Many of these are symptoms of trying to run the country on thin air, so that we can have lower personal tax than many other countries, amazingly low corporation tax, no domestic rates whatsoever, etc. etc. These all have many positive points (we have jobs and keep the money - well, apart from forking out over the odds for education, health, transport, crime), but basically even during the Celtic Tiger, the government couldn't for example ensure that schools actually have running costs paid for (currently primary schools on average get funding for about half their bills).
An Garda are in the shape they are because at every level in the country, things are not sufficiently funded. Training, equipment, organisation, contractors - everything is done as cheaply as possible (that applies even when things go overcost and over-budget - oft-times it is from penny-pinching at the planning stage).
Finally the job of the Gardaà is all the worse for no sensible planning of our urban environments, our patheticly supported education system, our economic system and work patterns.
Just wait till the veritably abandoned infants of commuter belt Dublin grow up - then we'll see Ireland even more become like the most dysfunctional parts of the United States.
Yeah, here in Ireland we don't have to take our military defence seriously *and* we don't have much of a welfare state.
Our primary schools are currently running with the govt. only paying about half the running costs. People have to wait months or years for hospital treatment, and even with private health insurance, private patients are treated in the same overcrowded public hospitals, or receive some of the most expensive treatment (not all covered by the insurance) in private hospitals that have no better a track record than public ones for misdiagnosis, etc. Entire towns are without policing overnight, and any serious trouble has shown up how the State is not really able to keep control.
I sincerely hope that the US becomes a more equitable place, because our politicians in Ireland seem determined to imitate it. Thanks to our media outsourcing continental European news reporting to British news outlets (i.e. Irish newspapers just buy the Europe stories from UK newspapers), our population is slowly becoming anti-European too - so less and less hope of Europe having a positive influence.
Actually elements of our government are more extreme than the US - we pay very little tax here, for some even less than in the US. Our local councils are barely operational after a government around 1980 scrapped domestic rates as a "giveaway" election promise.
"But there is as yet no "magic bullet" technology to replace paper checks."
It's not stopping banks here in Ireland pretty much doing away with them for personal use, and making life very difficult for businesses to use them too! At this stage almost no-one uses personal cheques anymore: it's pretty difficult to find places that take them.
High speed rail *is* mature, certainly for the fairly tame speeds required to compete with air travel over short/medium distances. There's no excuse for the US not having some high speed rail lines to reduce the use of inefficient, costly and overcrowded airline services and highways.
TOS is conceptually nice, the themes were often great, and it of course has nostalgia. However, there is a lot of the execution of the series that is pretty poor, and of course quite a high proportion of poorer episodes by the third season.
TNG is for me, the pinnacle of Star Trek. It still captures some of the original essence of Trek (esp. during the oft-derided first two seasons), it has a reasonable proportion of good episodes in most seasons bar 5 and 7, and the execution rises to incredible at some points (not least due to Patrick Steward's performances - but particularly when those are combined with stronger writing and themes). Each of the crew have their moments too (particularly Spiner, who has some amazing parts, e.g. playing himself, his brother and creator, distinctive and related characters, in a single scene) - although Sirtis and McFadden suffer from the fact that really their two characters could have been replaced by one (doc/empath), the characters are written terribly at times, and also Crusher is often just annoying.
DS9 is a disappointment, because at some points it rises to the occasion and shows what the show should have been like, and at other points it is the worst dross imaginable. I managed to follow it (and indeed enjoy some points immensely) until the second last season or so (roundabout where they killed off Dax).
VOY is pretty pants, and I for one cannot make the best of it (even if there are better episodes, better crew performances, the overall dross just puts me off it entirely - I hate half the cast entirely!)
Actually it looks like they have examined the "concepts" behind the original Trek, and tried to execute something that looks like ST might have if it had the money and technology (for film-making) that they didn't have then, and we now do have. From the couple of photos, it looks like a reasonable attempt at that, at least visually.
I personally want more Star Trek than what we have. Attempting to revisit TOS is a quite welcome change from yet another iteration of ST following on from the existing ones. Enterprise could of course have been that, but they screwed up on execution (I don't think the concept was inherently flawed).
This may of course end up a failure also, but as a Star Trek fan who didn't bother with any ST for about a decade, I'm hoping otherwise (ST gap from mid/late 90s until last year when I finally got TNG on DVD at a sane price. DS9 is next if I can get it cheap, but I'll avoid VOY).
The US won't crash to rock bottom, because despite Iraq it still has the military means to exert influence in any number of places in the world. And that may mean very messy times ahead, not least because Russia is making a comeback.
For us in Europe, it looks like being in the unhappy situation we were during the Cold War. Despite it seeming counter-productive to many in the West, and indeed probably truly serving only to agitate Russia, one can see why there was support in Poland for hosting US missile defence.
It may be worse this time round, as really the US seems less of a friend to Europe and more a competitor. Plus Russia is a large player in keeping our houses warm. Also the UK (very important to all of Europe despite French, German, even British sentiment that Europe can do without them) is going to the dogs (may not even be a UK for much longer if the Conservatives get in power without representing Scotland).
Being in Ireland I just hope this idea proves true - that we have deep sea resources in the Atlantic that may soon be profitable to extract (with oil prices rising due to supply vs. demand) despite the surveying required, massive engineering challenges, and cost. If that did come to pass, I think one would quickly see our country swap supposed neutrality for staunch support for common EU military defence!
Far better to separate classes by ability, and have smaller class sizes (more teacher attention) for the slower pupils. The problem is that low achievers in the school system are not usually incapable of learning the material, they just need a slower pace and more teaching attention. It's not really an option to avoid doing this either, at least up to primary school and even halfway through secondary school, because basic maths and literacy (for a start) need to be instilled in even the slowest learners in order that they are not a hazard to themselves and others in society.
Of course, the reason we are content to have school drop-outs etc. is pure short term self-interest. We don't want to pay enough taxes for the learning facilities and teachers (at least here in Ireland - in the US you take enough tax, you just spend too much on warfare). In fact we don't even spend enough here in Ireland to have real school buildings rather than pre-fab addons to what are in some cases decrepid 19th C buildings.
The difference is even less for PAL (625 lines rather than 480 - why anyone imports Region 1 DVDs is beyond me).
Besides, apart from the really decent LCDs, most of them have poorer colour and definition than old CRT TVs. Folks have only really been getting flat panels cause they take up less space and look less obtrusive in the room. They aren't getting them for better picture - because to do so you need to find a *real* HD TV and then one that is decent picture quality - you're talking a couple of grand.
No-one's going to be pushed about Bluray when they have a lousy average TV to view it on - even HD-ready are mostly a random resolution, e.g. 1024x768 and downscaling 1080i.
Are there not cheaper diesel options in the US than swish VWs? Surely you can get hold of Toyota's diesel models?
I know people here in Ireland who still have Toyota diesel models from the early 90s that are still going strong, have cost little to keep on the road, and still pass the NCT (National Car Test, regular checkup on old cars to make sure they are in order, including emissions and vital systems).
Of course, even here in Ireland people are guilty of not seeing the benefits of diesel. Because govt. regulation has not ensured that diesel is *obviously* cheaper and more efficient (as opposed to having to do maths), we have way lower percentage of diesel cars on the road here than in mainland Europe, despite it being the same models of car mostly available here.
Fortunately this is likely to change with recent changes to motor taxation (vehicle registration tax, etc.)
The mentalities seemingly increasingly prevalent in the US "Bible Belt" are proving an increasingly popular import from the US. Literalism in the US is IMO an overreaction to the extremes of liberalism also present in the US (and the fact society there is becoming more and more a mess). Indeed also within mainstream Christian churches in the US (and indeed UK) there are now practices that at no time in the past could have been reconciled with Christianity and are reasonably hard to reconcile at all with the fundamentals of the faith.
I think in some ways, those who have the worst time are the so-called "luke warm" traditional Christians of many mainstream churches. They are tarred with the same brush by extremist non-Christians, and they are regarded as weak and wishy-washy (or derided as worse than non-Christians) by literal extremists. Ironically traditional Christian faith is what has weathered the day best in the past against "the world" or over-zealotry. The zealots in their struggle tend to lose sight of really important parts of Christian faith (e.g. focus on "Love God" and forget the "Love your neighbour" - just because others do the reverse)
My ISP here in Ireland has reliable QoS and bandwidth, thanks to the fact that they strictly enforce a rolling 30 day cap (so you don't have network degradation at the start of each calendar month as heavy users use up their cap).
They do in fact have a meter webpage you can visit when on their network, that not only tells you how much you've used, but provides graphs of inbound and outbound traffic in the last 30 days (P2P activity is very obvious by the heavy outbound traffic).
Sure real serious P2P users won't consider the network at all, but it is more honest and up front than other ISPs who pretend you can have your cake and eat it. The worst service is from the ones who have no usage restrictions (service levels jumped on one network recently that went from unrestricted to strict cap).
Net neutrality, pro or anti, is a piece of nonsense. The simple and fair answer to it all is to bill for usage. Heavy users may wail about this, but why should everyone else subsidise them? (It's not just the companies taking the hit, but other consumers).
PS3 is doing just as well (if not better in Europe) taking the headstart of the 360 into consideration. It'll be with us a lot longer than the 360 also - should be as long lived as the PS2 (which is still selling).
And that's considering the PS3 is still quite a bit pricier than the Xbox360 - there are plenty of folks who would like a PS3 and are still waiting for the price to come down, or will get it this Christmas coming.
I'm happy with my sole recent purchase from the console manufacturers - a Nintendo DS. My Dell PC from 3 years ago (with two years on-site warranty left) still handles my main gaming requirements, albeit €150 spent on an X1950PRO 512MB last year.
I see little point to the latest consoles without HDTV screen, and for one that has almost as good colour/contrast as a CRT and true 1080i HD (not downscaling to arbitrary poor resolution), I would spend enough to buy *two* gaming PCs. Even the average HDTVs, many of which are "HD ready" with like 1024x768 resolution, are almost the price of a new PC!
It frequently drives me crazy that I still can't just type in a euro symbol into slashdot submission boxes. The currency is a decade old next year, and will have been in people's pockets for 8 years!
Ireland at least is green from the climate. But we've only had about one sunny weekend since the start of June, and even that weekend there were heavy showers. Last summer was poor, but this one has been worse.
Sweden's great, it's just a pity it's so far North and really you need to speak Swedish to live there sensibly (although I do know people who have emigrated there nonetheless, thanks to the EU freedom of movement for work). Being from Ireland, I for one am quite glad to have them in the European Union. At least there's some hope of them affecting the selfish ideals springing up here in Ireland - it's becoming like a parody of the US.
I'm just glad I don't need a PDA, and can just rely on my Nokia 6233 (nice normal stylish looking phone) for phone calls, texting, camera, mp3 playback, radio and occasionally checking the weather, news headlines or google using wap. Files are handily transferred using the microSD.
I guess I'd like better camera, apps (S40 is limiting), wifi and proper web browser. However, I have not found a nice phone that is a similar profile to my current one (and it would have to be nigh-on indestructable too, my phone has frequently been hopped off the ground from drops, knocks off table, etc). That latter reason is why I'm likely to stick with Nokia - all my phones have lasted years and survived countless drops and just carrying unprotected in a jacket or jeans pocket.
Atm the only other device I often carry (excepting major excursions with laptop) is my Nintendo DS (and even that I only bring out if I'm likely to be bored/waiting somewhere).
I saw a film on US TV one of the occasions I was there. It was so badly chopped down it was barely coherent. I can't believe people put up with such nonsense.
Of course there is craziness in the reverse situation too; the BBC not only show films in full - *but with no ad breaks* and what do the British do? Complain about their TV licence despite the fantastic output of BBC with the freedom it gives them.
I'm certainly glad we get BBC here in Ireland, although usually our national broadcaster RTÃ isn't too bad for films - film ad breaks are usually less frequent than the norm - maybe every half hour (or less if it is late night and less viewers).
Admittedly most of my recent film viewing on TV has been old films on TCM and random free film channels on Sky Digital (Astra 28 deg E). Still watch from the DVD collection half the time, but I have actually been introduced to some great films on these channels.
They are just another option. When you count in the extras, they are only cheaper half the time. Furthermore, some of the rest of the time someone else might not be that much more expensive, and it is worth flying with them instead to have some proper service and less inconvenience re: airports etc. It's just a pity choice out of Ireland is so limited here. Nevertheless, I've found Aer Lingus better to fly in general, and I've only flown Ryanair a couple of times when it was really cheaper pricewise. Ryanair wouldn't be half as big if there were stricter controls on advertising and service. Admittedly the other factor is they wouldn't be as big if other airlines weren't run by unimaginative people. I will say fair play to O'Leary, but I will nevertheless say they should never have had such free reign.
Lack of regulation has destroyed so many sectors here in Ireland. It's outrageous that our govt. just keeps telling people to shop around while they merrily let companies have exclusive region/premises agreements, suspicious identical high prices everywhere, dodgy dodgy advertising, etc, etc. Free market might be a nice idea, but evidently the proponents are not familiar with the Irish tendency to do anything you can get away with if it suits your interests. (This is true everywhere, but no-one does the job better than here).
I for one am rather glad we at least have some regulation in Ireland imposed by EU (some of which have indeed been implemented in Ireland despite ignoring environmental regulations for decades, such as "don't pump raw sewage into the water you use for recreation, drinking, etc."). A great pity we haven't supported a stronger EU by voting for Lisbon - again the cranks were given far too much freedom here, getting away with the same political funding nonsense our main party has been doing for decades, but in this instance, they were outdone.
Yes, there are other factors. For one of the airlines I usually use, you don't necessarily want to buy at the earliest opportunity. Reason being, if it gets to a certain point (couple months before flight) and seats are not filling at all, they will reduce the seat price/put them on sale.
So mostly the best time seems to be about 2 months before the flight, unless you know it's at a time of year and on a route that will be busy. In the latter case, they actually jack up the prices in real time as the seats fill, and they can be quite high even quite a long time before the flight.
I was thinking more along the lines of Northern Ireland. While I have no doubt there are people you cannot reason with, my point was more that there are usually people who can be reasoned with - and even if they aren't the perpetrators of violence, they may at best ignore those who do, and at worst, actively support them in empathy if not in materials.
If there is another attack, the response is simple. Criminal investigation starts, meanwhile you clean up and people affected try to get on with their lives. The overwhelming vast amount of people aren't even affected but for media coverage. A lot more people die from car accidents, yet for the most part you do not make driving on roads very difficult despite the precautions in place.
Apart from taking reasonable precautions and trying to catch the culprits using reasonable legal avenues, the only sensible response to terrorism is to try to keep things normal and go on with life. If there is a definitive reason you are being attacked that isn't simply down to prejudice and hate (or at least, genuine reasons that affect the silent supporters of terrorists), then perhaps you have to look at talking to your enemies (even if not to the terrorists themselves).
It's human nature, not religions that are responsible for so many atrocities. Plenty of atrocities have gone on without any religious basis - atheists are just as capable of carrying out evil.
Most of the so-called religious-driven problems were in fact down to the usual mundane things like politics, and religion was skilfully misused by people who cared not one iota for it. The same people are just as capable of misusing people's fears, poor education and understanding of logic, etc.
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Many of these are symptoms of trying to run the country on thin air, so that we can have lower personal tax than many other countries, amazingly low corporation tax, no domestic rates whatsoever, etc. etc. These all have many positive points (we have jobs and keep the money - well, apart from forking out over the odds for education, health, transport, crime), but basically even during the Celtic Tiger, the government couldn't for example ensure that schools actually have running costs paid for (currently primary schools on average get funding for about half their bills).
An Garda are in the shape they are because at every level in the country, things are not sufficiently funded. Training, equipment, organisation, contractors - everything is done as cheaply as possible (that applies even when things go overcost and over-budget - oft-times it is from penny-pinching at the planning stage).
Finally the job of the Gardaà is all the worse for no sensible planning of our urban environments, our patheticly supported education system, our economic system and work patterns.
Just wait till the veritably abandoned infants of commuter belt Dublin grow up - then we'll see Ireland even more become like the most dysfunctional parts of the United States.
Yeah, here in Ireland we don't have to take our military defence seriously *and* we don't have much of a welfare state.
Our primary schools are currently running with the govt. only paying about half the running costs. People have to wait months or years for hospital treatment, and even with private health insurance, private patients are treated in the same overcrowded public hospitals, or receive some of the most expensive treatment (not all covered by the insurance) in private hospitals that have no better a track record than public ones for misdiagnosis, etc. Entire towns are without policing overnight, and any serious trouble has shown up how the State is not really able to keep control.
I sincerely hope that the US becomes a more equitable place, because our politicians in Ireland seem determined to imitate it. Thanks to our media outsourcing continental European news reporting to British news outlets (i.e. Irish newspapers just buy the Europe stories from UK newspapers), our population is slowly becoming anti-European too - so less and less hope of Europe having a positive influence.
Actually elements of our government are more extreme than the US - we pay very little tax here, for some even less than in the US. Our local councils are barely operational after a government around 1980 scrapped domestic rates as a "giveaway" election promise.
"But there is as yet no "magic bullet" technology to replace paper checks."
It's not stopping banks here in Ireland pretty much doing away with them for personal use, and making life very difficult for businesses to use them too! At this stage almost no-one uses personal cheques anymore: it's pretty difficult to find places that take them.
High speed rail *is* mature, certainly for the fairly tame speeds required to compete with air travel over short/medium distances. There's no excuse for the US not having some high speed rail lines to reduce the use of inefficient, costly and overcrowded airline services and highways.
That's an argument for regulation of the government too... as indeed many sane countries do.
Lack of regulation is just anarchy. People only like it when they feel they can make the most of it and "win" at the expense of others.
TOS is conceptually nice, the themes were often great, and it of course has nostalgia. However, there is a lot of the execution of the series that is pretty poor, and of course quite a high proportion of poorer episodes by the third season.
TNG is for me, the pinnacle of Star Trek. It still captures some of the original essence of Trek (esp. during the oft-derided first two seasons), it has a reasonable proportion of good episodes in most seasons bar 5 and 7, and the execution rises to incredible at some points (not least due to Patrick Steward's performances - but particularly when those are combined with stronger writing and themes). Each of the crew have their moments too (particularly Spiner, who has some amazing parts, e.g. playing himself, his brother and creator, distinctive and related characters, in a single scene) - although Sirtis and McFadden suffer from the fact that really their two characters could have been replaced by one (doc/empath), the characters are written terribly at times, and also Crusher is often just annoying.
DS9 is a disappointment, because at some points it rises to the occasion and shows what the show should have been like, and at other points it is the worst dross imaginable. I managed to follow it (and indeed enjoy some points immensely) until the second last season or so (roundabout where they killed off Dax).
VOY is pretty pants, and I for one cannot make the best of it (even if there are better episodes, better crew performances, the overall dross just puts me off it entirely - I hate half the cast entirely!)
I did not even attempt to watch Enterprise.
Actually it looks like they have examined the "concepts" behind the original Trek, and tried to execute something that looks like ST might have if it had the money and technology (for film-making) that they didn't have then, and we now do have. From the couple of photos, it looks like a reasonable attempt at that, at least visually.
I personally want more Star Trek than what we have. Attempting to revisit TOS is a quite welcome change from yet another iteration of ST following on from the existing ones. Enterprise could of course have been that, but they screwed up on execution (I don't think the concept was inherently flawed).
This may of course end up a failure also, but as a Star Trek fan who didn't bother with any ST for about a decade, I'm hoping otherwise (ST gap from mid/late 90s until last year when I finally got TNG on DVD at a sane price. DS9 is next if I can get it cheap, but I'll avoid VOY).
The US won't crash to rock bottom, because despite Iraq it still has the military means to exert influence in any number of places in the world. And that may mean very messy times ahead, not least because Russia is making a comeback.
For us in Europe, it looks like being in the unhappy situation we were during the Cold War. Despite it seeming counter-productive to many in the West, and indeed probably truly serving only to agitate Russia, one can see why there was support in Poland for hosting US missile defence.
It may be worse this time round, as really the US seems less of a friend to Europe and more a competitor. Plus Russia is a large player in keeping our houses warm. Also the UK (very important to all of Europe despite French, German, even British sentiment that Europe can do without them) is going to the dogs (may not even be a UK for much longer if the Conservatives get in power without representing Scotland).
Being in Ireland I just hope this idea proves true - that we have deep sea resources in the Atlantic that may soon be profitable to extract (with oil prices rising due to supply vs. demand) despite the surveying required, massive engineering challenges, and cost. If that did come to pass, I think one would quickly see our country swap supposed neutrality for staunch support for common EU military defence!
Far better to separate classes by ability, and have smaller class sizes (more teacher attention) for the slower pupils. The problem is that low achievers in the school system are not usually incapable of learning the material, they just need a slower pace and more teaching attention. It's not really an option to avoid doing this either, at least up to primary school and even halfway through secondary school, because basic maths and literacy (for a start) need to be instilled in even the slowest learners in order that they are not a hazard to themselves and others in society.
Of course, the reason we are content to have school drop-outs etc. is pure short term self-interest. We don't want to pay enough taxes for the learning facilities and teachers (at least here in Ireland - in the US you take enough tax, you just spend too much on warfare). In fact we don't even spend enough here in Ireland to have real school buildings rather than pre-fab addons to what are in some cases decrepid 19th C buildings.
The difference is even less for PAL (625 lines rather than 480 - why anyone imports Region 1 DVDs is beyond me).
Besides, apart from the really decent LCDs, most of them have poorer colour and definition than old CRT TVs. Folks have only really been getting flat panels cause they take up less space and look less obtrusive in the room. They aren't getting them for better picture - because to do so you need to find a *real* HD TV and then one that is decent picture quality - you're talking a couple of grand.
No-one's going to be pushed about Bluray when they have a lousy average TV to view it on - even HD-ready are mostly a random resolution, e.g. 1024x768 and downscaling 1080i.
Are there not cheaper diesel options in the US than swish VWs? Surely you can get hold of Toyota's diesel models?
I know people here in Ireland who still have Toyota diesel models from the early 90s that are still going strong, have cost little to keep on the road, and still pass the NCT (National Car Test, regular checkup on old cars to make sure they are in order, including emissions and vital systems).
Of course, even here in Ireland people are guilty of not seeing the benefits of diesel. Because govt. regulation has not ensured that diesel is *obviously* cheaper and more efficient (as opposed to having to do maths), we have way lower percentage of diesel cars on the road here than in mainland Europe, despite it being the same models of car mostly available here.
Fortunately this is likely to change with recent changes to motor taxation (vehicle registration tax, etc.)
The mentalities seemingly increasingly prevalent in the US "Bible Belt" are proving an increasingly popular import from the US. Literalism in the US is IMO an overreaction to the extremes of liberalism also present in the US (and the fact society there is becoming more and more a mess). Indeed also within mainstream Christian churches in the US (and indeed UK) there are now practices that at no time in the past could have been reconciled with Christianity and are reasonably hard to reconcile at all with the fundamentals of the faith.
I think in some ways, those who have the worst time are the so-called "luke warm" traditional Christians of many mainstream churches. They are tarred with the same brush by extremist non-Christians, and they are regarded as weak and wishy-washy (or derided as worse than non-Christians) by literal extremists. Ironically traditional Christian faith is what has weathered the day best in the past against "the world" or over-zealotry. The zealots in their struggle tend to lose sight of really important parts of Christian faith (e.g. focus on "Love God" and forget the "Love your neighbour" - just because others do the reverse)
My ISP here in Ireland has reliable QoS and bandwidth, thanks to the fact that they strictly enforce a rolling 30 day cap (so you don't have network degradation at the start of each calendar month as heavy users use up their cap).
They do in fact have a meter webpage you can visit when on their network, that not only tells you how much you've used, but provides graphs of inbound and outbound traffic in the last 30 days (P2P activity is very obvious by the heavy outbound traffic).
Sure real serious P2P users won't consider the network at all, but it is more honest and up front than other ISPs who pretend you can have your cake and eat it. The worst service is from the ones who have no usage restrictions (service levels jumped on one network recently that went from unrestricted to strict cap).
Net neutrality, pro or anti, is a piece of nonsense. The simple and fair answer to it all is to bill for usage. Heavy users may wail about this, but why should everyone else subsidise them? (It's not just the companies taking the hit, but other consumers).
PS3 is doing just as well (if not better in Europe) taking the headstart of the 360 into consideration. It'll be with us a lot longer than the 360 also - should be as long lived as the PS2 (which is still selling).
And that's considering the PS3 is still quite a bit pricier than the Xbox360 - there are plenty of folks who would like a PS3 and are still waiting for the price to come down, or will get it this Christmas coming.
I'm happy with my sole recent purchase from the console manufacturers - a Nintendo DS. My Dell PC from 3 years ago (with two years on-site warranty left) still handles my main gaming requirements, albeit €150 spent on an X1950PRO 512MB last year.
I see little point to the latest consoles without HDTV screen, and for one that has almost as good colour/contrast as a CRT and true 1080i HD (not downscaling to arbitrary poor resolution), I would spend enough to buy *two* gaming PCs. Even the average HDTVs, many of which are "HD ready" with like 1024x768 resolution, are almost the price of a new PC!
I remember when ATI.com sold fake dog poop. They also politely hosted a link, to the graphics manufacturer.
It frequently drives me crazy that I still can't just type in a euro symbol into slashdot submission boxes. The currency is a decade old next year, and will have been in people's pockets for 8 years!
Ireland at least is green from the climate. But we've only had about one sunny weekend since the start of June, and even that weekend there were heavy showers. Last summer was poor, but this one has been worse.
Sweden's great, it's just a pity it's so far North and really you need to speak Swedish to live there sensibly (although I do know people who have emigrated there nonetheless, thanks to the EU freedom of movement for work). Being from Ireland, I for one am quite glad to have them in the European Union. At least there's some hope of them affecting the selfish ideals springing up here in Ireland - it's becoming like a parody of the US.
I'm just glad I don't need a PDA, and can just rely on my Nokia 6233 (nice normal stylish looking phone) for phone calls, texting, camera, mp3 playback, radio and occasionally checking the weather, news headlines or google using wap. Files are handily transferred using the microSD.
I guess I'd like better camera, apps (S40 is limiting), wifi and proper web browser. However, I have not found a nice phone that is a similar profile to my current one (and it would have to be nigh-on indestructable too, my phone has frequently been hopped off the ground from drops, knocks off table, etc). That latter reason is why I'm likely to stick with Nokia - all my phones have lasted years and survived countless drops and just carrying unprotected in a jacket or jeans pocket.
Atm the only other device I often carry (excepting major excursions with laptop) is my Nintendo DS (and even that I only bring out if I'm likely to be bored/waiting somewhere).
I saw a film on US TV one of the occasions I was there. It was so badly chopped down it was barely coherent. I can't believe people put up with such nonsense.
Of course there is craziness in the reverse situation too; the BBC not only show films in full - *but with no ad breaks* and what do the British do? Complain about their TV licence despite the fantastic output of BBC with the freedom it gives them.
I'm certainly glad we get BBC here in Ireland, although usually our national broadcaster RTÃ isn't too bad for films - film ad breaks are usually less frequent than the norm - maybe every half hour (or less if it is late night and less viewers).
Admittedly most of my recent film viewing on TV has been old films on TCM and random free film channels on Sky Digital (Astra 28 deg E). Still watch from the DVD collection half the time, but I have actually been introduced to some great films on these channels.
They are just another option. When you count in the extras, they are only cheaper half the time. Furthermore, some of the rest of the time someone else might not be that much more expensive, and it is worth flying with them instead to have some proper service and less inconvenience re: airports etc. It's just a pity choice out of Ireland is so limited here. Nevertheless, I've found Aer Lingus better to fly in general, and I've only flown Ryanair a couple of times when it was really cheaper pricewise. Ryanair wouldn't be half as big if there were stricter controls on advertising and service. Admittedly the other factor is they wouldn't be as big if other airlines weren't run by unimaginative people. I will say fair play to O'Leary, but I will nevertheless say they should never have had such free reign.
Lack of regulation has destroyed so many sectors here in Ireland. It's outrageous that our govt. just keeps telling people to shop around while they merrily let companies have exclusive region/premises agreements, suspicious identical high prices everywhere, dodgy dodgy advertising, etc, etc. Free market might be a nice idea, but evidently the proponents are not familiar with the Irish tendency to do anything you can get away with if it suits your interests. (This is true everywhere, but no-one does the job better than here).
I for one am rather glad we at least have some regulation in Ireland imposed by EU (some of which have indeed been implemented in Ireland despite ignoring environmental regulations for decades, such as "don't pump raw sewage into the water you use for recreation, drinking, etc."). A great pity we haven't supported a stronger EU by voting for Lisbon - again the cranks were given far too much freedom here, getting away with the same political funding nonsense our main party has been doing for decades, but in this instance, they were outdone.
Yes, there are other factors. For one of the airlines I usually use, you don't necessarily want to buy at the earliest opportunity. Reason being, if it gets to a certain point (couple months before flight) and seats are not filling at all, they will reduce the seat price/put them on sale.
So mostly the best time seems to be about 2 months before the flight, unless you know it's at a time of year and on a route that will be busy. In the latter case, they actually jack up the prices in real time as the seats fill, and they can be quite high even quite a long time before the flight.
I was thinking more along the lines of Northern Ireland. While I have no doubt there are people you cannot reason with, my point was more that there are usually people who can be reasoned with - and even if they aren't the perpetrators of violence, they may at best ignore those who do, and at worst, actively support them in empathy if not in materials.
If there is another attack, the response is simple. Criminal investigation starts, meanwhile you clean up and people affected try to get on with their lives. The overwhelming vast amount of people aren't even affected but for media coverage. A lot more people die from car accidents, yet for the most part you do not make driving on roads very difficult despite the precautions in place.
Apart from taking reasonable precautions and trying to catch the culprits using reasonable legal avenues, the only sensible response to terrorism is to try to keep things normal and go on with life. If there is a definitive reason you are being attacked that isn't simply down to prejudice and hate (or at least, genuine reasons that affect the silent supporters of terrorists), then perhaps you have to look at talking to your enemies (even if not to the terrorists themselves).
It's human nature, not religions that are responsible for so many atrocities. Plenty of atrocities have gone on without any religious basis - atheists are just as capable of carrying out evil.
Most of the so-called religious-driven problems were in fact down to the usual mundane things like politics, and religion was skilfully misused by people who cared not one iota for it. The same people are just as capable of misusing people's fears, poor education and understanding of logic, etc.