It's not carpet, they're styrofoam plates to imitate embossed plaster. You see that quite often in flats in Soviet-era prefab apartment blocks.

People used that sort of thing as part of low-to-medium-end remodels to individualize their flats a little bit, in particular in the 1990s, together with closing their balconies with masonry to get a little bit of extra (super-small) floor space, partly removing the inner wall sections to get a more individual layout, and moving the kitchens to the balcony to use the former kitchen as an extra room.

Coincidentally, in German it's called "Dachhase" and the origin is probably the siege of Vienna by the Turks in 1683, so I guess you got the term from the Germans.

Please, finally enable Unicode in comments.

It's 2011 and Unicode is used everywhere and allowed even in URLs, but Slashdot is still firmly stuck in 8-bit dark ages.

The military. You really don't want to live in a country with lots of tanks around that are loyal to the highest bidder.

If we look at the basic pattern behind your arguments, we find the following:

• Plant X is a very old design - with modern designs that couldn't happen
• The number of deaths is exaggerated anyway
• Other death sources are much more prominent, but are ignored

You use them for wind power (Altamont Pass is old anyway, there aren't really that many bird deaths anyway, more birds get killed by cars than by windmills). However, interestingly enough they're exactly the same kinds of arguments a nuke defender would use (Fukushima is old anyway, not that many human deaths can be directly attributed to it anyway, more humans get killed by cars than by nuke plants).

I'm not saying either is right or wrong, but it's just very interesting to note just how similar the line of argument gets as soon as people are on the defensive.

I think your friend never lived in his "ancestral Siberian village" or is making a joke at your expense. I've been to Siberia, and I work in Central Asia. We regularly get -40 C in the winter and +40 in the summer. Glass doesn't shatter from cold temperatures, it shatters from rapid changes in temperature gradients. You don't get that from the weather. Glass does just fine in the cold. Ask your friend whether in his ancestral Siberia they use special trucks, train cars and helicopters with all-plastic windshields. Hint: they don't.

People do use plastic on their windows, but they don't replace windowpanes with it. They just tape an extra layer of plastic foil on the existing glass window, the idea being that it creates an air pocket which provides extra thermal insulation. Throughout the winter, a roll of Scotch tape is one of the more important household implements to have around.

I've never heard of Siberian microtornadoes either all the time I spent in the region. You can freeze to death in the cold. At -40 or so it happens quite easily but it doesn't take a microtornado to do it. You can also be assured that people in Siberia have had a practical enough attitude towards the weather for a few hundred years that if people actually died from microtornadoes, as opposed to plain old hypothermia, "research grant award futures versus college loan payment rates" (assuming such a thing even made sense in the Soviet or post-Soviet Russian system) would be of little concern.

For selected values of "always". Apple has supported Unicode well since OS X, that is since 2001 or so, or in other words, ten years after the Unicode standard was published. Even Windows was earlier - Unicode support in Windows NT 3.x was there on the API level, in NT 4 it would work well if your programmers had been halfway diligent, and in Windows 2000 it would work well out of the box. With Apple systems before 2001, it was a pain to get Unicode working properly on MacOS 9 - it was technically supported in 9.x, but it didn't really work all that well.

With OS X, Apple finally had the opportunity (that Plan 9 had had something like a decade earlier) to design a new API that used Unicode for all strings. Prior to OS X, the Apple device that supported Unicode best was the Newton, and even there you didn't have proper input methods and rather limited font support.

I developed major wrist problems when writing my PhD dissertation, which involved coding (some 20,000 lines of Python) and writing lots of text. I had started off on an IBM Thinkpad X60 keyboard, which while good as laptop keyboards go, is not ideal for coding.

What made the problem go away for me was four things:

1. A Fujitsu-Siemens KBPC-E USB split keyboard. an adjustable keyboard that can be raised in the middle and has built-in adjustable wrist rests. The keyboard is a rebranded version of the Kinesis Maxim, with different keycaps. Normally they sell for somewhere between 60 and 100 EUR over here, I got lucky that there was an eBay seller who sold a bulk lot of them for 10 EUR each. I bought four.

   In addition I used a keyboard remapper to assign extra functions to the Windows keys (there is an extra set of Windows keys in the key column left of the keyboard). I remapped them into extra Enter and Backspace keys to be used with the left hand.

2. A small traveller's mouse, with the pointer set to high acceleration. I can rest my hand on the table and push it around with small movements.
3. A set of Rehband Manu ComforT wrist guards with built-in carbon fiber support (now made and sold by Otto Bock Healthcare. Not cheap at about 100 EUR each, but they did a good job.
4. Taking care of overall ergonomics of the workplace. Sitting with a straight back, getting a low table so my elbows would remain at a 90 angle, that sort of thing. It's worth talking it over with an orthopedist, some of the tips you get may seem counterintuitive but it works.

With the combination of the four, I went from having constant pain in the wrist to writing 140,000 words within six months without major issues, Your mileage may vary, but in my case it has definitely worked.

Actually the Germans had been using magnetic tape recorders since about 1935. The AC bias technique you mentioned was developed for the AEG Magnetophon, which was a series of tape recorders, not wire recorders.

Towards 1943 or so it was pretty much a high-end system, with stereo and everything. There are a few surviving recordings that were later reissued in LP and CD form.

Well, what are you actually trying to say?

If you can take the $0.99 MP3 and use that to perform a song yourself, go ahead. I'm sure the composer won't mind.

As for the price difference, the target market for sheet music is much smaller than that for MP3s, so it's not really surprising that the price is higher, as there are fewer buyers to offset whatever initial investment there was.

Then again, I'm not sure if a $3 price difference between completely different products entitles anyone to anything. But that's already a question of ethics, not one of "simple math".

When I was in a similar situation I simply got a used Symbian phone (in my case a Nokia E60 for some 50 EUR, the most important thing is there to get one with the S60 operating system.). You should be able to use that with Skype for Symbian, or alternatively with fring if your phone is not supported directly. Works well.

The E-series Nokias had the advantage is that they also included a SIP client out of the box so you weren't limited to Skype. Also there is a Python programming environment if you're into that sort of thing.

Unlike the iPod Touch it also has the advantage that it works as a phone when you're somewhere where there actually is cellular reception, or when you go abroad.

Well, seeing how your requirements and usage patterns are apparently completely different from those of the person you're replying to, and also from those of the story submitter who wanted "dual band, great range, USB print server and storage", it's not really a surprise that you don't experience the issues those persons are having with your hardware, is it?

The other question is, if you are the type that rejects file sharing functionality in a router on principle, why spend the extra premium for this functionality?

Actually it's about both. China probably has a lower percentage of English speakers than Georgia, but if you have more people enrolled into universities than Georgia has citizens, the raw number probably does make a difference.

Not to mention that there is a fair number of countries in Asia where the percentage is higher, too.

In Georgia, somewhat OK if you look at banks and tech stores, not great if you look at grocery stores or bus drivers.

Better than the guy in the store, and probably better than in Turkmenistan or so, but not higher than in India, for example.

I was answering to a statement that there is an "abundance of English speakers", compared to other nations in Asia. There, the raw numbers do play a role. It's much easier to find a qualified English-speaking Indian than a Georgian.