Yes, let's translate everything to be as helpful as possible. Oh wait, we're already halfway there. :-/

Yes, thanks for proving my point. Note the title of the articles, and note that they mention "crowns" only once. For the remainder of the articles, the currency is consistently referred to as "kronor" and "kroner" respectively.

No, it is translated to "crowns" only by Scandinavians *themselves* when they are speaking English. Noone else does this, it's not translated outside of Scandinavia, and it's not like "kronor" or "kroner" is hard to pronounce in English either.

I *am* Swedish, and I *do* tell people that they're wrong when I hear them do that.

The point is that it's only Swedes (and Danes and Norwegians) that translate the name of their currency when speaking English, in the mistaken belief that it's easier to understand, when in fact the opposite is true.

There are literal translations of the words yen, dollar, renminbi, ringgit, peso, and several other currencies, but you don't translate those, do you?

The English word for the currency of Sweden is "kronor" or "Swedish kronor". There's only a few Swedish crowns in existence, and they're displayed in the Royal Armory Museum in Stockholm.

You got it all wrong, in Europe, the carriers are not the primary phone vendors and there are almost no exclusivity deals. You can buy phones in regular electronics stores or from webshops or from the carriers' own stores. You can usually mix and match phones and subsidized plans any way you want. There are occasionally marketing campaigns where a carrier is promoting a specific phone model with a specific subsidized plan, but you can almost always buy the same phone without the plan or without that carrier.

This might also seem crazy to you, but over here, Nokia themselves have a webshop where they sell all their phones. Here's the N900: http://shop.nokia.se/nokia-se/product.aspx?sku=6958233.

I saw the quote from Verizon in the summary, that exclusivity deals promote innovation, it's so obviously and hilariously wrong if you've seen what the phone market is over here, but if all you've ever seen is how it works in the US, then you might fall for it.

I would say that the biggest change that DSL/cable brought is that you got a connection that was always on with a flat monthly fee which transformed it into something that was always there, instead of something you had to actively enable each time you wanted to use it, and having to worry about staying on too long because it would rack up a huge phonebill.

Ok, bye bye. The 11 million current players apparently disagree with you, and they're a pretty compelling reason for Blizzard not to lower the price since it makes absolutely no business sense for them to do so.

TBC was, in its time, the fastest-selling video game. Two years later, WotLK beat the record and became the new fastest-selling video game of all time. A lot of people whine about the expansions costing money, but if they can put full retail price on those and STILL sell millions over the first weekend, why wouldn't you? It shows that the whining is empty, people are still willing to put down the money for the expansions so it makes perfect business sense to charge for it.

...which is why there are hard modes for the raid content these days. The 45-minute baron run was their first attempt at a hard mode, and it could be overcome with good gear. The new Ulduar hard modes are certainly not easy, and they cannot be overcome with good gear. Gear helps, but ultimately you need very good coordination and execution to succeed. Let me tell you that pulling those off still feels like a great accomplishment.

As for dungeons, there is an almost exact equivalent to the baron run, which is the Cleansing of Stratholme run, also timed, and actually pretty demanding even in good gear. If you want different kinds of challenges in the 5-man dungeons, there's the achievements, some of which are pretty hard to get.

PCI is crap, because it's only really meant to be a way to cover your ass if something goes wrong. I see you skimmed the headlines of PCI compliance, and a lot of it is either just common sense or plain bullshit.

There are a lot of points about making sure as few people as possible has access to the card data environment, but still they slap on this. I'm sure your PCI auditor can sell you such a software if you don't already have it...

My absolute favourite. Never mind that anyone familiar with computer science can prove that it is impossible to construct such an anti-virus program ever, you still have to check this box and claim you ensured this. I'm sure there are more points in the specification that are 100% bullshit that others can find:

https://www.pcisecuritystandards.org/security_standards/download.html?id=pci_dss_v1-2.pdf

To be fair, that was 7% in the EU elections, where people are more likely to vote for single issue parties, where the voter participation is pretty low, and where it feels like it doesn't really matter if you vote left or right.

In the national elections, voter participation is much higher, and a lot of people who would vote for the PP in the EU elections might not do so, because they think it's more important to vote for the left or the right, myself included.

Then again, our current right-wing coalition passed a bunch of copyright maximalist bullshit laws, and even though I'd rather have them in power than the left wing, that betrayal stings, and I think a lot of people like me are similarly pissed about it come the next national elections in 2010.

He's a troll, because he's obviously exploiting it and only going after successful games that might infringe, and he always threatens to drag it to court unless he gets a big bag of money. In the case of the iPhone game he wanted them to change the name, AND half of the revenues accumulated up until the name change. Mobigames offered to change the name of their game to Edgy, whereupon Langdell as quickly as possible trademarked that name as well, and said that that name change also wasnt' acceptable.

Oh, and they're apparently developing a game called "Mirrors, a game by Edge".

It's those little details that make him a huge trademark troll.

No, it doesn't cost you any money, because Sweden has a system where the loser pays the legal fees. In the first TPB trial, TPB lost and was also ordered to pay the legal fees of both sides, but since they appealed it, that order is also stayed for now.

However, it costs you time and effort to defend yourself in court, which can be misused.