I'll admit I don't know the first thing about OS X, as I installed Linux on my company's macbook shortly after they issued it to me. But my coworker regularly projects slides from his macbook, and I've seen him give full-screen presentations both with powerpoint and adobe reader. So what was the missing functionality that's now there?

Ironically, Orwell, whom you quote, also warned against writers who didn't pay attention to their metaphors, and gave the example of the bad usage "tow the line" instead of "toe the line", which actually makes sense...

But I don't suppose, for that matter, that he would have liked your wild hyperbole in the first place.

Also it had actual valuable content. I backed up quite a few geocities pages (typically transcripts of old Britcoms, fansites with essays, fanfic sites, and lyric sites) just because I was a packrat. Now I'm glad I did.

But Facebook? Seriously, there is no actual useful non-personal content there.

Right, so if your first child is a girl or mentally deficient, or you're very, very rich, or you're not a member of the dominant race, then you can have a second child... Right, so none of the conditions are exactly calculated to increase the productive workforce then, are they now?

Can I just say, as a poor sod, that the Democrats (before Obama got in) actually reined in the more egregious practices of credit card companies and banks, like overlimit and overdraft fees. As someone struggling to get by, living paycheck to paycheck, I'm damned grateful to them for that.

On a grand scale, I actually think some surveillance is necessary and an ideal world where all of the laws written in America actually apply and are enforced in America would be totally unworkable. America is a bit weird like that: the rule of law is still stronger, especially in small things, than in many countries, but there is a tendency to write sweeping idealistic laws (like most of its constitution) that just won't work and are quietly ignored or bent. It's a shame, but I've just learnt to live with it (I'm a foreigner, just living here for some years) and just tune out most of the grandiose ideas from the top. They matter, but ultimately I think nobody at the top echelons has their head screwed on right, nor has for a long time, so I am just thankful for little mercies and hope for the best.

Emergency services be damned, ham radio would be the first spectrum they'd jam.

They're still short-changing themselves. Every last topic you are forced to think about, every last topic you are forced to write coherently about, imparts something of value to you that you will probably never force yourself to attain later, when you're out of college and stuck on your career path. Why, they even squirmed out from under the discipline, and you can bet that precious few of them will attain anything like self-discipline later, so they're stuck without any internal or external discipline.

Or hell, just look at your your local Asda / Walmart.

Yeah, except footballers get private money, scientists have to rely on taxpayer's money. Of course you're cheap if it's you paying up, rather than people paying on your behalf (the money still comes from your pocket, but you gave it of your own accord).

Speaking as someone who came here to study, and am going back -- sorry, but we pay for our education. Paying three and a half times the in-state rate, I even subsidised a few in-state students. The rules are that no federal or state money can go to foreign students, so if you want to get into a federally funded programme, tough titty. You can get private money, but all but a handful of scholarships and loans are limited to citizens and green card holders. At most you can work for the university you attend, but you pay taxes just the same as anyone else, so it's hard to call that support in any way either.

Don't get me wrong, I don't think US immigration policy is sane. But don't think it's naive and is giving money away. It's hard-nosed.

Yeah, well, didn't turn out to be true, did it? For the few hundred years after he said that, the only country that might fit Jefferson's hopeful criteria was Liberia -- and that was founded by people who had to leave America to be free. Meanwhile Americans wiped out the Indians and got started on the rest of the non-white planet, like the Philippines, except fortunately there wasn't too much left by the time they caught up with the Europeans on empire-building. For the century and a half after Jefferson's statement, the world aped the culture of the British (and the Germans and the French -- but of the 3, only the British were really a free people). Then in the twentieth century, as America grew rich and Europe lost its wealth -- surprise -- the world started aping American culture instead. And in all the intervening centuries, the only real freedom that's been spread in the world has been by 1. Empire and decolonisation (the British and French colonial empires), 2. bloody, murderous, foreign war (Western Europe), and 3. economic liberalisation (Eastern Europe and some of Latin America). Latin America is kind of a special case: a combination of revolution, foreign intervention, and unstable democracies dependent on prosperity. (You might say the same about most of Africa.)

No, you'd be shocked at just how much foreign entertainment people can pick up and have their society's worldview untouched. I've seen it first-hand. The only way to get freedom and democracy to stick somewhere seems to me to have it established in a prosperous society for several generations, and keep some level of prosperity. Establishing it can be very hard: apart from war and empire, only gradual economic boosting and intervention seems to work, but it's so easy to get wrong. The EU might prove a good model of doing it right.

Somehow that post is terribly, tragically ironic in light of your sig.

Most people I know (admittedly casual downloaders, I don't know any big-time downloader) use TPB above any other torrent site. I guess I know a guy that uses a private site a lot, but that's it.

Actually most of the laws are still in place. I mean, the legal foundation of India was built during the Raj (as were the railways and goodness knows what else).

Well, executables anyway. :) Cheer up, media pirates!