It is the year 2081. Because of Amendments 211, 212, and 213 to the Constitution, every American is fully equal, meaning that no one is smarter, better-looking, stronger, or faster than anyone else.
The Handicapper General and a team of agents ensure that the laws of equality are enforced.
The government forces citizens to wear "handicaps" (a mask if they are too handsome or beautiful, earphones with deafening radio signals to make intelligent people unable to concentrate and form thoughts, and heavy weights to slow down those who are too strong or fast).

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Harrison_Bergeron

My guess is that with Win 8 Metro interface Microsoft might try to move not just into tablets, but also into TV market.

Think about it for a minute:

1. Win 8 will stop being x86 exclusive, and will move on ARM too (Win 8 RT),
2. MS might start fully supporting Kinect to control Win 8 metro interface,
3. MS and partner TV manufacturers begin installing ARM processors and Win 8 RT on TVs, adding ability to connect Kinect through USB (or maybe even produce TVs with Kinect already installed),
4. MS app store is now on many TVs in many living rooms,
5. Profit..?

Purely speculation on my side, but might be the logical next step for MS.

Well, apparently you don't care. But I am sure many other people do care.

No, if I owned a property in my home country, I would be considered a resident and I would have to pay income tax on all my income, even the one I made outside of the country.

Not true.

In many countries, if you move outside, even for more than 6 months, you are still considered resident (and also required to pay taxes) under certain conditions.
For example, you might still pay taxes if you have personal interests in you country of origin, like if you own property or if you significant other and children still live there.

It is different from country to country. In my case, I am expat from European country living in the middle east more than 5 years already, and I would still have to pay income tax back home in case i owned any property there. I don't, BTW. :/

The biggest benefit of VLC, AFAIK, is the fact that it does not install a bunch of different codecs, everything is included in the player.

Maybe they think that email spam is just plain old http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spam_(food).

Perhaps you should take a closer look at the map. That area is not flat terrain, it is full of huge mountain ranges.
Digging a canal through that terrain would be almost impossible, and for sure prohibitively expensive.

And BTW, it's Oman, not Omar.

There was a cost-benefit analysis done by Philip Morris for the Czech government that showed economical "benefit" of smoking.

It is not unbiased, but it is interesting to read about it.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Public_Finance_Balance_of_Smoking_in_the_Czech_Republic

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/americas/1442555.stm

Off course, I guess that a value of human life is more than just how much they can produce (or perhaps we should all agree just to kill our grandparents and parents as soon they retire to stop them from being a burden on our economy, Philip Morris style).