I think it's fair to say that it's not that all Americans are ignorant, just that the loudest Americans, that the rest of the world has to deal with are pretty damn ignorant. Seriously, the world is full of stupid, ignorant people but you Americans have your own special breed that is almost totally unique.

Yeah but even Jesus seemed to be a bit of a condescending, tree killing dickish person. Of course when the bible says something awesome happens Christians take it literally and claim it happened just as it's written, but when Jesus does something dickish, like killing a tree simply because he wanted fruit but the tree was out of season then it's "meant as a metaphor" so say people "who have r teh studied the bible for yearz and yearz", so what the fuck do I know.

I've not seen Ancient Aliens in the UK, but we have a show called "Most Haunted" here where they visit so called, haunted places, and it pretty much sounds like the same thing, any noise, anything slightly strange that can't instantly be explained is labelled as a ghost.

...or the crazy glint on the face of first crackpot president, that decides to point it at whichever country the USA has decided is the bad guy next time around. Sorry, couldn't resist.

As much as I'm against Sony's recent lockdown on things like this, what they are doing here is perfectly acceptable, if you want to hack your console then you shouldn't expect to be able to use the online game servers, they need to control hackers and cheaters. This is no different from Microsofts stance.

...and apply a WebOS like switch that roots the phone instead. I'm having trouble seeing what the problem is.

You seem a little out of touch with a number of things you've posted, for example those independent handset makers are selling phones that are very much intended to be rooted (in fact they are rooted, out of the box), that's the whole point. I'm not even sure what you're talking about. I'm not talking about Samsung or HTC here. You can also add to the list WebOS, which has a small option to turn on "developer mode", which when selected roots the phone, that's it, a simple press of an option. Microsoft is also going down the same route with Nokia WP7's. I do get your want for a rooted open phone, I just don't think the outlook is as bad as you say it is. Google and indie handset makers are selling rooted Android phones out of the box. Several large handset makers like HTC make their phones relatively simple to root and others allow a simple developer mode toggle that roots the phone for those that want to.

Sorry but I'm having trouble seeing where Apple have come off badly in all that...

Thanks for this, I LOVED WebOS on my Pre but I just couldn't handle the bad hardware. I love my Android phone but I honestly will think about a WebOS phone and tablet in about a year. So yeah, this is really good info for me, I hardly had the phone before I managed to break the slider (and then again on another before I gave up)

...er criminals...?

Apart from Google selling root friendly Android phones, as well as some small independent handset makers selling root friendly Android phones, HTC selling phones that can be rooted with a mouse click and the only actual handset maker to back up your claim of locking down the bootloader that I know of is Motorolla. Also Microsoft is embracing the hacker community over Windows 7 phone thus far. So yeah, other than all those phones.

I know you might find this hard to accept, but Apple actually did this with the iPad. The first iPad version of iOS never hit the iPhone and iOS 4 wasn't available on the iPad at release. They slowly blended them together, which, shock horror, is pretty much exactly was Google is doing with Android.

While I agree I don't think anyone would ever beg to be made gay (I mean, lets face it, if you did want to be made gay then I'd imagine you probably already are gay), someone begging to be made straight is likely doing it because society is telling them they are freaks/whatever and making them feel like they have to conform or "be normal", creating a long line of gay people that grow up loathing themselves. Then some people (the "you don't see me shouting about bein' a hetro' " type) wonder why so many gay people, finally at terms with being gay and happy with themselves, like to shout it out loud and be in peoples faces with it.

Hurray! More views for your blog, you pretty much got what you wish for at Christmas.

You don't actually have to write any Java to create Android apps now, you could use 100% C++ if you wanted, as of 2.3.