'We' this and 'we' that. Is the government which represents you really 'you' if they're operating by withholding the truth from you?

Grow up. Or one. Whichever.

Imagine what you perceive to be your rights. Imagine they are ascribed to each individual you see around you. Start from that point, and then post further.

Did you not feel even slightly guilty?

I like this - all you have to do is set up codenames and hope the right person reads it.:

"Rosebud - won't be home for tea. The Squirrel Flies South later, okay?"

In the US it's quite common to pay for receiving messages or calls. I agree - it's rather odd. Imagine crippling your enemies by sending them a massively heavy signed for parcel...

"Two tons of lead, sir? What do you mean you don't want to pay - it's yours!"

This is so true, but in practice I'm selling books on eBay for 0.99 and charging a postage rate of three times what the book is worth just to break even. That's because the postage rate for books is murder...

Why eBooks aren't priced to reflect the lack of paper, shipping and bulk is beyond me.

What utter bollocks you spew: this idea of 'safely' doing business is bizarre and new to me. Tell me about your 'safe' business practices, and I'll listen and nod, then let you loose into the lions' den. Go for it, Mr. Safe Business: I'm going to be charging to sweep up your remains.

I agree totally - I don't want Steve deciding what applications I can and can't install: currently bittorrent-related apps, those which run interpreted code and various other excitingly niche apps are banned from the iPhone and iPad store.

I'm guessing they will also be banned from the Mac store. But can you see Transmission disappearing overnight? KOLMafia is another favourite, which won't get on the app store but isn't going to simply vanish. It'll always be out there, and even if the entire system becomes locked down, there'll be jailbreaking for macs just like for iPhones and iPads.

But listen to that - the locking down of an entire, unix-based system. How? Restrict root access? And how long is that going to last - physical access pretty much means all access. And then there are other things like Parallels Desktop or Boot Camp, all of which allow users to execute various bits of code that Apple hasn't sanctioned. The road to hell is paved, tile by tile, it's true, but it's a hell of a long way from 'shiny app store' to 'locked down mac'.

How did he become this rich? How did he attain this wealth? What is wrong with a guy who attained this level of wealth and power using it?

What if somewhere along the line, people stopped thinking for themselves and started following any messiah who strayed into their path? What if that was Murdoch?

What if people began to think for themselves? What if people realised that the only real choice they have is to think or not to think? What then?

He speaks of missing out the editors, as though they're not necessary. Sure, they hold up the project, but they also avoid the obvious typos and editing mistakes that J.A.Konrath's independent work is littered with. Littered sounds needlessly over-descriptive, right?

Oh, well maybe it is. But even one or two typos or mis-spellings or mis-attributions of speech mars a novel for me. Perhaps I've been spoilt, but what is it by - edited works, that's what.

A power user, if I may take you seriously for a moment, is generally people who populate slashdot. They are people who know more than ctrl-c and ctrl-v to copy and paste. They might be aware they're using a Macintosh, and therefore substitute a command key for the control. If you ask them to press the 'print screen' button they don't look at you blankly. They've heard of it, even if they've never seen it. If they're a Macintosh user, they'll never see it, but nevertheless they know enough to tell you they have no such thing.

To check if you're a power user is quite simple. Do you control the computer or does the computer control you? Does the machine before you bend to every whim you have, or must you constantly think before daring to press return? Do you even know what return is?

When someone says captcha, do you jump?

Enough with the jollity. Power users are people who control the computer. The computer is their tool. They make it do their whim. Ruthlessly. That's being a power user. I'm one, and I guess you are. Your Mom isn't.

Okay, I'm no troll, but this is news to me. How does this happen? You all run antivirus software, and yet somehow actually *visiting* a site can infect you. So how does this work? Can you visit a site wearing a 'condom', or do you know, somehow, that you shouldn't click on something.

No trolling, but as a Mac user I click what I like. How do you know what to click or not click?

I'm colourblind. Welcome to my world.

My hobby is nagging iDevice developers to include colourblind-friendly options in their colour matching games. Sometimes, like with the wonderful Marblenauts, the developer will actually work with you to sort the problem out. I like those kind of developers. The Trism guy also took steps to sort it out. Sadly, some developers don't care. (Face, meet this knife - it'll be cutting your nose off shortly, but the spite will be wonderful.)

You see, what we do is we try to think without the safety net. You use logic and intelligence rather than gut feeling and instinct. You can think like a criminal and not be one. You can think like a murderer and not be one. Read a Thomas Harris novel and shut the 'uck up.

Actually, that's why I said it's clumsy. If you want to browse through Earnest Gowers' 'The Complete Plain Words' you'll find he's quite unworried about the use of apostrophes for contractions, and goes so far as to only list three cases where one needs to worry unduly about apostrophes. He does, however, go to great pains to explain that the whole point of writing is to communicate without ambiguity, and in the case quoted above there's clearly ambiguity - is it an unconventional contraction of 'assistant has' or is it a possessive apostrophe? Both acceptable, but arguably ambiguous, hence my opinion of it as clumsy.

You wouldn't happen to have a Strunk and White handy, would you? My own library only extends as far as Sir Earnest Gowers on the grammatical front, and it would be interesting to see what an American guide has to say on the matter.