Then you're not paying attention. Threats on the president's life have skyrocketed since Obama took office. Right wing politicians fantasize about "second amendment remedies." There was a national day of prayer for his death.

You're wilfully remaining ignorant if you truly believe that there was more venom directed agains Bush than against Obama.

I know that Americans tend not to care what the rest of the world thinks about your country, but most of us think your tea partiers are nuts. Here's this wishy-washy, do-little centrist president, and you lot are going on and on about his socialist communist tyranny? And you invite open racists from European nationalist organisations to speak, but then claim the Tea Party isn't racist. Your infrastructure is crumbling because no one has the political will to use tax dollars to fix it, but you're Taxed Enough Already? We all think you're nuts.

Granted, its been a while since I've been in a Game or UK HMV, but my experience has been one small set of shelves given up to recent release titles, and the rest of the PC gaming section awash in 3 for £10 or 2 for £25 deals, and addons for simulators. My employer gave me a gift certificate to HMV last Christmas, and I went to about four locations on Regent St and Oxford St before I could find L4D2 and Fallout GOTY, both of which were recent releases at the time.

The most interesting bit of that to me is that this ended up on the front page of Slashdot before Boing Boing heard about it. That's not exactly cricket.

I'm sorry, did I miss the part where Steve announced they were removing the web browser? How on earth is a device that prominently features a web browser a closed system? Yes, it's less open than a PC or a Mac (which I would argue is more open than Windows as it ships with a development environment.) But it's very silly to claim that it's closed.

Spoken as someone who's never had to fuss about with signing a Symbian app. Nokia has hoops to jump through different from, but equally annoying as, Apple's.

I think you're exactly right in that that is what the FSF is saying. But look at it from Apple's perspective: do anything a desktop can tablets have been available for a decade, and they haven't taken off. Apple is saying "let's make it cheaper and simpler to create a new product." The lock-down is a deliberate gamble that the complexity is what's caused this product category to languish. I wouldn't be surprised if they're right.

I work near Oxford Circus, and don't find Americans worse than any other tourist here. Actually, I think the worst are the English who are in town now for their Christmas shopping. I was, however, asked when the show starts at the circus once by a nice middle-aged American lady who was appropriately embarrassed once I explained what the circus was.

Try a Budweiser here, too. They're the real thing, not the Anheiser Busch dog's piss. Try a cider or a scrumpy as well. You'll weep for what could have been next time you have a "bud" or a Strongbow.

If you fancy trying local brews, you can buy the Campaign for Real Ale's Good Beer Guide: http://www.camra.org.uk/page.aspx?o=192602 . They sell it in book, ebook, and GPS POI file formats. Also look for the casque mark sign on pub entrances. They identify pubs that sell proper cask ales, and have proper cellaring and handling conditions. http://www.cask-marque.co.uk/

Regarding your power adaptor, any Maplins, Dixon's, Currys will sell North American to British adaptors. If you're flying through Heathrow T3, there's a last-chance duty free after baggage claim that sells them for £5. Muji sells a good, cheap all-countries adaptor as well, but its heavy and big.

Seconded. I'd suggest Larn, I think its the most accessible of the bunch.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Larn

No, definitely not-- there's no immediate business justification for it yet.

Spoken like someone who's employer doesn't use Exchange Server. I can't wait to ditch Entourage. Right now my mail solution is a horrible mess of Outlook Web Access in a Fluid SSB with MacBiff, Entourage and Outlook 2007 in a Windows XP VM. If I didn't have to have several VMs running at once, I'd just make do with the OL2007+XP things, as Entourage is just that bad.

Anonymous Coward's Law Corollary: should someone reply to that comment, the first poster will tell the critic to write the change themselves, regardless of complexity or critic's programming ability.