Are there any cars that *don't* achieve 30mpg??

Hmm, maybe in America perhaps.

... for elections observers to be sent to Afghanistan.

Oh Yes They Do

I've done OSCE election missions, and if I proposed going to Afghanistan my wife would most certainly have something to say about how dangerous it is.

About a day and a half's income for a decent programmer. I hope it didn't take them any longer than that to write the app (including, of course, share of setup costs and training time.)

You could fix that first.

His job. It's a reporter's job to find out stuff. Some of them are better at their job than others.

"Are you the man who found the coins? Do you know who he is? Contact reporter David O’Neill on 01442 898451."

Duh! - one might have expected the journo to get the name, or even an interview!

And Pink Floyd albums.

Er ... why, if the noise bothers you??

When I choose somewhere to live, right at the top of my list is that it must be somewhere where nobody will have any reason to drive past unless they live in the same street.

I luuuurve people who thing that efficiency doesn't matter.

I make lots of money turning their crap into something useful.

... to make sure corporates thinking of moving to web applications actually decide to stick with Office.

Thought this one was worth a try :-)

I do sometimes get things right.

(1) Well, people have certainly paid me to write software that runs on Linux, but it's always been proprietary stuff that runs on servers in turnkey systems and suchlike (in fact I'm doing one such project right now), never shrink-wrap desktop stuff for sale to end users.

(2) Erm ... I'm afraid that my hobby is flying little aeroplanes ... and my other hobby, being an elected politician, is even more expensive.

(3) Don't have sufficient marketing skills and expertise, in that I can make more money by writing C++ for Windows and being paid by the hour.

(4) I really hate that business model, where you can download the source code for something for free, but the only way to find out whether it will do the job you want or not is to pay a consultant hundreds of dollars to tell you, ie to answer your pre-sales enquiries (or spend thousands of dollars worth of your own time trying it out) ... I much prefer the alternative, where the pre-sales support is free (eg there are decent specs and other documentation) but the software costs a few tens of dollars.

(5) I realise that that does work for some people ... but it can't be that easy to get it right. I think I have never paid the extra for any such software (or service). If the free version is too crap to be useful, how can you trust that company with your money, as your only experience of them is that they produce crap software? On the other hand if the free version is wonderful there's no need to pay for the extras.

... when you have children to feed and a mortgage to pay ... ... and the users expect all their software to be free?

Better off spending one's time addressing a market where people expect to have to pay for stuff, no?

real keyboards were "double shot moulded", and there was no way a letter could wear off the key.

What people are hiring in a freelancer is experience and skills and experience and ability to hit the ground running and experience. Oh, and experience.

Do ten years in a proper job first to learn this stuff.