I have a friend who used to work for one of the large charitable organisations as a statistician. He always said that his org didn't spend the money donated directly, they invested it. I know that sounds Bad and I didn't like the sound of my charity donations going into stocks, until he pointed out that the return on the investments meant that after a while, this strategy meant they ended up with a lot more to spend on charitable works than they could have done if they had just spent the donations. It made such a difference that it would have been irresponsible of them to just go out and spend.

So in some cases, it's not a war chest they're building. It's the charity squeezing as much benefit out of your donation as they possibly can and that, I think, is a very good thing.

By the way, he also said that one-off donations basically just pay for the campaign that solicited them. The campaign also gains them a smaller number of regular payments, and those are what funds good works. So if you're thinking about giving, consider signing up for a monthly payment instead of a one-off. It makes a difference.

The thing that bothers me here is the illusion that under the current system the populace has any means of control of the government.

I get to cast a single vote once every four or five years. I live in a country with more than 2 political parties, so normally the majority of people's votes aren't for the new ruling party. Whoever gets in is under no obligation to fulfil the promises they made to gain my vote, and in this country at least politicians are notorious for not doing so.

I'd like to believe in your view of the world, truly I would. But from where I'm sitting (GB), it looks very much like I get a five-yearly 1/60,000,000 part of the decision about who gets to do whatever they like for the next four years.

Practically speaking, I wouldn't say I have any more input into the political process through voting than I would have had in a monarchy, and for that reason I cannot agree with your notion that voting brings about *actual* change. It demonstrably doesn't.

I largely agree with what you're saying, the unstoppable momentum of bureaucracy is something that isn't changed easily. I did want to say something about this part though:

If you believe in the principle of presumption of innocence, until there's a trial these people are innocent. Not one of them is "actually dangerous". I know that's an idealistic stance to take, but presumtion of innocence is like freedom of speech; it's meaningless unless you apply it to the situations where you don't want to. If there's evidence and jurisdiction, try them. If not, let them go. It's that simple.

There may well be dangerous people amongst the hundreds or thousands of prisoners we've taken during the Bush wars and setting them free would be a bad thing, but it pales against the evil of keeping hundreds of innocent men imprisoned without trial for years on end. We're supposed to be better than that.

You know, I'm no expert on international relations so this might just be the media doing a number on me, but what you've written here looks remarkably similar to how the US treats the rest of the world.

The US had a unilateral information flow coming from Europe for years until the EU stopped it last year. It still maintains trade embargoes against a variety of countries whilst persuing a policy of protectionism for it's own trade. And the fact that you even have the concept of a "Free speech zone" speaks volumes about the individual's sovereignty over their opinions.

I'm not saying the US is better or worse than China, just that a lot of the things that USians appear to think differentiate them from the Chinese actually don't.

Thing is, I don't see the GP singling out any particular religion. From a non-religious person's point of view, they're all inherently dangerous and borderline schizophrenic. You're talking about belief in the existance of non-human entities that tell you to act in certain ways, without being able to produce any evidence of their actual existence. "The voices told me to do it" sounds insane to most people, yet if "God told me to do it" society still considers you sane for some unexplained reason.

I can remember terrorist attacks on the UK by christians, muslims and sikhs within the past 30 years - is it any wonder that everyone, religious or otherwise, has had enough of each religion's continual "We're generally a peaceful group" line?

Why? It hasn't been that way for the past several thousand years, what makes you think it's necessary now?

If you mean government should be open and transparent then that's what you should be asking for, not demanding without reason that government must use a particular software model.

Exceptional individuals do emerge despite their disadvantageous environment, but the majority will fail, and ignoring them won't work. Money will either be spent on assistance or on prison, and the latter is a lot more expensive. I don't think we need to choose between welfare programs and space though. The "huge amounts" given to the black poor are negligible compared to the trillions spent on coddling the wealthy and wasted on war and other insane endeavors.

An open standard is the first step, and MS knows this which is why they fight against it so hard...

OO may lag behind today, but for a large number of users it would already be more than adequate to their needs. For many of these users, compatibility with other people using MS is what stops them using OO. An open standard levels the playing field and removes incompatibility as a problem.
With an open standard, you would see casual users moving to OO or other free alternatives, as well as other pay suites like wordperfect starting to retake market share.
The extra users and attention would result in increased development of these suites.
You would also see new players entering the now competitive market...
The extra competition would also force MS to start competing by improving their product and/or lowering prices.

Also consider that many companies will quite happily use something inferior if it is significantly cheaper, that's how MS got to where they are today after all - they pushed their products which were massively inferior to Novell and Unix (often laughably so) but for a fraction of the cost.

But the GP is right, i am happy to see another government moving away from proprietary formats and i hope others do so too. Open standards are good for everyone except the owner of the proprietary system they replace... Governments should do things which benefit their people, that doing so is detrimental to MS is irrelevant since even in the US, MS is a very tiny percentage relative to the people and organisations who would benefit from open standards.

It's the same with various PC OEMs introducing gestures to their trackpads. The problem is, the trackpads are plastic garbage, the gestures are unwieldy, and it's just nothing like an Apple multitouch trackpad - at all. I think these new tablets are going to be the same. iPod touch and the 2G iPhone were lackluster and "underwhelming" at launch, too. And then OS 2.0 came along and blew everyone else out of the water. Killer apps are on their way for the iPad, rest assured.

That 200 bil was gonna get spent, anyhow, through the state medicaid system picking up the tab for the uninsured who are forced into bankruptcy, thus defaulting on their medical bills. Likely, actually, there will be a savings, as the collection agencies will be cut out of the middle thus eliminating a whole layer of cost that will more than offset the beureaucratic expense incurred. It's not an added expense, but a shifted cost with a more consolidated base of purchasing power. It's also very good for the credit health of the lower, working and middle classes, and therefore the consumer economy as a whole. But then again, it is California. So, yeah, chances are they'll bone it.

I was merely commenting on price. They are selling something priced as much as a decked out laptop, yet has only 1/3 of the features of one.

Simply counting the number of features on a list isn't an effective way of comparing value. It doesn't matter how many more features something has if it doesn't do the important ones well.

People can spend their money however they want, obviously...I'm just suprised that so many people are convincing themselves to spend more money for less product.

That's relative. If you value usability and quality components then you're actually getting quite a lot more than most netbooks or laptops (OS tailored to the device, IPS display). You're also paying to get all that technology in a small package, which can also count as a feature.

Agreed, doing it out of the box would have been a bit silly given the size of the market...but it is a market willing to spend. Apple should at least offer this as an accessory package. As you said, there will likely be others that will do it anyways.

Maybe they will at a later stage, but it's not Apple's style to do everything at once. There are many little niches that they could have developed the iPad more towards, but by only focusing on core functionality to begin with, they build a stronger product to expand upon.

My point was that claiming that everything works in Windows isn't true, just like it is in Ubuntu.

Ubuntu: "update every single progam I've installed, as well as the operative system, now! (click)"

Windows: "The update manager needs to reboot your machine, now!. You have 34 applications installed. Go to the website of every single one of them, find an updated version, and reinstall each one manually! Buahahahaha!".

I'd like to see that computer after 2 years of browsing stuff with IE, clicking on every link that says "click here to win a price". That's the kind of punishment I'm talking about I mean when I say "grandma usage". Your "Techy usage" can't compare with that.

but, how long will MS stay true to the ODF format, just because its a 'standard' doesnt mean they won't throw their own proprietary sh#t into the mix, they have done this before with other standards

That didn't sound right so I had to check.
From tfl.gov.uk:

So basically, you only need a permit if you're hanging around doing a proper shoot. Nobody has ever bothered me when I've taken shots while waiting for trains.
Quoted because it's a stupid session-based URL, but you can find it under tfl.gov.uk > Help and contact > Search common questions > Tube > Search for "photo" > First result.