Unless Amazon has injected their workers against their will, no one is forcing these people to work there. They knew what they were signing up for, agreed to the contract and now begin to complain that "its just not fair, we want more money."

Tough noogies. You signed a contract, you accepted the wage. Quit and work somewhere else if you are so ungrateful to have a paying job.

I expected more from this age group. With all of the awareness of shrinking natural resources, why anyone would choose printed books and their inherent danger to the environment. But, who cares that trees are cut down, thus adding to global warming, as long as I can have the feel and smell in my hands.

I expected more of this new generation.

I have a Jacob's Ladder on my workbench. My friends call me crazy or mad -- no, I am not angry -- but it is highly effective in disabling flash memory and such. And it makes this Bzzzt! sound that I love to hear.

Electric Cars are to blame for Tax-By-Distance. Electric Cars don't pay petrol taxes. As more electric cars hit the road, taxes collected from petrol will keep going down, as the number of cars total continues to rise. Electric car drivers think they are getting a free pass, but they are about to get a rude awakening once the governments figure out a tax them equally. Roads are not free. They cost a lot of money to build and maintain, and those fat pigs called Electric Cars weighing as much as an SUV do as much damage to the roads SUVs.

Why not? We have Windows Notepad, so why the need for anything other text editor? We have Microsoft Word, so why code ABIword? Why not create an entirely new OS in assembly? Because it can be done. We climb mountains for no better reason that because it is there.

...is the one not installed. Otherwise, don't make it a pain the ass to run when one is presented with, say...an enterprise app like ADP which requires it. This is sure to push Admins to move away from Firefox and give IE and Chrome more users.

They will now be teaching LibreOffice in all of those schools, not MS Office. Thus, in Valencia, no future Valencian employees in the government will require any new training.

Indeed. I have even come across old Lotus Approach databases. FileMaker is still used by some companies, as well. Microsoft will be able to capture the non-expert enthusiast to try something. Those that really like it will step up to the full SDK and get more advance.

A keyboardless tablet can work fine for...
- watching netflix
- playing games
- reading your favorite star's latest tweets
- reading e-mail

Yeah, that whole aforementioned 'consumption'. But these devices have long since moved beyond the toy status. The lines of definition for what people thought a computer is now blurred. And now people expect even an Android phone to be a productivity device. And for that, a keyboard is just so essential. Ye olde QWERTY keyboard may be purposely inefficient, but it is faster and more accurate than any on-screen keyboard or voice system. In my own experiments with trying to be productive with an iPad 2, Droid 4 and Acer Iconia W700...I absolutely needed a physical keyboard to type anything out without error.

As for Windows RT, Microsoft has spent too much money to let it natural fail. We will see RT languish on for years and years why Microsoft's profits prop it up. They will offer enough money to bribe devs to write apps for it to keep it going. With Outlook coming to RT 8.1, that will address the business side issues.

I grant you that in the current state of Russia. But, even the Kremlin, faced with the potential of billions of dollars of investment potential, might even jump at the chance to develop the north coast. At the moment, Russia is in essentially no position to be a manufacturing powerhouse. But with that silly ice cap in the way...

With the Arctic Polar Cap melted, entirely new lines for shipping will be opened. Shipping goods from China and Japan to Europe and New York will become significantly faster, cheaper and safer. The shipping industry will be able to cut their CO2 emissions to a tenth of their current amount.

Additionally, Russia could see an industrial boom along its north shore. Factories could be placed up along that coast with easy access to Canadian, American and European markets and put a lot of Russians to work.

One can look at the loss of the Arctic cap as a disaster, or a boon. It all depends on your goals for humanity.

Your reading comprehension is poor.

"The lazy, poor and retired." I am listing three different classes of people that dependent on government entitlements. This does not preclude an individual being a member of more than one of the above groups.

My answer has the potential to come off as a troll, but here goes: socialism.

The political elite don't care as long as the lazy, poor and retired continue to the vote them back into power. Screw the working class that is currently paying taxes.

It is a short-sighted view that cause harm to everyone in the end.

Wages will equalize across the developed nations. That $17k salary in India will be $30k in a few years. The average salary in the USA will go down. Eventually, the disparate extremes between nations will normalize into a much smaller range.

Microsoft is essentially paying a large builder like Dell to put Windows on the systems. Linux, on the other hand, has no one paying Dell, so that $50 premium probably represents the loss those marketing dollars.