What's the turn-over? How many old timers are still active or even lurking on here? Life and career are so busy for me now I barely have time to read the headlines on here.

That would be everybody who speaks English except for Americans. Not just the French (I assume that's who you were referring too in your puerile comment)

For most of the English speaking world, a "meter" is a measurement device, not a unit of measure.

China's a country of over a billion a people of different ethnicities and cultures, which you can't really look at it through the lens of averages or generalisations. The difference between rural China and Shanghai is far greater than the difference between Shanghai and Hong Kong. You might as well ask: why don't the people of the US rise up and demand better when their is so low?

No they're not. VW are crushing everybody at the moment, in terms of units sold:
http://www.economist.com/node/21558269

Not sure what this anti-Microsoft rant is all about. Microsoft licensed the technology long before IE came to dominate the browser market. Andressen also went to develop Netscape (forefather of Firefox). That business failed worse than Microsoft. So what?

Ahhh, translating between code pages...

Funny! Actually the worst email are from clients/users that insist on using plain text. A few messages in to an email thread and you end up with fugly misformatted mess that's incredibly hard to read over. Thank goodness iPhone's aren't quite as bad as they were a few of years ago when they came along and started f***ing things up.

Appeal to people who aren't stuck in the 1980's and Usenet formatting flamewars?

Totally missing the point that with mutli-process browsers, I can manage the browser better because I can:
1) See which tab is using excessive memory
2) See which tab is using excessive CPU

At the moment the only option to conserve battery life on a laptop is to close Firefox or minimise tab usage. That's user unfriendly bullshit.

The other major point is that multi-process browsers are more secure and more robust. Mozilla devs have never seemed to like thinking beyond monolithic processes though (I've had this argument with them for years from before Firefox and Thunderbird showed that mail and browser didn't need to be in the same process space). Architecture doesn't seem to be a strength of the Mozilla devs does it?

I wish they'd finish their maildir support, which apparently made it t experimental. The mbox format is terrible for backups and general folder reliability:
http://jaisejames.wordpress.com/2012/04/09/import-or-migrate-mbox-to-maildir-in-thunderbird/

Using Thunderbird is like taking a step back 10 years in MUA's. The core features (writing emails including their formatting, browsing folders, etc) doesn't really seem to have changed much since the Mozilla Suite days (which was only a small change from Netscape Communicator). It's looking pretty long in the tooth, and writing good looking emails is lagging behind other applications.

I don't suppose the re-assigned devs are going to anything useful, like multi-process Firefox. I switched to Chrome a few months ago for this one feature, and won't be coming back until they implement it as I now have per page/tab control over my laptop battery's life (I can kill CPU hogging tabs easily with Chrome).
http://lawrencemandel.com/2011/11/15/update-on-multi-process-firefox-electrolysis-development/

China protects its companies [...]. The US does not. [...] One of the reasons so much manufacturing is done in China is because that's the only way to sell there. China puts high import taxes on goods made elsewhere, while the US does not

Bullshit. Have you seen how many jobs have been lost in British Columbia (a province in a country that is the US's neighbour, ally and largest trading partner) at various times due to the softwood lumber dispute? The WTO ruled in favour of Canada, but that seemed to make little difference. If that's how the US treats its friends, it's little wonder the Chinese are so defensive.

Go look at the footage of the more sane pols from the Great Society era who warned we were spending our children and grandchildren's inheritance... they were right. It's all spent. The social security 'trust fund' is just a bunch of IOUs from the government to be paid by the government; meaningless.

This is probably the biggest reason why young people should be voting, although it's probably far from their minds. The baby boomers and unions have been and are busy voting for policies that ensure they have a cushy retirement. The young people are expected to pay for that, but as they are relatively smaller number, they will lose out on existing services or pay higher taxes as the bill for the older people goes up and up. In some ways it's pretty short-sighted by the older generation as it could backfire on them later when they're getting too frail to fight back.

No, 3G is good enough most of the time, either to check something online on my phone, or even for me to work tethered (email obviously, not something ore fancy like RDP). Think about the 80 or 90% use-case when you're on the move at a station. 3G doesn't cost anything... included in the monthly data rate. Wifi in this case is going to cost money after the Olympics too...

Oh please, talk about a disingenuous argument. Nobody in their right mind buys paper tickets. Especially as they're priced high to discourage you. That was your choice.

I live in Hammersmith (at the Chiskwick end)... I mostly walk, or sometimes take the bus. Going from Hammersmith Broadway as you were to Shebu is an even shorter walk - probably 10-15 minutes (or the time it took you to buy your tickets, wait for the next train, travel there, and then walk from Goldhawk Rd or Shepherd's Bush Market. If you were going to a concert at the Empire, you only needed to go one stop on the Tube.

If you were going to be driving to Hammersmith, why not just go a bit further and look for free parking on a side street near Shebu? As somebody who lived five minutes walk from the Green, that's what I would do, and what my parents would do when they came to visit me.

BTW, Shepherd's Bush is in Hammersmith, but assuming you were only coming from Hammersmith Broadway (the start of your Tube journey), Shebu is 0.8 miles, much less than your 2 mile business. Yes, that makes it sound more expensive, but also really makes one scratch their head as to your motivation for taking the tube in the first place.

Shanghai has working phone reception and 3G data on trains and stations throughout the underground - who needs WIFI? Time to catch up with China.

Actually I'm glad there's no voice phone service on the Tube... I really don't want to be jammed in inches from somebody yammering on about their banal life and their dull X Factor hero worshipping.