Why is it important to use a local system? What is wrong with using the best system for the job wherever in the world it comes from?

Because it's important that recorded information about my interactions with my government doesn't cross borders and escape from the data protection laws in the UK and the EU.

If it was a traditional software system that actually ran on the servers owned by the government then that would be fine.

With GA, at the very least Google get to know when I visit the site, and likely which pages I visit, simply through the requests my browser makes.

I'm not familiar enough with GA to be able to judge how much else is transmitted to them.

Is there not a separate deal for Governments and Educational Institutes with Google to negate this?

I honestly have no idea, and the page on cookies does seem to say that they don't allow google to use the data or do much with it, but that just raises further questions as to how they could ever enforce that.

I guess I'm just very suspicious when personal data crosses borders.

EDIT - also wondering what you mean by a separate deal? If the data goes to the US it goes to the US and is then subject to US laws (and no longer subject to EU/UK protections, deal or no.

It's called the EU safe harbour certification. I'm not sure how rigorous it is.

Because US can use the Patriot Act to get cloud data about foreign users. That's why.

I don't walk, I jaywalk!

How many people in a household?

I never realized there was any difference in licenses and have never had any trouble buying the OEM copy.

I wonder is this why central banks are having to print money if this amount is being stashed away and not allowed to circulated in the economy.

... and if it were made to circulate, we'd have hyperinflation and it would quickly become worthless. But I doubt that it can be made to circulate. I doubt that this is cash.

You must pay yourself before you pay the shoe salesman.

You pay yourself when you save. If you live paycheck to paycheck, you never pay yourself.

According to sources on Wikipedia High-frequency trading does provide benefit, it provides liquidity.

I can just about spell English words. I am not able to correctly Google foreign words.

A £15 computer sounds cool, but programming can be done in your web browser. Just write some javascript and let the whole world instantly see your creation.

That's what I don't like about modern computing, there's too many layers of middleware. With web browsers you lose the link between the software and hardware, it's too abstract and theoretical.

That spark of interest comes from seeing something real (which is physical and easy to understand), and being able to control it by using code. Think arduino, not emulation.

All that said, I am a web developer, the main reason I got into it was the simplicity of technologies like HTML, PHP etc. Whereas nowadays, even web development is dominated by abstract ideas like OOP, APIs and frameworks, so it's becoming less interesting in that respect.

Yeah but you only need to spend £15 on the computer to fire the web browser up on now.

The misleading thing about the '£15' Raspberry Pi is that the main peripheral I/O is via USB, so to get this device on the 'net you must factor in at least another £17 minimum for a powered USB hub and USB network adaptor - and then we have a £32 USEABLE computer. It would have cost about £2 to add an RJ45 Ethernet adaptor to the basic design so I hope this will be considered in due course (I have contacted the developers about this)

Long questions with long answers (What is a situation called in which the inflation rate is high and the economic growth rate is low? - stagflation) require more time than short questions with short answers (What herb is used in a Mojito? - mint). I know the answer to both, but I only got the points for one...

It's due to people writing, pardon my french; shit questions. Ideally this is solved by crowd sourcing good reviews that prevent long bad questions like that from getting in. At the moment over-eagerly publishing peoples questions to get the numbers up. Working on.