I am insinuating nothing of the kind. If you read what I have said and what you quoted I have not stated that Google passes personal user details on directly to the customer. That categorised data becomes the product which Google sells via their advertising program. As you have said, they sell targeted advertising and without user data supplied via interaction with their services there would be no product for them to sell. I would be interested to know how you know exactly what Google does with the data they collect however. Perhaps you work for them?

Exactly how do you think they "target" that advertising? They use algorithms applied to the data supplied by the users through their interaction with the Google services including search history, chats, contact lists etc. to categorise what the users' and their friends' and contacts' interests are, what socio-economic category they fall into, and where they are geographically. That data is the Google product and that is what they sell.

There is a fundamental difference to your example. When you visit a restaurant, you as the diner are the customer, the restaurant is the supplier and the product is the food and service. I think you misundertand the Google service user's relationship to Google. The service user isn't the customer. Google encourages the user to provide personal data in return for access to a service. That data then becomes Google's product which Google then sells on businesses and organisations - it's actual customers. It is the data customers who have the customer - supplier relationship.

The market is probably for people who like the Bolex film camera - they still make the H16 (16mm) camera in electric or mechanical versions. The market for these is mostly small film makers or wealthy hobbyists. Some higher budget films are also still shot on 16mm for atmospheric effect with the added grain giving a rawer or grittier "more real-life" effect.

Of course! You can listen while sitting on anything you wish.

I agree, the Unicomp has exactly the same feel (and sound) as the Model M and far superior build and 'heft' compared to most keyboards. Well worth the money and I've bought three from them. Model Ms - certainly here in the UK - are very hard to come by and ultra expensive when they come up with a UK layout. The Unicomp, even with the high shipping cost from the US and import duty, comes in at around £100. I did manage to banjax one by spilling coffee over it but barring future liquid intrusion, my other two are going strong and feel like they'll last a lifetime - just like the Model M.

Me too. My 11C is 32 years old and my daily user. The design is near perfect and only bettered by the 15C for it's complex number handling in my humble opinion. I must admit I was never a fan if TIs, always considering HP to have much better quality and of course, RPN. The output from HP these days is all from China and the build quality nowhere near what it was - the only plus is that they still make a few RPN models.

Drop the "ucken" and you would be very close to the truth.

WordPerfect?

Each control system requires comparatively little processing power but high reliability and redundancy. As an example, the back-up flight computer on the space shuttles was an HP-41CV/CX pocket calculator and later, an HP42S. These models were chosen specifically for build quality, reliability and lack of known inherent bugs, oh - and low outgassing.

This is yet another example of politicians throwing money at technology to try and solve problems of policy and administration. It's a bit like buying a new TV to cure a broken leg. Nothing but a distraction.

I'm using Mate 1.4 and it is good and definitely improving. There are still some bits of integration, especially in the file manager, which could do with improvement but it's coming along at a pace considering they are also removing a lot of redundant code from Gnome 2. The user experience in pretty near to the final versions of Gnome 2 and coming versions should be even better. Overall, very nice.