My experiences date from 1978. Athens was a different place to what I imagine it is today. Greek coffee with cold water, hardboiled eggs and olives? Beautiful and very civilized.
Strangely, it reminded me of Sydney when I lived there as a child. There were a lot of Greek immigrants at the time and they left in me a lasting impression.
I am all too aware of the Ottoman (Ozman) scourge. My birth country (Hungary) was split into 3 by the Turks who occupied it for 150 years. They destroyed the churches and people fled away. The Poles helped drive them out back to Istanbul by 1715.
Before, Hungary and Byzantine were good friends. The Emperor gave our first king his crown http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/H...
Even before that time, the Hungarians (Magyars) fought as mercenaries with Byzantine. So the history goes a long way back.

My school studies in ancient Greek history made me want to visit as soon as I could. I spent a month there in autumn, mainly on the mainland. I only went to Corfu and Chios. Why Chios? For the mastika! No one who chews mastika has bad breath. I also think that they burn the mastika (or something very similar) in certain RC church sacraments.

I always had the opinion that I would retire on a Greek island one day... maybe not in this lifetime though :)

I've been to Chios. I have a long story to tell of my adventures there. Suffice to say that after 1 week of trying to find transport for a Swiss friend of mine to Turkey, did I realise that there was a Turkish faction on the island and no Greek wanted to help him. Eventually he got on board a fishing vessel after his papers were stamped and left for a small coastal town.
On the trip to Chios, almost everyone on the boat was military. Some spoke English. They were on a training mission but I didn't see them again.
Yes I loved Greece. Amazing place. I even liked Athens!

That's not hard to do. FTL is not only possible but exists as anyone who discounts Einstein's theory would attest.

They should have thrown in a few Monaros....

Move to Chios. At least they grow their own mastika there. The lamb souvlaki is delicious.
Only a few km swim to Turkey if things get too bad for you.

For me, I had to find $350-$400/month for electricity, every month. I was lucky and got $10k inheritance. Various subsidies allowed me to install a $20k 3kw system (practical input about 2.3 kwh about 5 years ago. Legislature subsidy gave me 64c/kwh, dropping to 60c/kwh presently. As soon as my contract expires (any time now), I'll be paid 20c/kwh which is almost retail where I am (Australia). For the first few years it knocked 65% off my usage. Then when I got rid of the kids (sold for scientific experiments), I started to achieve credit in the summer months, almost evening out my winter usage, so I can say that I almost get a net 0 cost/year. It won't last though. When I get forced onto the reduced rate of 20c, my power bills will increase, but nowhere near what it was originally.

Now I didn't care too much *wasting* the $10k on the system because I didn't have to find $400/month, every month. That means that I had money for other things and much reduced stress on the family. After 5 years I worked out that I have almost paid the $10k back (there were 4 failures* in that time).
Doesn't matter about the capital expense! The long term savings in money and more importantly stress has paid for the system.

Failures:
The street voltage was too high for the inverter, so the inverter couldn't pump the power to the grid (2x). This was fixed by choking the street's line transformer.
The Inverter (cheap chinese shit) broke.
Birds ripped off the cover of a buss box on the roof and it filled with water.
Total cost to repair after insurance was about $500.
Loss of income from downtimes: $500 estimated.

lol Slashdot cognoscenti
That explains it all.

Dunno, but my cousin once was a member of Pornosheriff (band)

Ermmm... This guy should not be modded down. What he stated is default in most smaller shops. There are variations like the POS program talks to a CC swipe machine to send item totals and receives receipt information.
What got me was that in one particular case, they fired the whole IT support who set up the initial VPN Intranet and the new IT moved everything to internet. Really dumb.

Email is there in Win XP and later. These POS terminals are full computers with a cash drawer underneath, merchant banking device and card swipe periperhals. They are networked to a local printer and mainly controlled by IT through remote desktop. They are typically in smaller shops with 2 or more terminals. They do stock control, daily cash calculations etc as they replace traditional Z type cash registers.
Emails are sent by head office to all managers. Intranet and internet are available as well. So yes, they can be infected with spam emails.

That's an analog computer.
The first coding was done by Jacquard (1805) based on the work of another Frenchman Basile Bouchon (1725).
Babbage was a fan of Jacquard btw.

Fine. Be that way. I for one never go outside because strange things happen when I go outside.

Ahh yes. That takes me back. I think they were called 'Rugby Songs' and the only thing I remember was:

The men of this water
Had a charming little daughter
and the hairs on her dicky di-do
hung down to her knees.

The result of which was that I could never listen to Dido (the female singer: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/D... without giggling,
and by now, that the charming little daughter would be a hairy Welsh BBW as you say.

A super iguana? It'll have to be god like.
I propose 'Godguana'

Ermmm... They won't be pink anymore.