I think "religious choice" is a bit strong. it would be more correct to say that it is part of the furniture for adherents to some religions. I know plenty of people who are not religious and also don't like to eat meat. There is anyway a great military tradition of avoiding meat; Roman Legionaries for example were pretty hardcore guys but hated meat and if they were forced to eat it through circumstances (run out of other things to eat) then unrest and perhaps even near-mutinies were not uncommon.

Well actually this is a WWW site, it's called a "World Wide" web for a reason you know.

You "translate" when you convert one language to another, for example during translation into French you will be replacing the English word "mother" with its French equivalent "mère". However "transliterating" is different. Both English and French use the same letter M for the sound at the beginning of "mother." As it happens so does Cyrillic use the same letter M. This is not guaranteed for all letters though and with a different example "father" Cyrillic uses a circle with a vertical stroke through it for the sound at the beginning. Because the Russians have no native words for many modern concepts and computer terms they are happy to borrow from other languages. Russians use the word "online" in the same sense that we do. Although when you actually hear a Russian speak that word it sounds more like "orn-layeen".

Thanks found and bought a used copy very cheap, 4 quid delivered to UK.

I've been experimenting with Sleep as Android which uses your phone's accelerometer to measure your physical movements and thus your mental state during sleep, When it detects REM sleep it plays an audio loop "you are dreaming". Not managed to do anything exciting in my dreams yet but looks promising to me.

"Too much choice" might be a real argument in some contexts (such as Linux desktop) but certainly not in the world of Android phones.

Most people don't flash a custom ROM or change the launcher. Literally everyone I know just accepts (and grumbles about) whatever configuration the vendor burnt in at the factory. The more adventurous ones just possibly might create a custom wallpaper or ringtone but that's it.

Unbelievably some don't even know they can install apps, or do know but avoid doing so "in case I mess anything up". Quite rightly they understand that they hold in their hand a complex computer for which they will get absolutely no assistance to fix anything they do which stops it working.

Put your handbrake on if your vehicle is stationary. It is politeness for the guy behind you, so you are not shining a bright red light in his eyes for 45 seconds. Also if someone rear-ends you, and you are forced forward to hit the car in front, then your insurance company WILL ding you for it.

When it comes to coding I am not what you call professional; I have always manually saved everything with file extensions like .works_except_for_that_bit or .saved_this_copy_before_changing_FooModule

Finally I thought I should try to get with version control but I could not even use Subversion. What a nightmare. All my code kept disappearing, I lost things, stuff I thought had vanished so I did it again then the original came back. Also you have to learn entirely new concepts what the hell does checking out mean. I am sure nothing wrong with the software but when you need to get some code finished who has time to climb some other learning curve.

Read this from uber Nokia analyst

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August 27, 2013
Ballmer Aftermath Part 3 - Ballmer replacement and specifically Elop? (Spoiler alert: Elop won't become MS CEO)

http://communities-dominate.blogs.com/

When you send a text message you have no guarantee of delivery time. In many cases it will reach the recipient in just a few seconds but you do not know that for sure. It could get there immediately, after an hour, after two days, who knows. I have had messages take longer than one week to arrive.

So the sender cannot know if the message will get delivered at the same time that the recipient is driving.

Llama does not necessarily work for solving this kind of problem. No disrespect intended to the app itself but success depends entirely on the quality of signal that it happens to be receiving at any one time from several local base stations. Maybe the local cellular topology will work for you, maybe not. I tried and failed to have it detect the "I just left the office" and the "I'm at home now" conditions.

For the last 60 years or so the main medical system in this country has been government-operated and paid for via taxation. It has its faults but people generally agree it is a good idea and nobody from any political group wants to see it gone. Minor fees exist for some things but in general all medical care is free at the point of use. If it costs 200K to cure your rare cancer then you still get the treatment without charge.

The average UK person does not know that much about America. I could stop someone in the street at random and would be a good chance they could not name your two main political parties for example, or know which one Obama belongs to. People do know that there was historically no public medical system and think it's very creepy that when Americans get sick and don't have money they just get left in the street to die. Nobody understands why there is so much opposition to having a proper health service now that Obama has passed this law.

No real point to this post except a FYI how it looks from outside USA.

I am not keen on the light from people's screens but I can tolerate that so long as doesn't get too ridiculous. What I really hate though is people yakking all the time, whether into their phones or to the guy in the next seat. How come the movie theatre is not able to broadcast the sound channel somehow so you can take along your favourite wireless headphones? You can get a really nice bluetooth stereo headset for not much money.