1&1 and Deutsche Telekom in Germany just announced that (paraphrasing it) they will take email security more seriously now.

The announcement was from DT and United Internet (which has the sub companies 1&1.de, web.de, GMX.de), so you find the "eMail made in Germany" logo on all of them. These four plus GMail likely account for most email accounts in Germany. (And no, just because of having a subsidiary in the US doesn't make 1&1 an american company. It's not. Whether that helps the US employees against torture is another question, though.) Nevertheless, "more seriously" means enabling SSL encryption between servers, which technically is something that should have done a decade ago. So essentially it is nothing more than a marketing campain.

You might want t get an email account at GMX in Germany (product of 1&1)

You certainly don't want to. Fact is that the WW II hasn't ended in so far as there are still serious limitations on sovereignity on Germany from US side (the Russians gave up on them during German reunification). Essentially US authorities can order around German authorities, including in particular the order to not investigate US crimes on German soil. You also may want to look up the story of the guy who invited a few friends on fecesbook to take a walk to some spy facility to watch the endangered species of NSA agents from a distance (or some such). He had the modern equivalent of the Gestapo at his doorsteps a few days later and had to officially register this walk as a demonstration...

and then use PGP/GPG for fully

That for sure.

Thinks... :-p

... you're willcom. ;-)

We have also seen there IS a way to build a road so it will really last, just look at the Autobahn, but you have to lay a really solid foundation and build up.

Hate to burst your bubble, but the Autobahn doesn't last forever, either, even if it might be better made than the roads in the USA. And in Switzerland they're experimenting with special asphalt with even longer durability (IIRC with nano particles in it), as closing the highways crossing the alps has an extreme economic impact... Also, there are lots of bridges in need of maintenance in Germany as well (but not on the brink of collapsing at least) - for example that bridge that held the record of the shortest construction time also held the record of the shortest time till needing repairs.

Of course I agree with you that investment into infrastructure is a better idea than investment into lottery players (aka bankers)... which is true not only in the USA.

Apple's 1 year warranty

EU Consumer Law regarding to product quality at the time of sale

Call the first "warranty" (as in: a promise the manufacturer opted to make), and the second "defect liability" (as in: the seller must not sell defective goods). Unfortunately, these two concepts ("Garantie" and "Gewährleistung") happen to both be called warranty in English, clouding the issue somewhat...

Noteworthy: some non-essential, nice to have things

I just wished they'd fixed copy (and paste) from konsole - most of the time when I copy some output from the konsole to paste elsewhere (e.g. my editor of choice or my chat program), I have gobs of spaces after each line. That's the most frustrating bug ever...

My cousin in Europe carries around 600euro and this is considered normal.

This is certainly not an amount considered normal for every-day usage here in Germany, and I seriously doubt this is the case in any other European country.

Also note that in Europa, there is the EC card (currently being renamed to girocard or some such) - essentially a regular bank card that you can pay with, either with PIN code (also requires commission, but less than credit cards) or with signature (allowing direct debit and agreeing to pay fees caused by cancelling that direct debit).

And last, but not least, there's also the GeldKarte (money card) - another application on your bank card that you can load small amounts of money for micro payments, accepted at some vendin machines and some shops - it didn't reach the popularity the banks anticipated, but almost any bank card carries the GeldKarte logo.

All in all, there's pretty much no place for PayPal in Europa - except for people believing the "buyer protection" mythos and smaller mechants. But small amounts are still frequently paid in cash - why give banks an additional share coupled with a slow down in the paying process?

Not sure what problems you have with Gmail, but false positive rate is minimal and I rarely get more than 50 -actual- spam messages a month.

That sounds about the amount I get daily. And false positives... well, from my last keysigning party, virtually every signed key that went through gmail ended up in the spam folder. I don't consider that "minimal".

Though, probably the spam rate went up since a) some retard from the US that wouldn't even be able to spell my first name passed my email on as his own one to his friends (yeah, thanks for the BBQ invitations, but I'm afraid I wasn't able to make it over the big pond in time) and b) that one other person in Germany with the same first and family name kept CC:ing me on his personal and business mail...

So, for me, I also have my one-mail-address-per-business thingy setup. However, mine are unguessable (i.e. they have an added cryptographic check sum). Unfortunately, the overwhelming majority of web sites nowadays are so crappy that they refuse mail addresses with a plus sign in it. And some even refuse conscutive minus signs...

deb http://ppa.launchpad.net/kubuntu-ppa/experimental/ubuntu jaunty main

Essentially, it shows progress on all itches I had with 4.2 -- the weather applet, kdelirc being ported, the CPU/mem/swap applet being readded. Now only the device notifier needs to be revamped, and konqi should learn that double click means to mark words and not some random part of the line... (Yes, there are some crashes. Sometimes. So? At least it provides the functionality I need.)

KDE is *broken* to delete a file and expect it to still be there if it crashes before the write.

Nope, it writes a new file and then renames it over the old file, as rename() says it is an atomic operation - you either have the old file or the new file. What happens with ext4 is that you get the new file except for its data. While that may be correct from a POSIX lawyer pont of view, it is still heavily undesirable.

I've seen traffic lights with digital countdowns, but I don't remember exactly where. I think somewhere in eastern Europe.

For pedestrians I've seen such in Hamburg. And lots in Kiev (Ukraine).

I dunno - I've been using KDE for years, recently I gave Kubuntu a try (using it to setup the Christmas gift for my dad), and it came with KDE 4.1.

If you want to use KDE4 in any useful way, then go for any KDE distribution. In particular, OpenSuSE is known to be quite good for handling KDE4: you can still install KDE3, or you can install KDE 4.1 with a bunch of KDE 4.2 features backported, which actually works quite well. As much as people like Ubuntu, Kubuntu is simply KDE 4.1 hacked together in what feels like the worst possible way. If you insist on Intrepid, then at least grab the KDE 4.2 b2 binaries. You trade in a constantly crashing plasma for a KDE version without the plasmoid that shows CPU/mem usage (and that one was really handy). So whatever Shuttleworth archieved with Ubuntu, his team doesn't deserve any credit for what they did to Kubuntu. :-(