According to the Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs for the occupied Palestinian territory (a UN body) 1754 Palestinians have been killed since 2005 (excluding the recent Gaza war, vs. 117 Israelis. In the Gaza war 773 Palestinian civilians were killed. Israelis are free to leave their country, Gazans are imprisoned in theirs. The sources of employment are drying up in Gaza as Israel prevents many supplies entering the territory, including the building supplies needed to reconstruct the many factories that Israel bombed. So I would say that Palestinians go through a lot more pain than Israelis. Would you rather be a Palestinian civilian or an Israeli? Not much of a contest is it?

Desperate people do desperate things, and the things Hamas does are no worse (perhaps less worse) than what the Israelis are doing. Admittedly, not an excuse for doing bad things, but certainly explains why they're doing them. Like I say, imagine yourself a Palestinian living in the Gaza Strip.

I think that Hamas's best bet is not violence. If they can only be seen as a passive Gandhi style resistance it might go a long way to improving their image in the US. Frankly, their armed struggle doesn't have much effect anyway. Also, they do a lot of things that are pretty bad for PR. For instance, arresting Western journalists does not endear you to the people who might be able to help your cause.

Then why does the Hammas have Israel's entire land on its flag?

Maybe because they're pissed off? Try living under siege, seeing your land encroached by illegal settlers and your people's homes bulldozed and see if you're still reasonable towards your oppressors. I don't agree with Hamas's methods, but I can see why they do what they do.

The normal claim is that there are 4,200,000 in the UK, which was from a study which extrapolated from the number on Putney High Street.

By iPhone 2G I assume he means second generation iPhone. There is no such thing as a 2G iPhone in terms of second generation phone network. The first iPhone used EDGE, and that counts as 3G.

I'm curious, where is it that you get the impression the UK has vastly more CCTV than anywhere else, aside from reading it on Slashdot?

The EU is not a federal government. Although their laws are technically legally binding unless the applicable government implements their laws there's really nothing they can do about it (especially when it concerns one of the more influential countries in the EU).

They are expensive if you have a 'preexisting condition'.

I'd love to see that answer, since it would basically confirm my suspicions that the ultra-libertarian Slashdot crowd are basically anti-social egotists who care about no one other than themselves.

NFSN is a good solution for a low volume site. I use it as my personal homepage. It doesn't get a lot of traffic, so the pay-as-you-go scheme works out a lot cheaper than any other host. If I were building a large, dynamic site I'm not sure it would work out so well.

You're attacking a strawman. I'm not talking about the overall high cost of premiums in the US, I'm talking about how some people, through no fault of their own, are totally unable to get health insurance.

What if you do have a chronic illness though? What are you supposed to do then? And I would dispute that any normal person could save enough to pay for long term cancer treatment. Breast cancer treatment could be over $100,000. Finally, what about the people who don't plan carefully? Do they deserve to suffer and die because of their lack of foresight?

That's not what I said. Read the GP's comment. But if you were insured then your insurer would be doing anything it could to try and cancel your insurance.

And then you get cancer, requiring millions in dollars of treatment, so you remortgage your house, then you lose your job because you're taking too many sick days, then you lose your house. Great solution.