Actually, on re-reading the whole thing, I've just got completely the wrong end of the stick... ignore me :P

Latin/Cyrillic is not a question of language class, but alphabets. German uses the Latin alphabet with diacritics (and, I think, the Schaffer's S, although I vaguely remember hearing something about them trying to get rid of it, so it may not still be in use). My fault, should have been clearer when I said "Latin-based".

Last I checked, German was a Latin based language.

This is actually a (poor) copy of a joke about the Russian militsia. British police, same as the French, tend to go about in twos, whereas the Russian militsia tended (although not so much any more) to go about in threes. Also, to give credit where credit is due, PC Plod does tend to be at least competently educated. I think the situation is similar in France, except in France they use the CRS a lot more... and the CRS are just a bunch of bruisers.

In fact, you can see quite clearly on the image you linked to.

Well that's incredibly strange, because on EU plugs, the male points of contact are symmetrical, but the female is offset (above) the two males. It's impossible to turn them upside down. Maybe you're thinking of somewhere else.

Self contradiction. A European plug with grounding cannot be inserted into the socket upside down.

A teacher reading a book in class is doing it for educational purposes. There is a practical difference, and I believe there is a difference in law, although IANAL.

A lot of the time we live in UTC + 1. We're living in UTC + 1 at the moment. Soon, we'll be back to normality though.

Frankly, I'm dubious that a charging station cum bus stop will be cheaper to build and maintain than the infrastructure of cables required for trolley buses.

"He probably backs the idea of returning Putin back to president"

Probably. Along with more than 60% of Russian citizens. I know, in the West and ex-Soviet bloc, Putin is depicted as some kind of megalomaniacal dictator, but in Russia, he is very widely liked, and his approval ratings (as verified by independent pollsters) have always been above 60%, with peaks at close to 90%.

However, because his ideologies and his interests aren't in line with the West's, we try to make it out as though he's a carbon copy of Stalin.

Administrative or judicial, a "California stop" is called a "California" stop because... it's not a stop. If you follow (a quite reasonable) law, then there's no problem. Most countries you cannot turn on a red light at all, some you can only turn on a red light if there is a flashing orange light nearby, or some other indication that you can turn on a red. It's like speed cameras. Everyone hates them, and if you're caught, you whine, but at the end of the day, you broke a clear and long-standing law, and you have to accept the consequences.

I think that Russia have a very good reason to consider Georgia, the US and the Ukraine a threat, and it is quite simply NATO. During the Cold War, the fight was NATO vs. Warsaw Pact, but then the Warsaw Pact and the Soviet Union dissolved, leaving NATO. NATO, however, chose not to dissolve - worse, it chose to continue to expand. Georgia and the Ukraine both want to join NATO, and NATO have agreed in principle. Can you imagine how the Americans would react if Russia signed treaties with Canada and Mexico and started sending troops and missiles there?

I'm not trying to paint the Russians as saints - they're not, but they're no worse than any other country their size.

Also, I think the 50% and 5% figures you've quoted are completely wrong - can I please see your source for those, I think it would make very interesting reading.

It would appear Slashdot doesn't like cyrillic. That ought to read "A democratichnyj kvartira, for example..."

Short Russian lesson: the Russian word pronounced "democratichnyj", has come to mean something cheap. A , for example, would describe a one bedroom flat without mod cons. It doesn't particularly mean poor quality, just what we in the west would probably refer to as "basic". It's not particularly derogatory in and of itself, but compared to how "favored and hope-inspiring [the word democracy was] in 1991 and 1993", it shows how Russians feel about the fall of the USSR. Many Russians DID have better lives before the split.