Feel sorry for us Brits who have to deal with both, in a confusing mishmatch :)

Metric for most things, with some bizarre use of imperial for inertia reasons.

road/railway speeds - imperial(mph), scientific speeds, and any other speed, metric.

road distances (signs usually are in miles/yards or fractions), however, the distance markers on the side of the motorways used by workers, etc are in KM.

Car economy is in mpg (though our gallon is slightly bigger than the US gallon), but we buy our fuel in litres, and
pay for it in litres. Possibly a good thing considering the price.

Most items are bought in a supermarket are given metric mesurements for weight and volume, eg litres for drinks, grams/kg for food weights, yet MILK is still sold in pints.

Beer is still sold in pints in a pub....

Let's see:

• A full, immediate pardon. (as a legal mechanism, not because he committed any crimes by being a whistleblower).
• Presidential Medal of Freedom
• A serious discussion and legislative effort about surveillance and how surveillance was allowed to reach clearly illegal levels
• A continous whistleblower award for the rest of his life, so that he doesn't have to work ever again. He put everything on the line for his beliefs, did more than the vast majority of people. The SEC and other groups already give out multimillion dollar whistleblowing awards for mere white collar crime, exposing the surveillance programs ought to rate higher.

or rather:
d) Leave s40 exactly as it is.

The people who buy this do NOT want a smartphone. Just a simple phone that is cheap (around the £10-£20 mark), durable, makes calls and text, long battery life, easy to use, and maybe have a torch/fm radio, at the most have bluetooth. There is NO need to replace S40, it is not broken.

I have both 7 Ultimate and 8.1 on my computer (dual boot on seperate SSDs). Her is my positives and negatives of Windows 8 over win 7.

Positives:
- Really fast and smooth compared to Win 7. The difference is noticeable, even in boot up.
- I am not too bothered with metro itself, nor do I care much for the loss of the start menu. Rarely used it on seven other than to open frequently used app, or search for other apps. I rarely even know whats on my start menu aall programs list, as its hardly used)
- Lightweight. It appears that Microsoft have finally got rid of some in built junk
- Metro apps have their uses. I can think of many types of apps that I would rather not have to install into my windows system normally (as an admin no less) complete with the potential to add further junk to my system folders complete with system wide spyware, and being unable to guarentee a clean uninstall. Metro apps seem to be a bit better isolated.

Negatives:
- Metro apps are still tooo touch focused, and certain things are less intuitiuve with KB and mouse only.
- MEtro apps and dual monitors. Despite the improvements in Windows 8.1, there are still huge usability problems still existing for dual screen users. For example, when running a metro app on the left hand screen, its more involved to bring up the charms panel with just the mouse. Whereas with a single screen, you can blindly flick the mouse up and to the right until it gets to the upper right corner to bring up the charms panel, with a dual monitor, the mouse will simply go to the next screen, making the user have to concentrate more in actually positioning the pointer in the exact region to show the panel.
- I still feel the desktop UI is very poor. I enjoyed aero on Win vista, and more so on 7. The transparency effects give me a lot of cues to order, and overlap. The new UI is frankly ugly, and personally a lot worse than win 7.

Even in the USA there are "bribes" paid by businesses. Its called campaign donations, political sponsorship, etc and is quite legal.

Find out how much the companies such as Google, Microsoft, Apple, Exxon, Big Cigarette, Media, etc pay as political donations... Bet your bottom dollar there are strings attached.

It is corruption, for in a true DEMOCRATIC government it should be the desires of the voters that dictate the laws and governance moving ahead.

One person one Vote, and not One Dollar One Vote

You are not going to get hammered. I agree, the Windows Phone interface is actually very good from what I felt when I played around with a Lumia. Its other things about the OS that makes me stick with Android.

To be honest, although I myself would NOT be interested in a Windows OS phone, I can see my parents being quite comfortable with one.

Now coming to windows 8.... thats a different kettle of fish! They should have kept a limited aero for desktop use. I completely hate the lack of contrast on the new desktop (I do not mind the metro interface in "metro" world, I just HATE the desktop interface)

It was a paid advert, but for a fictional, made for the film Ericsson JB988 (http://www.007museum.com/ericsson_jb988_james_bond.htm) loosely based on the real Ericsson R320 http://www.gsmarena.com/ericsson_r320-194.php

The real thing that's turning javascript into the lingua franca of the web are really three things:

1. JS is already supported by all major browsers, modern ones with JIT

1. asm.js - which turns anything from a LLVM intermediate representation into javascript code that runs around 2x the speed of native c/c++ code in supported browsers and as fast as any other piece of JS code in all the other browsers

1. HTML5, WebRTC

It's an inside-out stack.

Remembering the 80's Superman, especially the aweful Superman 4, I think the reboot was a good thing.

(the First was not too bad, and nor was the second, the third was getting a little silly at times, but all of them had a strong stereotypical american view which may have worked then, but is kinda tiring now.)

See the next announcement that Apple is pairing with Microsoft to bring Bing maps in 3.... 2.... 1.....

I can tell the difference between a "beginner" and a "professional" irregardless of what they are using. A professional with a camera phone, will tend to record the moment better than an amateur clicking away with a fancy DSLR on automatic mode that he or she bought at Best Buy to show off!

In fact most pros have a bit of a dont care attitude about their tools, because ultimately its whats in their head, and their skills that make the photo.

Ultimately though, it doesn't matter what tool, or the skill of the photographer, if the photo is a recording of a once in a lifetime event.......

Don't get me wrong; I am a DSLR photographer (amateur not professional, its not my day job!).

You are absolutely right about the technical quality of a DSLR, crisp clear photos when used with Primes. Nice fill in flashes. Filters. Large Sensors. nice DOF effects, etc.

However, do not dismiss a cam phone. set up of a DSLR can take time. And it is bulky to carry. A phone is always there.

Remember the biggest aspect of a great photo is actually being able to capture that moment, and sometimes its only with a phone. It doesn't matter how bad the quality is, or anything at that point, as long as you can sufficiently captured that moment.

I think a lot of photographers (mainly amateur, who are just starting out with DSLR) have forgotten that.