I assure you that things are quite excellent in the US when you compare it to the rest of the world.

Here's a Series of excellent articles by Economist that might be news to you.

Glorious failures

Rough justice

Too many laws, too many prisoners

I would pay particular attention to the third article which shows the depths of illogicality to which the American Justice system has plummeted. Justice is often depicted as a blindfolded woman - the idea being that justice is impartial to everything else except the law.A corollary might be that the Judge delivering the ruling isn't important, same cases before different judges ought to produce the same result.The US Supreme court has too much power in terms of the individuals that make it and not so much as an institution. After all its the election / rejection of individual judges that results in endless conjecture about the overturning of the abortion judgement , the outcome of cases before the court etc.

If you consider the President of the England And Wales Supreme Court, Lord Igor Judge, people other than the parliamentary circus , the legal profession and a handful of Times and Telegraph readers don't know him from adam. After all , if personalities were important, One would hardly have a Lord Chief Justice called Judge Judge!!

This should be 5.This is the sort of comment which used to be seen a long time ago on /. - erudite , useful and interesting.

hey mate

i am with scottish power.Do these guys offer power meters?

A pint is 568 ml and a pound is 453 grams.Water's different round your place??

I take exception to your first point about gun control. While Guns are indeed necessary and essential where a majority of Populace depends on hunting for their survival I see no reason for a Civilized society to require guns.

I believe there exists considerable confusion about the concept of freedom.What is freedom?? Is it being free to do anything you wish??Cut that tree down??Forcibly Mate with that Woman because hey she looked good??Bear Arms??

Or is freedom something that enables you to be free of Fear?Of walking down that street?Of someone breaking into your home ??Of being able to walk down the street / park / Shop / School??

If your definition of Freedom is the second one;then we require a society with rules.The rule can be a small family rule that i come home before 11 PM and we keep each other informed when leaving house??It can be community based such as not leaving garbage strewn around. It can be more significant such as laws outlawing violence against another person. Whenever a number of organisms come together they need to follow a set of rules.sometimes they are simple and are understood easily.Sometimes they are complex and need to be codified.

If your definition of freedom is the first one then all i have to say is that Somalia is the free'est place on earth today.The question is: for an Average Somali with a Family,Children and most importantly ,a conscience ;Is he really free??

I haven't much experience with Apple's products.My wife has a very old 512 MB Ipod Shuffle which she doesn't use.I wanted to use and downloaded iTunes and thought it would be easy to just drag and copy my mp3's to the ipod but I couldn't make it work!!!! I don't know about others but i am not really impressed with used friendliness of apple's software.

I bought some for £2 each

Where did you get them that cheap?? AFAIK Lidl has some at 4 quid but thats about it.

The theory is that US citizens should be able to figure out for themselves

HA HA Ha .....Did you really expect that In the land of sprayable cheese???

Posting to undo incorrect moderation

Souter's leaving, Ginsburg is likely to leave in the next two or three years (to ensure that Obama gets to choose her replacement), Stevens is likely to do the same... and all of them are considered likely at this point to be replaced by more distinctly progressive justices, since for the first time in decades there's a Democratic President with a Democratic Senate that can actually confirm his choices easily. None of the hard-right justices (Scalia, Alito, Thomas, or Roberts) is going to be stepping down voluntarily any time soon, but Kennedy might be getting some inclinations that way based on not being fond of being the constant swing vote, subject to pressures from all of his colleagues all the time.

You guys need to fix your justice system soon.In the UK,Judges are impartial i.e. without any political affiliations who are supposed to deliver judgements based solely on the Law and not their political / social leanings.

They also retire at a certain age and that ensures that there is a constant inflow of new blood and more importantly, prevents any of them from suffering delusions of grandeur.With the new Supreme court of the UK coming up the judges will lose their last connection with the Parliament and will be truly independent of political affinity ( as far as humanly possible).

You have enough politics in two of your government branches,you should work towards making the third Politics free.

Lots of US discussion about big points of Law is about the Personalities in the Supreme Court rather than points of law.While its a given that no human can be entirely free of prejudices ;that does mean that you should have a limit on how long the judges will serve so that there cant be a concentration of power in the hands of say social conservatives or liberals.Another good idea might be to have a quasi judicial body appoint and confirm judges so that the politicians can influence but not decide who gets to the US Supreme Court.The politicians will always want a Judge who leans towards them; a body to appoint judges will appoint good Judges because it will not want to harm its reputation.After all to trust politicians with any thing of importance is utter stupidity and if you have a little while look up a few of British newspapers to find out what our House and Crooks and House of Louts have been up to with regards to their pay and allowances.

Please donate generously for a fund to send KDawson for a basic journalism course where he can be taught a bit about Editorial role and requirements.

Does anybody have any luck rescuing dead usb flash drives??

Cable isn't available in any of the slightly rural places (Even inside the M25!)

Very True,i live in harrow and cant get virgin cable even though its available just 2 streets away.Virgin's customer services never replies to any communication about extending services

interests me is the fact that DDR costs at least twice as much as DDR2?Now why is that?

India has lax (nonexistent?) safety and emissions standards

Dunno about safety but the emission standards are certainly higher than the US. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Emission_standard#Republic_of_India