I saw your earlier (or at least further up the thread) comment about the guy not being able to get a car without permission from a judge, and thought it was rather odd. Now I get to this post where you say actually the guy can't get a car /loan/ without permission. That's completely different - you can (at least in the UK) buy a car for whatever you want to spend. I know someone who bought a car for £100, for example. Yes, it was ancient. Yes, it only lasted a few months, but I bet on a per-month basis she paid less for it than she would for a newer one.

If you need a car that badly for a job, it's possible to find one that won't break the bank.

I agree entirely - I'm not US based, I'm in the UK, and I'm also not in the McJob situation, but after I finished uni, I lived with friends for several years because it was cheaper than living on my own (or with just my girlfriend). It was also a lot more fun! Having friends in the same house is fantastic for your social life so I can't understand why more people don't do it. Granted, you need to get in a situation where you have friends who want to live in the same area... Moving in with random people would be a lot riskier. But if you can manage it, it beats living on your own in practically every way! Then, later in life, when you're ready to settle down a bit more and have some money saved up, that's the time to buy a house or flat.

To be honest, I kinda miss the days of living with friends...

My experience of Blackberry users (UK based) is that they used to consist entirely of "suits", the stereotypical businessman who's got to have his email every second of the day. This was because the Blackberry was the only way to get email on the go, without having to type emails out on a T9 pad. That's changed, as someone said upthread, a lot of those people are now using Iphones, and the more tech savvy are on 'droids.

These days, the typical Blackberry user is the teenage girl who's a text (or these days, BBM) addict. There's been a massive explosion in that group in the last couple of years. This, I believe, is because Blackberries are the cheapest of the smartphones, so teenagers with relatively little spare money can afford to get them on PAYG. It's also the networking effect - they all get Blackberries 'cos all their friends have Blackberries and use BBM to communicate.

I don't know how long the latter group will stick with them for - I don't see any reason, apart from the network effects, why Android and Googletalk couldn't take over, especially with the Google+ group messenger. But while everyone uses Facebook and BBM, everyone will continue to use Facebook and BBM.

IME, it normally depends if you've typed it in yourself. If it's been provided as your "current password", then it's not actually your password 'cos being able to copy/paste would be a ridiculous security flaw, but if you've typed it just then, and not submitted it, copy/pasting usually seems to work.

Are adverts really that bad where you are? Here in the UK, even on the worst of the ad supported channels, the programme starts pretty much when it's scheduled to. There'll typically be one 5 minute ad break in the middle of a half hour programme and another 5 minutes between programmes (rough estimates). Longer programmes have more adverts, of course, but 20 minutes of programme per half hour of real time seems to be pretty typical.

It did mean that when The Simpsons was on BBC2 (ie, no adverts) they were able to shove it in a 20 minute slot. And that I can watch 3 episodes of The Big Bang Theory in an hour if I torrent them. Weirdest thing is watching BBC programmes like Sherlock or Jekyll since they actually last an hour, which makes them feel really long!

In the UK, when i first got a mobile (back in about 2000), cross network calls were very expensive, but landlines and other mobiles on the same network were cheap. These days, all contracts seem to have loads of included minutes which are to any geographic or mobile number (but not freephone or fixed rate, which is a pain). I'm not sure what call costs are like outside of the included minutes as my contracts have always had far more than I use! I'm currently paying £22/mo for an HTC Desire.

Incoming calls have always been free (except when abroad).

Now I want to know if Bethesda went after iD for the blatent copying of Quake III: Arena, from Elder Scrolls I: Arena.

Also, I don't know which came out first... But if Pratchett can be accused of copying Rowling, who is also accused of copying Twilight, anything is possible.

Ummm, so? Would you use the same argument comparing Windows PCs to Apples? The story is about Android, and this part of the thread is Android vs IOS. The number of models don't matter. To some extent, including Ipods and Ipads makes sense because they add more IOS devices in use, but as they're not phones, they're slightly different. Still, including them would make a lot more sense than claiming that lots of options in the Android ecosystem is a bad thing. Different people want different things from their phones. I want something powerful with a decent res screen for watching films and reading ebooks and for it to be easy to copy software and media on and off. My mum wants something small and light so it doesn't take up too much space in her bag. One of my friends wants a huge screen because his eyes aren't as good. Android can satisfy us all (HTC Desire, HTC Wildfire S, Dell Streak respectively), wheras an Iphone would've been a compromise for any of us.

The obvious answer to this is that iPhones are much more expensive than similarly specced Androids. When I bought my HTC Desire, the iPhone 4 had just come out. They were roughly comparable - the iPhone had a better screen, the HTC had a faster processor and more RAM (I think), but they were pretty similar. The Desire was being advertised at £30/mo for 2 years. The iPhone 4 was being advertised at £60/mo for 2 years. I ended up getting my Desire for £22/mo with a bit of bargaining.

Moving to the present, the iPhone 4 is still at £35/mo + £69 upfront or £40/mo. The HTC Sensation, which is leaps and bounds more powerful than the Iphone, is £30/mo.

I disagree, assuming good enough visibility I can happily take roundabouts at 40mph with virtually no slowing down. At least when there's no traffic. If there is traffic, I'll slow down a bit, but can still keep going reasonably quickly if there's nobody coming my way. Wheras at traffic lights there's a ~50% chance of it being red when I get to it. I might be able to time my arrival to a green by slowing down in advance if it's red, but I'll still probably have to slow down more than if it was a roundabout.

I live in Britain, so I (and everyone else on the road) am used to roundabouts. Maybe this is the difference.

I have 240V...

Not true. In my office, faxes are turned into emails. However, because there's no easy way to tell who they're for, they get shoved in a shared folder (that anyone can look at, but noone does) and are very easy to forget about. An email on the other hand sits at the top of my inbox until I've read it, and is nice and easy to search for later.

That is correct. The aging is entirely done in the cask. Once it's bottled, you don't get to change the label every year. :-)

These days, that'd be a channel on Youtube of videos made by various hobbyists, perhaps cherry picked by the people behind the R PI itself.

"The iPhone is price comparable with equivalent smartphones."

Rubbish.

I bought an HTC Desire at about the same time the Iphone 4 came out. The Desire is about the same spec as an Iphone 4, slightly lower res screen, slightly faster processor, generally pretty similar.

The Desire was being advertised at £30/mo, I managed to get mine at £22/mo by wrangling with the network.
The Iphone 4 was available for £65/mo.

So, yeah. More than twice as much (almost three times as much if you take the price I actually got) for a similar phone. The Desire is made of plastic, yes, but it doesn't feel cheap and tacky. And it's comparable to the Iphone 4 for processor and screen.

As another data point, the 3GS was also available at that time. For £35/mo. So, for an extra £5 over the Desire, you could get a much slower phone with less than half the screen resolution. I would also say that the 3GS looks much tackier and less nicely made than the Desire.

I accept this was a significant time ago - now the Iphone 4 is dated and there are much more powerful Android devices available - so I've checked for updated prices. The Iphone 4 is now £35/mo, the Desire S is £25/mo and the HTC Sensation (a much higher specced phone than the Iphone4) is £30.

(all prices are for 24 month contracts, with "free" phones)