And scaled back to be a rector on top of mount Snowdon.

The reason why the police do not pursue an arrest/beat up all these morons here, is because soem of them actually relish the notion of fighting with the police, and also know that if the police gets too engaged they will probably engage more support from other morons.

This is why other tactics are used, such as you are NOT allowed to re-sell football tickets, they can only be sold from the offical places or their permitted agents. Other tickets (thertre, shows, etc) do not have this restriction.

During the final, many tried to get into the staduim without tickets. One lady who came with her kids was adamant that she believed that all english shoudl be allowed to see it for free, and believed that was the case.

Absolutely correct, and in fact even when they did finally go drm free, it was a kludge called itunes plus, with a limited library and 30% more expensive over the DRM versions, justifying it by saying they were "higher quality", upon which Amazon simply increased their own bitrate.

But the real clincher was that if you had already purchased the DRM version, you would have to "repurchase" the non drm version AT FULL COST!

Amazon made mockery of that by shortly afterwards allowing their users to even download High quality MP3s of music CDs that were purchased on their store for free.

Actually that have started showing a really good "open" freedom on their PC platform. Take the recent Microsoft Flight Simulator 2020. From release they launch on both their own MS Store, AND Steam simulateously (in fact certain regions - america - were able to install via steam a few hours before the MS Store). And there is a DVD version.

Payments made in the game would go through the respective store it was purchased from. However, you are not limited to the market place either, as you can still install yourself, both payware and free community stuff, and some third parties have their own "store" (such as orbx) for MSFS. That is actually a very good model moving forward, with plenty of choice.

Thats where you may be a little out of date. AMD ARE making huge inroads on the server market with the Epyc chips. the big scale datacentres, the ones that buy in bulk, Amazon, etc, are going for the Epics in greater numbers than ever. And its not just for the price.

And even to their compeitors, for example, the didn't HAVE to help microsoft with its Chromium based Edge browser, or Android based surface, but actually they worked WITH microsft in a positive way, despite what may have been many years of antagonism between the two companies.

Credit to both of them.

To be fair, the standard Home edition of 365 also comes with access and publisher too, albiet you cannot use it for commercial use. But yeah, most coorporates do use the higher tiers. Not sure about government though.

Thats the problem, those dont just use the "Game Port" part of the interface, which only support a max of 4 axis, and 4 buttons, and certainly no two way communications. They also use the soundblaster/compatible midi bolted onto the gameport for the additional buttons/force feedback.

Most USB -> Gameport adapters do NOT support the MIDI requirements, and will fail with those flightsticks.

Oh dear, sometimes you really need to understand the system you are critisizing before you critisize it.

Do you mean Java the language or Java the run time?

Java the language has nothing that makes it slower or faster than any other language, such as C++ or ObjC. Like all languages, a crap code = crap performance.

If you are talking about the Runtime, again, you are wrong. Firstly, Android uses the Dalvik Runtime, not Java. Since 2.2, it has used a JIT compiler, which in itself gives very much near native performance on "tight" code.

Since Android 5.0 lollipop, it has a AOT Compiler, all apps are converted to native code on installation, therefore all code is native.

Finally, your proposition that iOS is easier to port, is also very very wrong, based on the actual evidence and reality. Today, you are seeing android apps running on all types of platforms, such as windows/mac via bluestacks (http://www.bluestacks.com/) on blackberrys, and many others. IOS appas can only run NATIVELY on ios devices (even on a Mac PC it has to be compiled as an x86 app first to run on the emulator)

Not to be too pedantic, but MTP actually has certain benefits over USB mass storage. It doesn't require the SD card be unmounted first, which causes many problems with appa which use SD card storage. Also file reads are atomic on MTP which is also important for these devices.

There are some downsides to MTP but practically it works. And is a lot better than Apples nonexistent file system access.

Feel sorry for us Brits who have to deal with both, in a confusing mishmatch :)

Metric for most things, with some bizarre use of imperial for inertia reasons.

road/railway speeds - imperial(mph), scientific speeds, and any other speed, metric.

road distances (signs usually are in miles/yards or fractions), however, the distance markers on the side of the motorways used by workers, etc are in KM.

Car economy is in mpg (though our gallon is slightly bigger than the US gallon), but we buy our fuel in litres, and
pay for it in litres. Possibly a good thing considering the price.

Most items are bought in a supermarket are given metric mesurements for weight and volume, eg litres for drinks, grams/kg for food weights, yet MILK is still sold in pints.

Beer is still sold in pints in a pub....

or rather:
d) Leave s40 exactly as it is.

The people who buy this do NOT want a smartphone. Just a simple phone that is cheap (around the £10-£20 mark), durable, makes calls and text, long battery life, easy to use, and maybe have a torch/fm radio, at the most have bluetooth. There is NO need to replace S40, it is not broken.

I have both 7 Ultimate and 8.1 on my computer (dual boot on seperate SSDs). Her is my positives and negatives of Windows 8 over win 7.

Positives:
- Really fast and smooth compared to Win 7. The difference is noticeable, even in boot up.
- I am not too bothered with metro itself, nor do I care much for the loss of the start menu. Rarely used it on seven other than to open frequently used app, or search for other apps. I rarely even know whats on my start menu aall programs list, as its hardly used)
- Lightweight. It appears that Microsoft have finally got rid of some in built junk
- Metro apps have their uses. I can think of many types of apps that I would rather not have to install into my windows system normally (as an admin no less) complete with the potential to add further junk to my system folders complete with system wide spyware, and being unable to guarentee a clean uninstall. Metro apps seem to be a bit better isolated.

Negatives:
- Metro apps are still tooo touch focused, and certain things are less intuitiuve with KB and mouse only.
- MEtro apps and dual monitors. Despite the improvements in Windows 8.1, there are still huge usability problems still existing for dual screen users. For example, when running a metro app on the left hand screen, its more involved to bring up the charms panel with just the mouse. Whereas with a single screen, you can blindly flick the mouse up and to the right until it gets to the upper right corner to bring up the charms panel, with a dual monitor, the mouse will simply go to the next screen, making the user have to concentrate more in actually positioning the pointer in the exact region to show the panel.
- I still feel the desktop UI is very poor. I enjoyed aero on Win vista, and more so on 7. The transparency effects give me a lot of cues to order, and overlap. The new UI is frankly ugly, and personally a lot worse than win 7.

Even in the USA there are "bribes" paid by businesses. Its called campaign donations, political sponsorship, etc and is quite legal.

Find out how much the companies such as Google, Microsoft, Apple, Exxon, Big Cigarette, Media, etc pay as political donations... Bet your bottom dollar there are strings attached.

It is corruption, for in a true DEMOCRATIC government it should be the desires of the voters that dictate the laws and governance moving ahead.

One person one Vote, and not One Dollar One Vote

You are not going to get hammered. I agree, the Windows Phone interface is actually very good from what I felt when I played around with a Lumia. Its other things about the OS that makes me stick with Android.

To be honest, although I myself would NOT be interested in a Windows OS phone, I can see my parents being quite comfortable with one.

Now coming to windows 8.... thats a different kettle of fish! They should have kept a limited aero for desktop use. I completely hate the lack of contrast on the new desktop (I do not mind the metro interface in "metro" world, I just HATE the desktop interface)