How exactly do you manage to do that? I change update CM9 nightlies with CWM. No wipe is needed at all. Not a single app login is lost during the process! The only thing I need to setup again is the avast anti theft service.

Of course, not! They do it just for the lulz!
More seriously, for space systems and embedded systems in general, due to resource constraints on-board, you usually cannot fit all the functionality you would like to in one software image. So you keep only what is necessary for the first mission, and then you replace the obsolete ones with the next thing you want to do.
As a simplified example, when you launch a satellite, you will need it to deploy its solar arrays quickly (and do many initialization checks). When that is done, you could imagine changing this part of the software with something else...

Also, they might have had time planning constraints on the project, and needed to launch with a simpler first version of the software, while finalizing the second one. That does happen.

Exactly. Usually, no trademark issues are raised when the two companies' activities are so different.
My guess in that case is that the German Metro wanted to avoid a splash of bad notoriety in case Windows 8 is a flop.

Not sure if real pistol fired next to the athletes is too easy or not geek enough...

Why wonder? Just assume that some agency, somewhere, does. Maybe not the police, but with all the agencies that could be interested in this, it's likely that this happens!

This is the most important part... Don't forget that our definition of intelligence today might be very different from the original "natural" one, as in "surviving in a wild environment". Maybe the bigger brain is better suited for the wildlife thing; from TFA: "Animals with larger brains relative to their body size have been shown to be more likely to thrive when introduced to new places"
On an another subject, I cannot find the curve they're referring to, to predict the brain size from the body's. From what I understand, it seems to be really curvy, not linear, so I am not sure it is that reliable for such predictions...Moreover, it is only applicable to mammals.

Unless you are a software patents fundamentalist, this screen filled with big buttons looks just like any interface designed for the sight-impaired!

Some men just want to watch the world burn...

It's not like if we weren't warned; some Euro-MPs had announced this: https://www.laquadrature.net/wiki/Translation_Interview_Marielle_Gallo_ACTA_pcinpact

You mean, like any of the biggest military powers which were concerned by the diplomatic cables?

In that case, the fact that it was a horribly ugly and slow even compared to 56k Internet (compare it to an old black-and-white teletext) should also be ignored. I forgot to mention the outrageous charges, even to connect to public administration services; I remember myself waiting for some nation-wide exam results to display, the connection timer was the real source of stress, not the results!

I am surprised by this part: last time I tried with a Win7 Pro laptop, I was able to use my own license number (the one on the sticker on the laptop case) with another Windows setup disc, without having to purchase a new license!

Couldn't the buyer of an OEM PC with Windows just flash their UEFI with one allowing disabling the Secure Boot?
This would add just one step to the alternative OS setup!

This is nice as a tool to increase users' awareness, but Idon't see the point of using this add-on more than a couple of minutes
Then you install ghostery if not already done, and you forget about trackers...