EU grants asylum to Snowden. That would send the message home quite effectively.

Yes, the Israelis routinely spy on their sugar daddy. That attitude is but one of the many reasons that Israel is one of the worlds least popular countries, almost break even with North Korea. I don't think you should use them as an example of why that's OK. Incidentally the USA is less popular than the EU.

I took a ten month holiday once, does that count?

Right now I can only cover around 9 months without calling on credit; using lines of credit available to me without asking I can go around three years (at 1.25% p.a. compound).

What, that's meant to be hard? When I was young, yes. But monthly payments back then? No trouble at all.

Mortgage + car loan can be enough, especially if you're on low income.

Hell, my mortgage is 40% of my pre-tax salary at my first job. That makes it over 50% of net salary, and my mortgage isn't much more then renting a single room these days (I bought when houses were rather cheaper).

When I bought my first house my mortgage worked out at 18% of gross salary, or 23% of net salary, or (taking into account travel costs to work, bills, food, etc) around 120% of disposable income. I had to get a lodger.

Get a mortgage these days for the same property at the same loan-to-deposit ratio on the same salary and you're looking at the basic mortgage being over 50% of the gross salary.

naivete

fucking slashdot

Which school of naÃveté did you fail to graduate from?

I have a good 7.1 / 5.1 headset for gaming. Just not something I want to wear when watching TV.

I bet my mortgage that France is spying on Germany.

Friends?

Actually for me it's sod all - I'm slightly deaf and my neighbours get upset at noise so there's no point buying expensive sound systems.

On the flipside it means I still need to go to the cinema for a full sound experience :)

Now consider that I bought a top-end 56" tv for watching sport and old films (in HD, although it supports 3D too) already anyway.

Incremental cost to get cinema grade sound? Not a whole lot.

Sure, it's "only" 56" and not 120". I don't have 120" of wall anyway, and I don't have to turn my head. I'm also sat reasonably close to it.

So yes, of course, total price is high. Incremental price? Nope.

You've done that? Far out.

It's kinda fixed, with judicious use of cargo-cult apt and dpkg incantations.

I've never been able to stick with Ubuntu for more than an hour, much less upgrade it... :)

Well it helps if you install FVWM and a few other nice tools :)

When you go out and demand that spaces be "cologne free" because of your supposed chemical sensitivities, then you are being discourteous.

Depends. If you were to go on the tube at ruch hour and and wear a whole bottle of "essence of strongly allergy inducing pollen", I'd say that you were being discorteous. I think there's something of a continum. If you have strong allergies to very common things, then you can't expect the world to accomodate you the whole time. On the other hand, wearing something that many people are seneitive to in a crowded place is still deeply antisocial.

Or another take on it: if you wear something in public that people are known to be allergic to, you can't expect not to be sneezed on. The amount of being sneezed on increases with the likelihood of people being allergic to whatever you wear.

It just lacks a decent editor

No it doesn't. Try the following:

M-x term
vi

I said nothing about using phones in movie theaters.

Given the thread topic and the wording you used, it was not a terribly unsurprising inference to draw, especially as this thread is about a pet peeve and annoyance for many people.

There are no 9-11pm sessions of these movies where you live?

Depends on the cinema. I generally prefer to be home a bit earlier if possible and it seems that they type of parent who is happy to browse facebook through "Wreck it Raplh" doesn't mind taking the kids to a 9-11 screening anyway. Fortunately some cinemas have started instigating over 18s screening for non 18 rated films which does greatly improve things, and some cinemas are a little more upmarket and attract different clientel.

Naturally, I've come to try to avoid screenings with such behaviour, but I was offering some insight into who would do such a thing.