"I know this is supposed to be an "Apple is evil" issue"
HUH???? I thought it was an interesting story about a marketing mistake. And even more interesting is that Apple (=King of Marketing) can make mistakes like that.

The advertising department is at fault for boasting of local support that doesn't exist but it's hard to say how intentional it was for the parent company.
Are you trying to suggest that the rest of Apple doesn't know what the advertising department is doing? Nonsense, it was a stupid mistake to name a device after some localized technology, period.

"While this repair cafe is a single cafe in the country"
Nope: http://repaircafe.nl/netwerk/

And there happens to be one in _my_ hometown, pleasant surprise!

"But I live in the Netherlands"
yeah, ditto

But you're just echoing what your granny is saying, and she's just echoing what she's heard on tv.
Seriously, 30 years worth of individualizing at an alarming rate? That's stupid.

"Reposted: wasn't logged in first time."

You're so very close! Now, go back to the story, f* read it, and than try it again.

Except you're just cherry picking. But here's an other cherry: someone who pays cash for a tattoo is suspicious. Now _that_ is ludicrous.

"floating user profiles" ???

I see them sinking quite often...

"The problem with socialism is eventually you run out of other people's money" - Thatcher.
That's cute. However, as we've seen, the problem with capitalism is, that eventually you'll also run out of other people's money.

That is just cynical excuse to kill more people. Many activities include a vehicle. This was a van with men, small children, probably one or more women that arrived at the scene well after the shooting. They did what you would hope many people would do: they tried to help one of the survivors.
The soldiers first claim the van is there to help the insurgents and pick up the weapons. However, we don not see them picking up any weapons. The people from the van start to help the wounded man. Then we hear the one of the soldiers thinking\hoping aloud: "pick up the weapon. come one, pick it up". Somewhat later, we hear the question "are they picking up weapons?", and this is maybe the only questions that is never answered. We do hear the crew repeatedly ask for permission to fire, and to me it starts to sound like pestering. Until someone gives in.

Please, grab a brain: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alexandria_library

Yes, and most children's toy cars have had one for a couple of decades. Yet, when busses got one it was innovation as well.

"I for one don't want changes made to a system without my approval or consideration."

I'm pretty sure there's an OK-button somewhere in the process.

Think of security patches for 24/7 production servers, or even servers that are only critical during office hours. Do not think pc's.

"However, I don't see that it can be legal for them to force you to agree to pay a per-system fee to use a binary patch."

Yes, but you're not paying for just "using a binary patch". You pay for the specially for ksplice selected and readied patch, offered through a services. So, obviously anybody can do this, it is not the code that is somehow restricted. However, the service is.

"passing tokenised dead mice through a wormhole"
Ah yes, somehow I remember that quote.