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Pentium
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| Americans can all safely be described as paranoid only in the same way that all Britons can be described as castle dwellers. I don't want to generalise, but I wonder how many Americans think everyone from Britain is some sort of lovechild of Simon Cowell and Keira Knightley. These are the perils of generalisation. In fact, it's easy to find evidence that the UK is more paranoid - we have CCTV coverage in nearly all urban areas and in most towns, for example, and very little statutory protection. We have far more coverage than any other country. Emails are the least of it. The day may also come when we will have to show our compulsory ID 'papers' on demand. We have the most complete DNA database of citizens too. It was interesting to read in the mag this week that ISPs are claiming a warrant is required before they can decrypt personal data packets (as a reason for not being held responsible for acting against data piracy). Similar laws presumably apply to personal emails.
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Octo-core Atom @ 233GHz (ES)
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I'll add I hate generalizations about any nationality as much as my own, and ask that we keep in mind thoughtless, unsubstantiated comments perpetuate problems.
I agree wholeheartedly. I've held back from commenting until now through fear of starting another argument. With regards the English language, it's not "owned" by the UK and any country that adopts it as its national language is quite at liberty to change it as it decides. We in the UK twist it and change it continually, so why shouldn't every other native speaker be able to do the same?
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186
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Exactly.  Just a quick peek at the origins of many 'English' words in everyday use reveals the vast number of other countries these words are sourced from. They've been changed more than once by the time they reached America.
In my mind, that's a big part of the beauty of the language.
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Octo-core Atom @ 233GHz (ES)
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Indeed it is.
Classic PCs
Original IBM PC (4.77MHz 8088, 256KB RAM, monochrome) · Original IBM PC XT (4.77MHz 8088, 512KB, 10MB HDD, monochrome) · Original Compaq Deskpro (7.14MHz 8086, 640KB, 20MB HDD, CGA graphics)
Home Computers
Commodore VIC-20 · C64 original · C64 Terminator edition · C16 · Amiga 500 · Amiga 600 · Amiga 600 HD · Amiga 1200 Acorn Electron · A3010 (Archimedes) · A4000 (Archimedes) Others Sinclair ZX Spectrum 48K · Dragon 32
Consoles
Nintendo Wii · GameCube purple (x 2) · GameCube black · N64 black (x 2) · N64 clear blue · SNES (x 2) · NES (x 2) · DS silver (x 3) · GBA SP silver · GBA purple · GBA clear · Game Boy Color clear · Game Boy Sega Dreamcast x 3 · Saturn · Mega Drive II · Mega Drive · Master System Atari 10-in-1 · Jaguar (x 2) · 7800 · 2600 wood-grain Microsoft Xbox 360 · Xbox Others Mattel Intellivision · MB Vectrex · GoldStar 3DO · Sony PlayStation (original)
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286
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Last Login: 26/11/2008 09:08:45
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| The email thing is more than a myth than anything really, it's usually suspected accounts that are targetted and certain words (not so obvious) that flag up a warning, get given a priority and then either later read by computer or in priority cases sent straight to somebody to check over. Bearing in mind that terrorists aren't generally as naive as many suspect and will use encryption and codes to cover such things. Message posting on newsgroups, newspapers etc is also a common method as is the good old dead letter drop. As to the British obsession with camera's etc, this is a throwback to the days of the IRA's mainland campaign and the NI conflict as a whole. Police stations, military camps and certain homes were surrounded by CCTV in order to look for suspicious activity. London, Belfast and other cities also began to increase surveillance in order to counter this terrorist threat. Given that street crime and other terrorist activity is now on the increase the current surveillance is not to spy on the average citizen but to protect them. My local paper now prints the faces of CCTV captured litter louts and trouble makers post the weekend drinking madness, asking people to identify them for prosecution. Stereotyping of a nation will always happen, we've now moved from picturing a frenchman as wearing a beret, striped jumper, string of oinions and a moustache while riding a bike, to someone who is arrogant, carries a picket sign and constantly strikes about anything while waving immigrants through to British shores. As for the language thing, as already stated, English is constantly evolving and adopting new words and phrases, or changing the meaning of words in use. The language thing in MS products though is more to do with keyboard layout than spelling though I think.
i dont really know what I'm doing but it looks good!
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Pentium
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286
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MartenReed (29/02/2008)
So basically, the world will end up like in Ninteen Eighty-Four, and Jason will be Big Brother?  For some reason I just had a vision of Jason on Big Brother telling a sobbing Jade Goody that the housemates have no food budget this week as she failed the weekly task of overclocking a P4 to 9Ghz.  Edit for spelling
i dont really know what I'm doing but it looks good!
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286
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Silver (29/02/2008)
Americanised
Surely you mean AmericaniZed? What nonsense.
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