I worked on a similar product ten years ago (it was covered on Slashdot twice in '99 or '00) which unfortunately stranded because of perpetual delays (I left at the end of '99) and lack of commitment from distributors and customers, and several rounds of re-engineering everything.

Today it should be a lot easier, given that they can rely on much cheaper off the shelf components and don't have to squeeze everything into minimal amounts of RAM and flash (for the first version we were working with Opera to get it running with a custom GUI in 16MB or 32MB of RAM total, and about the same amount of flash)...

Hope they make it - I want one.

I think you just made PETA's hit list for that comment.

Several countries in Europe and Asia have more than one active cell phone subscription on average per person. Now, not all of those are connected to a phone - some will have more than one sim and just one phone. But many have more than one. My wife has two cell phones she uses (one for "regular" use and one to call her family abroad, with a sim that gives lower rates for those calls), and one "backup". I have two - the one I used, and a cheap, extra crappy one I got for free as a replacement when I lost my last one. I just threw out a third one today.

I know the US has been lagging behind Europe and the more high tech Asian countries in this area, but I doubt you're lagging that much.

Also regarding replacement rate: Here in the UK the phones can be upgraded for free or a heavily reduced rate on contract renewal, every 12 or 18 months for most people. While some people may keep their phone longer, a huge percentage of phones are replaced at that rate, and a lot of people regularly upgrade because they happens to want to as well. I doubt the US is lagging that far behind in this area as well.

The position for the media in China is not nearly as dire as you paint it. The media does make a stink. Frequently. It does expose corrupt officials. It does demand things.

The difference being that they are careful about not questioning ideology or the top party brass, so they wouldn't dare expose any corruption at the highest levels (unless sanctioned by the "right" people - which can and does happen when someone has fallen out of favor).

I still agree with you, though. The limited ability they have to openly criticize things is not sufficient.

Just because I feel like being a pedant: The US covers less than 7% of the worlds land mass and less than 2% of the globe. Don't know where you got "a quarter of the globe" from unless you're envisaging an occupation of Russia and Canada or something.

Protection of life and freedom against arbitrary decisions in the UK date back to the Magna Carta (1215, with the version currently "on the books" in England dating to 1295), the Petition of Rights (1628), the Habeas Corpus Act of (1679), and the Bill of Rights and Claim of Rights (1689), which combined set out the foundation for ensuring fair trials and protections against punishment without trials etc. (and which are reflected in large part in current US law as well...). In the intervening centuries there has been a number of acts adding to these rights.

In addition, by passing the European Communities Act (1972), the UK parliament made EU law supreme to UK law in a number of areas, which means that the EU human rights legislation is binding, providing additional rights.

If anything, the complexity of UK constitutional law in the form of those (and many other) acts, principles and court judgements makes it harder for government to just change things, as the UK court are loathe to let parliament get away with that kind of thing unless they have made pretty damn sure to dot all their i's and that what they try to do is not inconsistent with other laws or principles (in which case they'd have to revoke or replace those as well to get their way with the courts).

Governments have tried "simply decreeing" more than once, and had the courts tell them they are simply wrong. Specificially, they've been told several times that what they've tried to do is in violation of EU law, and thanks to the European Communities Act, they can't override EU law.

After passing that act the situation has become quite complex, as there are some legal scholars that argue that this act actually limited parliamentary sovereignty, and that the UK parliament thus can't actually just revoke it, and revoking it would be the only way for the government to take away any rights guaranteed in the European Charter of Human Rights (revoking it would also mean leaving the EU).

If the courts agree with that assessment, then barring the EU itself revoking the charter the government would not have a legal way of modifying those rights in any way other than adding to them.

Now, there are many things lacking in the UK constitution, and I agree that having it in a clear, written form would make things easier (and at the very least make people more likely to be aware of what rights they actually have), but the situation is quite a lot better than what most people complaining about (lack of) rights in the UK think it is.

Meanwhile, in the UK, democracy was largely introduced by parliament itself. Ever since the Magna Carta, officials in the royal council that slowly turned into an elected parliament have been chipping away at the monarchy and expanding the electoral base, only briefly interrupted by the civil war and Cromwell.

It's a history were power has largely been handed downward as a result of demonstration and pressure rather than armed action, and where most of the armed action has been between regular armies

If YOU had read a history book you might have seen that there is a lot of diversity in how democracy has come about in various countries, as well as in how it has been defended when under threat, and that includes a lot of cases where armed ordinary citizens had minimal impact.

I bought at least a 10 day supply last time I needed anything (just a few weeks back). In fact, the only time I have ever been told I couldn't buy the quantity I wanted was when I on a whim tried buying two packs of paracetamol (acetaminophen for Americans) .

The "worst" case is that you go out of the pharmacy and back in 5 minutes later (or to another one) - if it's important to you and they are being difficult.

If you want to buy something that is potentially lethal or used to make drugs, then yes, there are restrictions (pseudoephedrine, for example, but that's mostly replaced by phenylephrine in most products anyway). Those restrictions might seem silly, but they are there because idiots do actually use those drugs to harm or kill themselves fairly regularly - paracetamol and alcohol being a "popular" combination (apparently spending days in massive pain while dying of acute liver failure is a fun way to go...)

There is this implement called a "fork". Maybe you have heard of it?

Knife crime is a growing problem

Is it? Or are the newspapers just writing more about it?

Remember a few years ago when gun crime was the "big thing"? Despite the stats showing that only a vanishingly small fraction of violent crimes in the UK involved a gun at the time... It was an impression created almost exclusively by the media with the help of family and friends of victims that were trotted out as "evidence" of how Britain was facing a plague of gun crime.

I am not saying knife crime isn't a problem - it is certainly a bigger problem than gun crime has been in this country since before the hand gun ban -, but I haven't seen any stats, just reports from the same media that never retracted or apologized for their unsupported "We are all going to be shot to death, OMG!!!!" scare stories.

The UK has one of the best public health care systems in the world. Of course it has it's issues, but generally it fares very well. More importantly NHS patients generally rate the quality of the NHS very highly.

My wife and I have both been through various treatments, and it's always been quick, high quality, and efficient. There's been the odd minor hiccup, but that's all.

The biggest "problem" with the NHS is that some people expect it to be a luxury service. That is not the goal. The goal is to provide a good and cost effective health service for the entire population. If people wish, nothing stops them from paying for private care or taking out insurance to "top up" the care received on the NHS, such as going to a private hospital *if* there is a long waiting list for a particular NHS service..

Yes, you can expect to wait for non-emergency operations, and if that's an issue you can either pay for a specific operation privately or pay a little bit for private insurance.

That's what you have to expect with a publicly funded system: While I am perfectly happy to pay taxes towards universal health care, people are simply not willing to pay for the amount of excess capacity needed to avoid queues completely.

In fact, only about 10% of the population see that as worthwhile enough to pay even a couple of hundred pounds a year for comprehensive private insurance that lets them avoid the queues. That in itself is a pretty damn good testament that the capacity tradeoff for the NHS is just about right.

4. if drive wiped itself, charge suspect of violating RIPA by not handing over the genuine password, and get him thrown in jail regardless of the content of the drive.

A lot of the enterprise SSD's are RAM with battery backup and a smart controller that will dump the RAM to a disk before the battery runs out, though, not flash. I'm assuming the GP meant flash

Still, your point holds even for flash based SSD's.

That's totally chip/device specific. I've written drivers for flash drives with a totally flat address space.