I see you're out to prove that sarcasm really is the lowest form of wit.

Read it in the context of "Gnome OS" which was mentioned in the interview. He knows it's not an OS on its own, but he places it (KDE+linux, implied) on the same level as WebOS, Android, MeeGo, etc.

Well, the "foreign" bit didn't come out right - I didn't mean to imply you're racist. What I meant to say is that most people, particularly those from the bigger countries, have no clue about the politicians and politics from the other member states (this is an observation, not a complaint). And it's easy to mistake all those politicians for "faceless" bureaucrats when you only know a few of the more than 700 MEPs. After all, you sure haven't voted for all these other guys. But some of the 500 million citizens sure did.

> Britain doesn't elect it's head of state - the Queen, it also doesn't elect it's Prime Minister - the main party in parliament's leader becomes Prime Minister.

Well, I thought it was be clear that it's not the Queen sitting in the European Council. And while you don't choose your PM directly, it's not like you don't have a say at all in who the PM will be. Either way, if you want to send someone to the European Council that is directly elected, like a president, or a PM that is appointed in a more democratic way, than by all means, your country is free to do so. It's not a lack of democracy of the EU though.

> You can write to your MEP all you like - they don't make the laws so it's a bit futile.
> In the UK the laws are chosen by the people we vote for.
> In the EU they are not.

They actually do hold legislative powers, together with the Council of Ministers. The parliament is directly elected. The council is composed of the national ministers. And your cabinet ministers are again selected from elected members of the house of commons, right?

> So to re-cap:
> 1. MEPs - elected but not much power.
> 2. European Council, not directly elected.
> 3. Commission, most powerful, not elected.

Well, we had our chance with the EU constitution. It would've established more power for the parliament, more transparency, smaller commision, in short more democracy. But all people heard was "more faceless bureaucrats" and said no on the referendums in France and Holland in 2005.

In any case, I'm not saying the whole EU thing is the greatest thing since sliced bread. What bothers me is that the EU is very often unfairly blamed for a lot things. Our own governments push things through on the EU level, knowing full well it won't get the same amount of public scrutiny, then turn around and proclaim they have no choice but to implement these evil EU diktats on a national level - while all along that was the goal in the first place.

I think it's long overdue that EU citizens took an interest in what the EU institutions actually do. And that the media properly inform us on these matters.

> faceless unelected bureaucrats

Right. Sure.
- the European Parliament's MEPs are directly elected by the citizens
- the European Council is made up of heads of state, like, say David Cameron, who (I hope) is elected by the citizens.
- the European Commision is indeed not directly elected, but has to be approved by the Parliament, and put in office by the Council - seems like there's still some democratic checks there.

Just because you don't know these "foreign" people, doesn't mean they haven't been elected.

But yeah, people don't seem to give a shit about EU elections, even when it directly affects them.

You _can_ write your MEP, and directly influence them as citizens. Corporate lobbyists have clout, but ordinary citizens _can_ get themselves organised and lobby too. But for that you actually have to:
a) know what's going on
b) care

Stopping all farming subsidies seems to have worked in New-Zealand, *in spite* of them having to compete on very heavily subsidized global stage.

I so agree on Cunningham. Sad that this didn't happen.

At least you can hook up an MT-32 straight to MIDI. If you make DOSBox pass through your MIDI interface you're set. No such luck for me with my LAPC-I, which you're supposed to plug into an ISA slot (try finding an ISA slot on motherboards these days).

There's some projects out there that try to emulate the MT-32 / CM-32L / LAPC-I - even on linux. But to be honest, I found them somewhat lacking.

How about encrypting the data on the client-side before sending and/or storing it. Then you wouldn't have to rely on any server side encrypting, and the users wouldn't need to worry about whether the server gets hacked or goes rogue.

maybe the lawyers can double as walls instead?

So... the idea is that "flying humvees" can drive most of the way, and fly over the dangerous parts, right? Now the only question that springs to mind is, how do they know which parts of the way to fly and which parts of the way to drive?