Mark_Book

"I'm honestly surprised (& pleased) he would say that outright. I'm not particularly familiar with the workings of the U.S. justice system but a disparity of 100 to one sounds fairly unjust." You sound prejudiced against American justice if you can be pleased that he takes a certain position on something that you are unfamiliar with. Part of the reason why there's a 90% success rate (if that is the case) might be that prosecutors in many jurisdictions are instructed to only pursue cases they believ are winnable

I suspect a lot of Toyotas problems have to do with the standards in their overseas factories not living up to those on Japan My father has driven toyotas for 30 years without a single breakdown. I have had 2, I had trouble with one of them. It had a sticky accelerator (which I never considered serious as it only ever happened at the start of a journey), the wipers stopped working one rainy day, the driver seat adjustment lever gave up with the seat stuck in reclined and one time the brake pads stuck to the cylinder when the car had wasn't driven for a month. Interestingly it was the only one of the lot that sported a "Made in Britain" sticker.

"Traditionally, if you produce something of value, people will pay for it" but if there's better value elsewhere that's where they'll go. In this case the best value of all is FREE ie no flattr account.

what's the incentive to set it up in the first place if you're not a content creator? Non content creators will mentally file it in their 'something virtuous to do when I have enough money' aka never_never. The content creators who end up being net donors will stop because their motivation was to make money not give it. This scheme and the optimism surrounding it sounds like a throwback to the internet bubble.

replying to ugh and steveklabnik: I guess I'm a cynic but I can't see people just sticking a meaningful amount of dosh in this every month for no marginal gain. Museums have tried similar methods with voluntary contributions instead of entrance fees it doesn't work. Now if they were to get a mention as a valued internet patron on flattr or on the sites they give to then maybe

AFAIK 'donate' buttons have never proved successful. People don't like paying for stuff they can have for free

I can't see the sense in it. It's analogous to a situation where a newspaper's only paying customers would be other newspapers. The content creators send each other money and the only net beneficiaries are Flattr and the vast mass of interenet users who continue to view for free

The above comment of mine received a fair number of votes with the majority being negative. The comment was intended to be humorous and in my view if people downvoted because they were offended on behalf of Italians they need to lighten up. OTOH if they downvoted becaust they thought it was not funny, fair enough. I don't mind because it's not my joke I heard it on The Simpsons

well as there are probably not many venetians present you might as well translate 'xe un mona' for us

And their best player at the world cup, David Villa's name is correctly pronounced Dabid Biya

yessa de rest spoka de broken english

Can someone tell me when did english people start pronouncing sixth with a k instead of an x. I've only noticed this phenomenon this decade. It's almost as irritating as pronouncing 'three' as 'free' which at least has the merit of being easier to say

Wikipaedia says 13.3 million crossed east to west europe between 1950 and 1990, 75% of this movement was sanctioned so that makes for 4 million irregular crossings or about 100,000 per year. Currently the US is estimated to have 11.5 million illegal immigrants with about 0.5 million entering each year

It's not the will to shoot illegals that's needed, simply the will to implement the law as it stands by putting in the necessary resources into border policing and deporting those illegals who are discovered. Almost all illegals into the UK entered as paying passengers, ie they needed a ticket. If commercial carriers can police their passageways why can't the government police the doorways to those routes?

The fatwah against Salman Rushdie, the reaction to the Danish cartoons made it feel to people in western countries that muslims were trying to impose their values here, by extreme means if necessary. Not for the first time has an attempt to make people behave in a certain manner had unintended consequences

Please excuse my ignorance but can someone explain to me what message is being given to developers? Is it to develop in Java (for Android) or to develop in HTML/css/Javascript combo?