These pens are awesome; their cases however seem cheap and nasty - there seems to be an industry built around making quality bodies for them.

Locale has been available for Android since before Android was released: http://www.twofortyfouram.com/ It's flashy and plugin based now - so any range of conditions can put your phone in any range of states. But initially, it was mostly about turning your ringer off when you went to the movies.

I recall being able to buy monitor stands that converted your monitor into a touch-screen by using a similar technique - It doesn't shock me that the same can be done with phones.

Another vote for python, yes, it's clean, for learning, however the immediate CLI is a win too.

There is of course the basic issue of licencing, you can build a basic htpc that will play 1080P for around $150, comparable to most out of the box solutions - with Media Centre, you need to add Windows to that price.

One member of a party supporting something does not imply the party supports it. The Greens Party do not support internet censorship, some of the members do - even with strong minor parties like we have in Australia it is impossible to align yourself entirely with the party's standpoint. A more controversial issue would demonstrate this; Say, same-sex marriage, Federal Labor do not support same-sex marriage, but individual members do. I am a member of the Greens (as in, attend meetings, pay membership, vote on policy) - but are not particularly in favour of much of their hard-line environmental policy, (I am, what is referred to as a Water-Mellon Green) that does not mean the party do not support these things, just myself.

I'm not sure what people really expect Google to do in these instances, they're at the mercy of the governments their sites are used in.
Blocking some content to some countries seems like a better option to me than having all content blocked to some countries.

It supports PHP 4, but doesn't rely on it - they have separate code-paths for PHP4 and 5, and some features just don't work in 4.

I've been wagging this flag for years now. Apple is more dangerous than Microsoft, they're not only tying users to their software, they're tying them to their hardware.

To be fair, you should compare it to a PSP or DS. In which case the CPU is fine, but the device is bulky, and has a very limited scope in the ways you can interact with a game. At best it's a mediocre board game platform, any game that requires any form of privacy (scrabble is a good example) is solved by adding extra devices. You could network them, but really, the point of board games is to be social, any get-together where people say "hey let's play monopoly" and everyone just pulls out their iPad finds a seat and starts clicking away is not a success.

I gather that it was 100% accurate at blocking sites on the blacklist (without interference by the user) not 100% accurate at blocking unknown content - that figure fell in the 70-80% range depending on the filter in place.

For a short while? Last decent Prime Minister we had was Keating.

As a "modern" vinyl collector, it's not as stupid as you suggest - my vinyl is purchased purely as a collection, the convenience of digital can't be beat but it's nice to own something that isn't cheap and nasty like a CD. Yes there's a digital add-on - most records these days come with download vouchers for digital versions of the music - although notably, I've never encountered one from iTunes (thank teapot).