NSA or for me GCHQ want access they are going to have to break into my house, without me knowing about it. Now I guess that is possible but actually quite tough, but should I wish it would be quite easy to make that much much harder. However I don't see the point, because if they really wanted it they could just get a court order.

My Ethernet does 10km, 20km, 40km and 80km and 120km at various speeds up to 100Gbps all with off the shelf transceivers over either 1 or 2 cores of single mode fibre. Note not all combinations supported.

I would point out that you would have to eat and drink regardless of whether you are travelling or not. Consequently only any incremental cost over your normal food and drink can be counted as part of the travel costs.

Good job the Reaction Engines Sabre engine is not a jet engine then.

Of the Nordic countries only Norway was access to significant oil reserves.

Why on earth would you want to be connected to a USB printer. Why on earth would anyone buy a USB printer? A laser (either colour or mono) with ethernet plugged into the router is almost always the correct solution to printing. Anyone claiming that lasers are rubbish for photos, that's true, but inkjet printing is rubbish full stop, and it works out cheaper and better just to send them to a photo printing service and have them printed on real photographic paper, while using a laser for everything else.

Remember the two rules of printing. Rule one you brought an inkjet printer and you do so much printing that a laser would have been cheaper in the long run. Rule two, you brought an inkjet printer and you hardly print anything, but now spend a fortune in ink cleaning the heads every time you want to print something that it would have been cheaper to buy a laser in the long run.

What a chromebook should be able to do is print to a Postscript or PCL printer on the local network. You can get a brand new network capable mono laser which supports PCL or PostScript for under 100GBP and a colour one for under 200GBP.

This is an English language website. The term in-situ is something that I would expect at least an educated person from an English language country to understand perfectly. There is a large amount of the English language a none native speaker might not understand, that is no reason not to use it on an English language website. If there is something you don't understand Google if heavens sake.

I am quite sure if I demanded that the French used simple French on their websites so I could understand it they would go positively apoplectic.

Sure I probably won't look at over 90% of my data ever again. If you can tell me now today which 10% I will look at again you can have everything I own.

As hoarding data is both cheap financially and physically, aka the downside is very small it makes sense.

Yes the tower backs away and the holding clamps release. However this happens literally as the rocket blasts away. Have you never watched a a video of a Saturn V launch? Try this one a high speed 500fps 16mm footage from the base of the Apollo 11 rocket. Notice how the holding clamps release to let the rocket move away, which they only do when they get the signal from the onboard systems that all five F1 engines are working properly.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?...

I think the point was at 350 million a mile you could construct 10m high re-enforced concrete wall that bristles with high voltage razor wire, and masses of video sensors. If you include some sort of walkway/track along the top or road behind it and have forts every so often you could physically secure the border and it would not cost anywhere near 350million dollars a mile. Further most of the cost is a one off; maintenance and garrisoning would be a lot less than construction.

If the Romans could manage in six years to construct a a 76 mile long stone wall with forts every mile (actually less because they where Roman miles) then the USA can manage it with the Mexican border.

A combination of Google and Wikipedia tells me the Israel Egypt barrier cost 1.6million USD per mile (though this is most barbed wire) it cut illegal entry through the Sinai into Israel by a factor of 280 before it was even completed. The West Bank barrier that is mostly 5m high concrete costs 3.2million USD per mile so lets be generious and say 4million per mile so 2000 miles is say 8 billion. Heck even the UK is going to spend half that on the F35. One Gerald Ford class aircraft carrier is 13 billion USD.

Answer is that a strong barrier between the USA and Mexico is perfectly possible and the cost is entirely reasonable.

Please stop equating the west with the USA. The maths that Americans do is way behind their European counterparts as well.

Part of it is much shorter school years in the USA. Typically 20 less each year. By the time you get to 16 that is over a year less education than their European counterparts.