clash of cultures.

American-style/common law copyright allows to waive all rights, European-style copyright law is built around the (unwaivable) moral rights. It is possible to sell economic rights, but some "implicit" (as the GP called it) rights are still attached to the author/creator.

no, GCC doesn't support the processor.

but the Crysis experience is excellent - details cranked up to 11 and the immersion is _fantastic_

this is synonym, isn't it?

it took a while... I think you tried to translate "asshole writer"? Next time you should use "Arschlochschreiber".

but wtf did I wrong to deserve this title?

your points are valid, but take also a look at the drifting semantics. The evil empire of yesteryear was communism, yesterday socialism and today social democracy? Extrapolated this should lead to "the failures of European-style traditional conservatism" in about 2 days...

ah shit... thanks for the corrections.

[there's a wide gap between "knowing the language" and "living the language"....]

I think anyone can request the deletion of a trademark if it's unused for 5 years and/or not enforced/defended (though this is not specific for Germany but valid in all EU member countries)

I could be related to the German company Metro AG (Wikipedia) - they are _very_ aggressive with trademarks (including killing a fan-site for the rapid transit-type of Metro).

One of the Nice Classes Metro AG owns the trademark for METRO is 9, the classification includes "data processing equipment, computers; computer software". afaik the company has no claims in this specific part of the Nice Classification, but as a big retailer (and business partner for MS) they had probably the way and means to convince Microsoft...

There's a German word for this: Fachidiot [literally profession idiot]. The idea is that sometimes professionals are thinking to specific - they loose the ability to think outside the box.

The whole iPad vs Galaxy Tab mess could be based on this: The argument is mostly about extremly tight details without context. Sure, a side-by-side image is similar, but your typical consumer sees also the bigger picture; like typical orientation of the device, look-and-feel of applications, price tag and description in the shop, ...

Belgium had between June 2010 and November 2011 no functioning central government (only a managing administration without own majority in the parliament) - and the country still functioned. So yes, "no president" could be an interesting and working way of politicking.

Numberphile has a nice video about different types of infinity: http://www.numberphile.com/videos/countable_infinity.html

yes. I knew something like this could happen (and was in a way prepared - the police visit was surprising but not completely unexpected), but lawyer and new computers were expensive...

Sure, it is cowardly - blame me as I blame myself :)

[anecdote]

I had legal troubles* as someone used my exit node for downloading child pornography. after nearly 2 years the prosecutor closed the proceedings as he found nothing punishable.

*) including some officers searching my flat at 7 am and all my hardware was confiscated

nah, not sure. SMART-1 was a test bed, but not DS1. though DS1 used an (more or less) experimental propulsion system the science done outweighs the test character.

a sane choice, considering typical French beer...