Ah ha, but you say its spread over population, but it is not, it is broken down by various categories based on risk management, you charge more for higher risk people and less for lower risk. Everyone has a level of risk, but your individual habits determine how much of a risk it is to the company. If it was spread equally across society then everyones premium would be the same, perhaps with variation of cost of car if your getting full comprehensive cover.

Well, again a couple of points, most insurance companies make more more money from investments rather than from the actual business itself, they make very little from the actual insurance business. Also, you do suddenly stop being members of some groupings, age for example. In the last year my age bracket changed so I get slightly cheaper insurance.

Now in relation to this particular case, its talking about the option of a 20% discount based on how you do during your 200km run. Its not basing your entire quote on it. Nor is it manditory. Nor are they punishing you if you do badly. It is rewarding you for being able to drive safely.

Don't get me wrong, I still feel like I'm getting robbed blind because insurance companies are exploiting my age bracket, but this here seems to be trying to seperate out good drivers from bad, rather than saying we've had X number of claims from young men, therefore ALL young men are bad drivers, therefore ALL young men have to pay huge amounts for insurance.

Well first of all I will take issue with your math, if you're doing a 48 mile round trip, you will cover 192 miles within the first 4 days, so you would only be monitored for 8 miles on the Friday and then how would they have any idea what your weekend journeys are?

Second, could they not roughly work out the same information from your mileage in a year?

From what I can see, they are proposing to move away from the model of generalisations, which for me, a young male driver, is welcome news. A girl I know who was the same age as me when she started driving and had nothing different from me other than the car (which was actually more powerful) was quoted nearly €1000 less than me. That seemed massively unfair to me. If there was option of something like that, that charges you on the basis of your actual driving as opposed to your demographics, I'll welcome it any day of the week.

For years insurance companies have been doing the exact same thing of estimating how good or bad a driver you are based on your age, gender, occupation etc. Now they're proposing to allow you to determine how good a driver you are based on using an app for not too long of a time really.

Is there a potential for it to be misused, yeah, but I'd welcome any move to judge my driving over lumping me in with a particular age group or gender.

I hate to burst your bubble, but browser usage != platform usage. I have a Galaxy S2 and I've never used the default browser. I've used a number of different browsers depending on which I prefer at what stage.

Also, I've always used a seperate app for wikipedia viewing, simply because I don't like the interface on the browsers. In fairness, I rarely use a browser on my phone, there are usually apps that have browser functionality for any links within their content.

iPhones have their place, they're for the people who don't want to customise their phones, for people who just want their phone to work. I think the browser share reflects that to an extent, there are more people who are just happy enough to use whatever comes with the phone than try to find out if there is a better tool for the job, its good enough in their mind so why change around.

Boards.ie is full of idiots but I don't think it reflects on Ireland or the ".ie" suffix. In fact, the ".ie" is one of the most tightly controlled commercial suffixes available on the internet. You need to demostrate why you are entitled to the address. Pain in the arse for me because I wanted to setup a site that wasn't a business but for me and my friends as a bit of a joke site but they refused my application

And you think there isn't fraud in the voting system? The most easiest way you could do it is to register in a constituency to vote using the form thats sent out to houses in the lead up to elections without using the RFA3 form to transfer your vote from your original constituency. The reason a lot of people do this is because the form thats sent to each house just needs you to fill in the sections and then send it back in the post, postage free of charge. The RFA3 form requires you to fill it out, go to your local garda station and only your local garda station and get them to sign the form confirming you are who you say you are. Then to send it off to the local authority either in the post after paying for postage or drop it in yourself. People will generally take the path of least resistence and end up registered in two constituency. I really believe this is the only way that FF got anyone elected during the last election

Maith an fear!

Why would you need more than one credit card? Honestly don't see why I would need two credit cards. I only have one bank card as well. If I lose my card I will have another within 3 days. I always have enough food in my house to last me a week and I cycle everywhere so I don't need to pay for transport. Worst case scenario and go into my bank and take out money directly from my account.

Agreed, really don't see why this is modded down as troll. Apple do have the ability to remotely remove your app from your phone. So its not out of the realms of possibility that this is what happened here...

So your arguement is no longer that the US is the champion of "freedom and democracy" but simply they were not as bad as the soviets? And we have only touched modern era, when you go into pre-WWII days there is even more blood on the hands of the US government/military. The US has almost always only ever acted in its own interests, it didn't enter World War 2 because they need to stop the Nazi's, they did so because they were attacked by Japan, hell, the US didn't even declare war on Germany! Germany declared war on the US. They didn't fight in Korea to ensure democracy in Korea, they did so because they didn't want another nation which was friendly to the USSR. And by the way, not all communist countries were friendly to the USSR, just like not all capitalist governments were friendly to the US. This was less an idiological conflict, though that may be the underlying cause of the mistrust between the US and the USSR, but it primarily a game of one-upmanship between two nations. That was not a moral battle, do not attempt to portray it as a battle between good and evil, neither side was good, neither side was evil, both did good things and both did bad things.

I am not American, I am not a Russian. I am fortuante enough to be in a position where I didn't grow up hearing either sides propaganda about the other. From my point of view, both sides lied, both said they were for democratic purposes only to topple democratically elected governments simply because they didn't like the outcome of those elections. I'm also not naive enough to think that violence is never the answer, there are times when violence is required, but only when the will of the people is not being adhered to or when you are under threat in the case of minority being surpressed. But the US wasn't concerned with the democratic will of the people or if someone was being oppressed. They were willing to overthrow democratically elected governments, to supress minorities and even surpress majorities only for the purpose of suiting themselves. That is why I don't see the US as an ethical government or military, because they have made unethical decisions. I'm not arguing about who is worse, neither are ethical and that is origin of this discussion

Learning from history is so important that it cannot be overstated. It is only by examining history can the US realise they can't use force to overthrow governments, they will only be fragile and short lived and the unintended consequences usually create a worse situation. I think some people in power are starting to understand this concept, that talking to nations rather than isolate them and force them to more extreme solutions to their problems. However it is a complex answer to a simple question and the attention span of a US election cycle does not allow for complex solutions to things. Which is why the US continues to this day to attempt to strong arm the world to do what it wants.

And as always, people like you forget that many of those dictators were American sponsored dictators. They then use the excuse of overthrowing said dictators to introduce new leaders once the old ones stopped listening to Washington

-Syrian coup d'état -CIA backed coup against Prime Minister Mohammad Mossadegh's democratically elected government -Guatemalan coup d'état, democratically elected government over thrown -Indonesia in the 50's had an autocratic government, after a band of rebels espousing anti communist literature, the US pumps weapons and money leading to increased deaths in the region, US later gives billions of dollars to autocratic government it previously tried to overthrow. -Cuba before uprising, US told Cuban dictatorship that the US could exercise the right to intervene in Cuban political, economic and military affairs if necessary when the US wanted, which it did to rob the Cuban people through the export of its goods and food in a form of economic slavery while General Batista, head of the government took a cut in return for his continued co-operation. This continued for nearly 30 years before uprising occurred, which took aid from where-ever it could, the enemy of the United States offered support to said uprisings, only after the rebel took power did they take the full direction of communism. -Iraq has had CIA backed coup's forming governments only to be toppled by a later CIA backed coup since the 1950's to this very day. The period of time between each overthrow has varied -Brazil in 1964 had a democratically elected government overthrown by rebels who were supported in the form of ammunition, oil, and chemical weapons as well as the US deploying flotilla of ships to be deployed in the area -Greece in 1967 had a democratically elected government overthrown by right wing military colonels which was rumoured to have the active support of the CIA, CIA refuses to comment on the matter -Chile prior to 1973 had a democratically elected government overthrown by military coup which was supported by every means available to the CIA, including black propaganda, weapons, training, money etc. -Argentina in 1976 had a democratically elected government overthrown by military coup with the support of the US, including introducing the coup leaders to public relations companies to manage their image in the US so that they could maintain their support -CIA attempted to overthrow the elected government of Nicaragua from 1981-1990 by funnelling arms via puppet Iran regime. -Military government of El Salvador is facing popular uprising and the US government supported the military government while they used death squads to stop political and economic change. -US Supports Philippines dictatorship for decades until it is no longer maintainable at which point withdraws support -Venezuela in 2002 suffers a attempted coup d'état against a democratically elected government, the coup is widely believed to have been organised and supported by the CIA, confirmed by Former US Navy intelligence officer Wayne Madsen. -Palestinian Fatah party receives $84 billion after elections showed Hamas to be the democratically elected representatives of the people, leading to a protracted civil battle between the two groups as Fatah attempts to hold onto power

That's not to mention direct interventions into Korea, Cuba, Vietnam, Cambodia, Zaire, Honduras...

My point is this...
You ask me if my claim of millions of deaths is accurate, in direct numbers affected by US foreign policy, yes I am. When you include the residue and the blow back which the CIA has always known about, I am wrong, its tens of millions. All of this wasn't "because they were communist" it’s because they all made a decision which would benefit their country at the cost of the United States, either economically, militarily or simply just the pantomime on the geo-political stage. All empires have done it in the past. The US is no better, they simply label it superpower and pay off locals to do their direct bidding instead of having their presence their all the time

And US Imperialism hasn't also caused the deaths of millions around the world? How many puppet regimes did the US install around the world, usually after over throwing democratically elected governments in one form or the other? How many assassinations have been done in the name of "supporting freedom"? Cop yourself on. Your white washing of history would be funny if it isn't that same attitude that is at the helm of US foreign policy and military control.

ajv is exactly right. There is a deep current of misogyny that runs throughout the nerd world, I think primarily because a lot of guys (and lets face it, nerds are predominately male) who believe that girls simply don't give them the time of day because they are nerds, I'm sorry but that is not the case.Some girls will, just like some guys wont give you the time of day because you're a nerd. Then when the rare event of a girl being a nerd, she is usually given so much attention by guys that she is often time put off from announcing she's a girl. Don't believe me? Look at any forum where a user is a girl and see how many of the posters fall over her every word simply because she's a girl. There are girls who love the attention and off they go. But why should every girl who doesn't like the attention be subjected to such harressment?

In the case of booth babes, I doubt all these women have the luxery of picking and choosing which events they attend. I'm sure there is fierce competition for the positions and that if you want the good modelling jobs you also have to do some of shit ones too. Everyone here seems to be treating it with a "put up and shut up" attitude without thinking beyond their own limited perception. Just because a women, or a man for that matter, is a model doesn't mean they are talentless, doesn't mean they're bimbo's, doesn't mean they're stupid and most importantly, doesn't mean they are without emotions. There is also a difference between being looked at and being leered at.