According to this paper, 3.5% of French people are currently taking antidepressants, and 42% have taken them at some point. And this article claims that 24% of Spanish women use antidepressants. I also know many friends and family members who take or have taken antidepressants in the UK.

I mean, why would a doctor tell you to drug yourself, even if you feel depressed.

This isn't about some vague feelings of 'feeling bad' or 'feeling depressed', this is for diagnosed clinical depression.

You're very lucky that you've evidently never suffered from depression, or you wouldn't say this.

Oops.

My national identity confusion (they/our) is because I'm British, but haven't lived in Britain since 2007.

Great OFT, but dreadful weather.

/shrug

You can look on it as government interference if you want, but in the UK people like the OFT: we look on their work as consumer protection.

The key word is 'Fair'. If a trade practice is 'unfair', the OFT are pretty effective at stopping it. If it really is just a case of your kid spending your money, then no, it's not the government's problem. But how will the OFT know if it's fair if they don't investigate?

I don't have any children, so I've no axe to grind, but I still think it's a good idea that they at least investigate the fairness of in-app purchases.

The OFT is one of the reasons that in the UK they have a variety of mobile phone providers with coverage everywhere, that they can move between with no penalty, and who will unlock our phones on demand. I don't think this is true of the US.

Good advice.

But really, there just shouldn't be a default username: you should have to enter your own. This has been standard practice for decades.

Though I have to concede it works pretty well, WP is truly awful: a tiny bit object-oriented here, a bit finite state machine there; no coherent design at all.

It's kind-of the PHP of PHP software: Crufty, inelegant, painful to develop with, yet also ubiquitous and loved by clients, who ask for it by name.

WordPress needs a 100% rewrite by someone who has read a book or two on programming.

Does seem a bit unlikely, even taking into account higher than average rates of diabetes in the US.

The summary is way over-dramatic.

The customer they have lined up to buy the NAND flash is Samsung itself, as they're now making a shit-load of smartphones, tablets, TVs and whatnot. There just may not be enough flash memory to go around.

The article is also littered with phrases like "what effect, if any..", "one can imagine that...", "there is the possibility that..."

Since he saw the huge amount of cash in the one he repaired, and discussed what the size of a "kilo" would be, etc, he opened the door to getting in trouble.

Then he invited trouble right in the door by talking to the DEA without a lawyer.

Sure, he thought he wasn't breaking the law, but was hardly an expert. Huuuge gamble to make.

Also, getting tried in Kansas with the name Anaya might have been something a decent lawyer could have avoided.

I had no sympathy at all until I saw the sentence. 24 years without parole is madness.

I love visiting the US, but almost every time I've been put off by the unpleasant and agressive attitude of the people on the immigration desk. In my view they're much worse than the TSA on departure.

I'll put up with being photographed and fingerprinted (though I think it's downright daft), but my experience at immigration last time just took the piss.

I had made some trivial omission on my visa waiver form — I probably forgot to tick the box to say that I wasn't a spy, saboteur or Nazi war criminal (yes, this tick box really exists) — and I amended the form right there in two seconds, but the officious drone showed great pleasure in sending me to the back of the long queue like a naughty schoolboy.

Then when I got to the front of the queue again — this time to a different drone — I was accused of "abusing the visa waiver" because I had the temerity to visit the US twice in one year (once to San Francisco, that time to NYC, both fairly long visits). It was insinuated that I wasn't welcome back for some — unspecified — period of time. The visa waiver FAQ specifically states that there are no limits to the number of visits in any given period of time.

I guess the government is only interested in promoting tourism when it means handing out billions of dollars to the airlines.

I decided at the time that I would never go back to the US, but time heals all wounds and I'm starting to think I can put up with the necessary humiliation again.

As absolutely everybody else I've met in person in the US has been smart, funny and friendly I can only assume that all your assholes work in airports.

+ and - keys work for me.

From a sample of 89 packages.

Actually, 178 packages.

Either USPS loses the majority of the packages it handles...

How do you get that, from 11 missing out of 178? Even if had been 11 out of 89, it wouldn't be 'the majority'.

10 out of 89 'Atheist' branded packages were 'lost'. 1 out of 89 non-branded packages were lost.

But hey, nice rational atheists would never resort to half baked sensationalist nonsense to promote their world view, would they.

Heh.

Their evidence suggesting the USPS discriminates against atheism is a hell of a lot stronger than any religion has for the existence of their Gods.

because that would mean a minimum of 11/189 packages were lost

That is what the article says.

...and the USPS has never had anywhere near a 5% loss rate in my experience

/facepalm

Maybe because your experience doesn't include shipping packages with prominent 'Atheist' branding?

I did however find a LOT of anecdotal data from Amazon and eBay seller forums that indicates it seems to be less than 1%.

Yeesssss... And less than 1% of non-Atheist branded packages were lost.

Atheists in America love to act like they're repressed, even in cases when they're not. I never understood this.

Yes, you certainly seem to be hard of understanding.

When I moved to France, I went to a language school and many of the other students were Chinese.

We had to do oral presentations on a subject of our own choosing, and one of the Chinese students explained the system of democracy in China. The local people elect a representative, the representatives elect people further up the chain, congress, deputies, etc, etc, right up to the president.

The Chinese students thought this was perfect democracy in action, and were baffled that the Europeans, Africans and New Worlders couldn't understand how wonderful and flawless the system was. When we pointed out that there was only one party, they indignantly said there were several parties to choose from: more than in France.

On the subject of censorship, they thought it was necessary to protect the country, and made hand-waving explanations that things were different in China.

These kids were the offspring of the kind of Chinese families who could afford to send their children to study in France, so no doubt are not representative of the population as a whole, but it was still a real eye-opener for me, who had kind of assuming that the Chinese would want the same kind of (imperfect) democracy we have in the West.

Personally, I still think it's basically down to indoctrination, but if so, it's evidently pretty effective indoctrination.

- Poor Multi-Monitor Support: Since the menu for each application is in a detached panel that is only displayed on one monitor, this means you will be racking up a lot of mileage on your pointing device to hop between apps on the secondary monitor and their menu on the primary monitor.

Yes, it's stupid that there's no option to display the menubar on both monitors.

SecondBar might be useful.

Another WTF since Lion: make an application fullscreen, and your other monitor is useless: it just displays a brushed metal background.

It's not naziism, it's "Sharia compliance"

Yeah, like the recent laws forbidding women wearing the niqab (those islamic headscarves which cover the face) in Belgium, France, Italy, Luxembourg, Holland...

They're really pandering to Sharia there.

As the weak Europeans edge toward Eurabia expect more and more liberties to be challenged, successfully at first, and then eventually legislated away.

"Weak"... "Eurabia"... Your prejudices are showing. Belief in all religions is in freefall in Europe.

... those who seek to take liberties away (not just the Islamists, but the political Left as well).

Good theory. Spoilt only a little by the fact that the right-wing holds the balance of power in the European Parliament, and all those headscarf bans were introduced by right-wing parties.

I know it's considered common knowledge in the US that Europe is run by socialists, but consider that France — for example — currently has only the second Socialist president since WWII (and he's as popular as a turd in a swimming pool).

The fact is that this is just what the European Parliament do: this isn't binding (it's 'advice'), it's a waste of time, and yogurt will continue to be advertised by topless women on TV in France and Italy.

Heterophobia. Sure.

The media criticise people for being straight. The media believes that heterosexuality is 'flat out wrong'. They believe that heterosexuality is 'damaging to the nation'.

This is a straw man. People don't say this.