Don't forget the ARM chip, which runs most mobile phones!

It seems funny that "Pirates! In an adventure with Scientists!" had to be renamed for the US release since Science is seen as some sort of swear word over there. And that the BBC documentary "Frozen Planet" had to have its seventh episode withheld from some areas since it mentions climate change, and the other episodes dubbed over.

I think you may be double counting some of those countries! The people who have lived on the Falkland islands for 180 years might say that South Georgia and South Sandwich islands are not that independent, and you have France in there three times (St Pierre et Miquelin, french guyana and guadalupe all send deputies to the french parliament and are EU citizens) :-)

When you are driving you shouldn't really be watching TV.

Well there was this Italian bloke who went in that direction in 1492 (which is before 1766). I had a friend who is a descendant of native americans, negro slaves, lost pacific tribe (the Moriori) and the Irish. These things happen!

Do you not get points on your license for that? In the UK if you speed for example you will get points on your license, which could result in you being disqualified. And if you drive while disqualified you... can get more points on your (now non-existent) license. (Um, huh?)

Are US schools really that bad? At schools I went to they tried to stop students from taking drugs, not put them on some! (this was years ago though).

I went to a few schools when I grew up, some of which did not have good academic reputations, and they just let me take the class (and exams) a year higher for subjects I was good at. Admittedly the time-table confusion for one year did mean for some classes I was sitting in a desk in the corridor, but at least I didn't have to resort to time travel like Hermione did in the harry potter books.

Being good at maths is quite common I would have though (compared to e.g. being good at History) but perhaps not as common as being good at a language (if you are bilingual). Do Hispanic kids get put in the same year in Spanish classes as beginners or do they get a more advanced course?

Is this some post from the future, where Italy, Germany, France, Belgium, Netherlands and Luxembourg all have their own currencies that they are manipulating? I know the Euro is a bit weak but it hasn't actually split up yet! And an attempt to impose different tariffs on different members of the EU is just asking for middlemen to work their way around that (and piss off the commission obviously). I will refrain from commenting on the merits of protectionism itself.

Hey at one school I went to we all had to clean the school. Divided into four houses, each of which had the duty for a week. You got a bit of pride in the school from it being spotless, and didn't mess it up so much in the first place.

Well I could see housemates or flatmates as being a lot less annoying than roommates. If you are in separate rooms you can at least turn lights on without waking people up, or getting annoyed by peoples' farts. And there is the possibility of bringing someone home.

"should". Ha ha. You mean like the Ariane 5 rocket should not have exploded when some unimportant logging function failed. Behold the mighty power of hardware traps on exceptions.

You are building/repairing historical reenactment stuff that uses different measurements from modern (19th century) English or modern American units? I am surprised it does not have the tolerance to use standard tools! Some "American Customary Measurements" do have the same names as "Imperial Measurements" as used in England (pints of beer and milestones on highways), but are not the same. For example volumes (pints, gallons) are noticeably different between England and America. An English pint is bigger of course, since it will hold beer not some sort of brewed rice drink. Also distance (inches, miles) are very slightly different since the US statute mile and the International mile were defined (in terms of metric of course) at different times. I think they are out by an eighth of an inch over a mile, which you would need decent GPS and long distances to notice.

I apologise. It seems I am wrong about that; I am sure I read at the time that they were involved but it seems they were not, at least in a major way. However, Bin Laden group has been awarded the contract for the "Kingdom Tower" which is taller than the Burj Khalifa, and is building the very tall mosque clock, and has a joint venture with a company Arabtec (Dubai) that helped Samsung (Korea) and Besix (Belgium and Egypt) build the burj.

"the elements of computing systems" will get you from logic gates to cpu design to assembler to writing a compiler in 300 easy pages.

Yeah, but the Burj Khalifa was built by the Bin Laden family. Apparently they are good at skyscrapers. Didn't get the new york contract though...