Perhaps you should have searched on "historical references to red cross in sky in 775AD"

I did a search and this one is all over the Internet. Interesting correlation if nothing else.

I think the red cross is mentioned in the "Anglo Saxon Chronicles". I have a copy but finding the reference might take a while.

A sensible traveller does not take anything valuable with them. Buy some cheap clothes, a disposable watch etc and put in a cheap bag. Put important things like passport and credit cards in a money belt. Carry a small backpack as carry on luggage if you really must have a notebook or tablet.. Get a cheap pre-paid phone when you arrive. If some fool steals your suitcase wander down to the nearest H&M and get another cheap case and fill it with cheap clothes. Claim the old case on insurance. Easy. If you take nothing valuable then you have nothing to worry about and thus enjoy your holiday considerably more.

Google already maintain multiple branches. Plus a court could easily rule multi-touch as an essential patent. The USA hates monopolies, if the court grants Apple a monopoly the politicians will tear them down. A so we will go around again and again.

I cannot agree more. I have a Kobo WiFi and a Nexus 7 and a Xoom. 10" tablets are too heavy for serious reading. I have the Kobo app on my Nexus and the two sync. So I can use the Kobo in daylight for reading novels. The Kobo is light and runs for weeks and is easy on the eyes. I read a book on the Kobo faster than on a dead tree book. At night when every one else is asleep the Nexus is great because you can read it in the dark or in low light. The Nexus weighs more than the Kobo but is light enough. The Nexus wins hands down for reading magazines and technical books. Anything with pictures or diagrams and I use the tablet. The one big advantage to the Nexus is thet you can install Kobo, Google Play, Aldiko etc etc and buy books from all of them. Nothing like competition. And with Feedbooks and Calibre the whole universe of out of copyright books is available.

Troll? Really? Anyone with a different view of the world to you is a troll? There is a simple retort to your silly jibe. If you live in the third world or in the middle of a desert then do not use Internet connected services. Xfce4 will serve you fine. But do not suggest that the rest of us should be reduced to the lowest common denominator. Those of us who live in big cities in the developed world and who have an Internet connection everywhere would very much like to move forward and use the applications of the 21st C. Anyone with an Android phone or an iPhone can configure that phone to be a mobile WiFi hotspot. If your provider does not allow this then change providers. Your own connection, locked down, everywhere. If you have a phone you are always connected. 3G accounts keep coming down in price. At home my ADSL 2+ never fails. Years and years of up time.

I use Gnome 3.4 every day and would never go back to the old ways. Extension are a terrific idea and there is plenty of development in that area. The future of the desktop is as a seamless connection to the Internet, so that local apps and online apps are both available as if they are all installed locally. Queue the naysayers who will go on about what happens when you do not have a connection. That is why Gnome can be a mixture of local and remote. You can stay stuck in the past with Mate, or move into the future. It does not bother me if you stay stuck in the past, but I look forward to the next generation of Gnome, and the one after that. Lastly, there would not be a Unity or a Cinnamon without Gnome. Both are merely alternate shells to Gnome 3.x. But that is the strength of the new Gnome, you can make alternate shells.

Google accepted advice from a man who declared Thermonuclear War against them. Seriously?

It would not have mattered if his speeches were in Google Docs or one of the other cloud services. Borrow any computer and log in.

WooHoo Cheap Xooms for the 7 billion of us who live outside of the USA. A nice 32gb Xoom for about $200 - sounds good to me.

No. I just tried to see what would happen and Firefox insists on ignoring system settings. I know it can be done permanently, because I have had to go the other way. To remove all antiailiasing from the system requires playing around with font config. You would start by removing .fontconfig.conf from your home folder and restarting. Also setting the monitor as not an LCD would help. This is not the place for this type of discussion. A post in the Linuxmint forums would get expert help in a hurry.

Install Gnome Tweak Tool. It shows as Advanced Settings Manager in the menus. One click antiailiasing off.

I would love to think you are right. But, we are both Australian and have grown up in a country with true separation of church and state. A country that has never been overly religious and one where people have always had a healthy disregard for authority. My R.I. classes at school were truly fun. A teacher trying to teach us the way of religion and 25 kids completely ignoring him/her as if he/she was not there. Yet, they kept trying and now in Victoria they are trying to bring it all back. The result will be the same. But, this cannot be extended to the rest of the world (except perhaps our cousins in NZ). Fundamentalism is on the rise in so many paces. One of our politicians that is fighting the good fight is Nick Xenophon. He has no hesitation in condemning the ratbags when they deserve it. If a senator was so outspoken in the USA he would not be re-elected, here he is a hero. Will the Arab Spring result in a saner world or sharia law from Afghanistan to Morocco. Only time will tell.

"Reason and religion are not mutually exclusive" - they do not have to be, but when you read of the constant attacks on teaching Evolution in the USA and the creation of Creationist Museums that show people frolicking with dinosaurs then you have say that there is a growing religious attack on common sense. And it is not just in America. In the Islamic world Evolution is under attack as well. The deeply devout seem to struggle with a world that is much older than 6000 years. It is ironic that the Catholics seem to be the new home of religious accommodation with science.