I'm not even a smart guy and I can put 2 and 2 together here.
NOTE: "Sci-fi writer" ,............ this screams "please read my books" or "I have a new book coming, I need my name out there in popular culture for a couple of weeks!"

We're better than this aren't we?

Ingredients are 1/5'th of the battle. The reality is as I've mentioned to the guy above, the vast majority of fat people are food ADDICTED - this is habits which they need to break, serious habits.

Skinny people simply don't understand, a smoker might understand or alcoholic - and many may ridicule me (or others) for pushing the food addiction theory but as someone who experiences it, I can clarify it's quite real.
A smoker, drinker, heroin user, coke user - all these people when they finally quit their addiction it's over - for food addicts, they must eat for the rest of their life, it sits with them forever.

I do appreciate your post, but to clarify my stance, I'm 34 - I have fluctuated between 70 and 115kgs 6 or 7 times over the past 20 years. I can lose weight incredibly easy when I put my mind to it but it's an ongoing battle which I have to fight day in and day out and relenting off course is a disaster due to the addictive nature of my eating. I believe this is why many, many dieters fail. It's not (all) about nutrition help or excercise or even the health benefits of being skinnier or eating better, it's simply about making someone not want to gorge themselves, often by addressing other issues.
Every meal is a battle to keep on course, it's amazing how miserable, how difficult it is to order a meal out at a resteraunt when on a diet. You have to make a conscious, sensible choice about what to eat and then eat carefully in front of others. It sounds so trivial probably to skinny people but you're stressing before the meal, then stressing when the meal arrives. It's difficult to even EAT the damned meal, even if you chose wisely, it's easy to go into "zombie eating" mode, the addiction takes over as you shovel the food quickly - I suspect we're probably very ugly people to watch eating, not just due to appearance but the style in which we eat, so compulsive and uncivilised. Finally it's difficult after the meal, you're either sitting there feeling TERRIBLY guilty because you ate too much or you're not feeling satiated because over 50% of your life, your idea of a decent meal is to be gorged to the point of being physically uncomfortable (yet we do it again and again)

To finish my point, here is a massive post I made on reddit, a self depreciating and honest post covering more of the topic of being fat and what it's like, near 10,000 chars,........
http://www.reddit.com/r/AskReddit/comments/sd9pf/what_is_it_like_being_a_fat_person/c4dosfp

Long story short, thank you for the information - people need all the help they can get - I've learnt a lot in the last 2 years about food, nutrition and excercise and did nothing for 18 months of that, ultimately you HAVE to want to do it for yourself.

I am really glad you posted, because as I hit post I forgot to breach the topic of food addiction.
I've been watching a lot of supersize vs superskinny (ermmtv on youtube, whole series uploaded!) and observing my own behaviour for 34 years.

I dont' need to go into the sobstory but ultimately I 101% believe in food addiction, without question. I am a major major comfort eater and the sensation is incredibly addictive.
Just to note, when you shovel food in it's utterly mindless, the voice in your head saying "you don't need this, you know it's wrong" gets drowned out as you gorge. You can see the person almost become a zombie as they shovel the food.

This may be due to sugar or bad parenting or millions of things, it's certainly compulsive for me - I think the only thing I can say, besides yes I absoloutely experience and understand it is that while yes, fat people got themselves to where they are and yes we are WAY too politically correct about fatties and coddling them, do bear in mind - they don't sit at home thinking "I want to be fat" the weight is a symptom of their issues and depression, generally not the cause (but it sure adds to it) A heroin addict can roll up their sleeves. An alcoholic can not drink for a couple of days and so on - but the food addict cannot hide their problem.

I think I found this here like 5 years ago and I've kept it since.
http://muller.lbl.gov/TRessays/22-ThePhysicsDiet.htm

I've emailed Richard last year by the way and he's still the weight he achieved in that article 9 years later.

FWIW: I'm an endomorph who DOES believe that some people hold weight easier, crave carbs and sugar more than others and have a lower BMR. However science is science - these things only make up a small fraction of the work. 95%+ is simply putting in the effort.

I can also confirm that adjusting diet is far, far far more rewarding than excercise for weight loss, despite other health benefits. Just as his article says.

I know it's limited to Apple devices so that's what? 30% of all SMS's people do are now free? Not bad for a piece of software added to your phone.

You can't expect them to do this for everyone, it's not a simple to impliment. I'd be happy with 2 standards, 1 iphone, 1 android - from there consumers will whine enough that we'll eventually get interpolation like we did when SMS didn't go from carrier to carrier.

At least it's a partial standard.

Google talk does not work seamlessly as default when it detects someone online.,
The SMS messaging app and the chat / talk app are 2 different entities and not working 'smartly'

Apple deserve credit because their system works /seamlessly/ instantly with any other iphone (I wouldn't be surprised if it works on tablets but I don't know for sure)

The key word here is seamlessly, utterly seamlessly. Therefore you will get 'free' SMS the second you use the App as long as the recipient is on an iphone. It's built in to the OS, nothing more to do.

Hence, Google should be copying this, Google chat like integration - they've already done some work as I've now noticed in one of the newer Android builds that as I scroll through my contacts, some have the green dot representing being online on google chat (talk) - it just needs to default to messaging them off the bat.

Google could then release Google chat for ios, allowing people to receive messages there, although I'm skeptical Apple would allow it.

There is about 15 different companies offering their own messaging systems "for free" - some even offering VOIP calls.

These insidious packages take a copy of all your friends as well and match you up against them, awful things - also never is everyone you know on it, ever.
I hate to yet again give Apple credit but building the imessage system into the iphone is brilliant and I sincerely hope Google copy the concept with far far better Google talk integration into the Android OS (frankly, I'm surprised it hasn't been patched in NOW)

Nice of the 3'rd parties to offer this but I'm just not interested unless it's seamless (which, to my knowledge imessage is? if it can imessage, it will - if not, defaults to SMS, seamlessly, right?)

As an Aussie - this guy is fairly right.
You can get us to whine a fair bit but as for actually doing anything? Simply unheard of. We're so screwed.

I'd ban the "Motorola Xbox" too! It doesn't sound like a legitimate product to me,........