Galileo/GPS are useful for so much more than just navigation. Being able to get a very accurate time signal anywhere in the world is very useful too. In my line of work we deploy seismometers to the bottom of the ocean, and the clocks on these instruments to be accurate to microseconds. We can get this kind of accuracy in the middle of the atlantic with nothing more than a 2U rackmount GPS clock and a small antenna. With chip-scale atomic clocks becoming widely available, having Galileo available as an even more accurate time source will be very useful.

That graph shows a general trend for warming since 1979, the last dip in the graph can hardly be treated as heading into a cooling phase as it has only been sustained for a very short period of time. It is hard to draw meaningful conclusions from anything less than a decadal timescale, especially considering that the sun's output varies on an approximately 11 year cycle (Solar Variation).

Just a quick one as I'm drunk and tired; but our most accurate climate models so far (as quantified by starting them in approx 1870, running them to the present, and comparing results with reality) show that in the absence of anthropogenic forcing (i.e. CO2, aerosol and methane input by humans), we should have in fact experienced cooling over the last decade or so. The fact that we have experienced warming is then even worse than it initially appears.

Also, I am sick of people trotting out 'correlation does not imply causation' argument all the time. Yes, it is true, but in this case there is a clear and proven causal link: increased greenhouse gas emissions enhances the greenhouse gas effect which leads to more radiative energy being trapped in the Earth's atmosphere.

As someone working in this field, I would just like to make some clarifications. The term 'Climate Change' is better viewed as two separate questions: is climate change occurring, and if so, is it due to human influence? The first question is effectively settled; temperatures are increasing and extreme weather events are occurring more frequently. The second question is more complex, although the vast scientific consensus is that it is indeed due to human influence. In particular, the greenhouse effect has been conclusively proven. The slightly-informed seem to misinterpret scientific uncertainty (a very specific term referring to statistical probabilities) with a much more general 'scientists aren't sure if this is true or not'.

It is true that there is a long way to go in climate science. However, this is no reason not to teach it in schools. There are many unknowns in the science (as with any field of science); these should not be understated, but neither should they be overstated - it would not be helpful for teachers to spread yet more excessive doubt. Finally, it is of particular importance that climate science is taught in school - the consequences of climate change are likely to be extremely grave for mankind and will impact the next generation much more than this one.

I'm Irish, and can suggest two phones if you're looking for something... cost-effective ;).

Samsung Galaxy 5 Europa, 45 euro: http://three.ie/shop/products/samsung-europa-black.html?_selectedTariff=prepay&_defaultPriceplan=9
Vodafone Smart, 60 euro: http://www.vodafone.ie/offers/vodafone-smart/

Why do I recommend these? Well, a disclaimer: I develop unofficial CyanogenMod 7 ports for both of these phones ;). Although CM7 doesn't support wifi proxy natively, you can use a third-party app such as TransProxy on CM7.

P.S. I recommend the Samsung phone - it's better than the Smart, despite the lower price.

Yes, GEB is awesome. But it doesn't have anything to do with this. You can check every input, it may just take a while.

Thanks for bringing that to everyone's attention (I'm the author of the guide).

The instructions are a little shaky for 64bit users at the moment, though. Hardy's version of the user-land ALSA libraries are too old to function well with PulseAudio, and it's difficult to package updated 32bit libraries that already exist in the massive ia32-lib package.