Fast forward to 2014. Apple's products have become dated and uninspiring.

Roughly 10% ahead of Canada and losing ground rapidly.

Haha, no. It is quite elementary that sacrificing market share while increasing prices is a fine recipe for short term gain and long term pain.

America certainly has it's issues but Putin seems determined to turn Russia into a nuclear armed banana republic. Look at this list. Russia, styling itself a great power, has impoverished its people to a state worse than Croatia and 56 other countries. Not far ahead of Botswana. Amazing power, that.

Is it in Russia's best interest to become isolated as an international pariah and have its economy shrink?

You're making the mistake of presuming rational behavior.

It's .5% of Russia's GDP. Sounds like a lot to me.

Apple toady calls Samsung broken but.

"Tesla won't sell out to us for a price we can afford"

Mass adoption of electric cars is inevitable as soon as electric cars consistently outperform gasoline at a similar price point, which in turn is inevitable. Until then things will move in fits and starts, and for now, "limited" accurately describes the markets. But Daimler-benz would be nuts to deny that the writing on the wall. I suppose they feel the time is right for a bit of FUD.

Interesting spin on it. The rest of the world seems to perceive it as a timely reminder that they should be seeking any way they can to escape Microsoft's tentacles as soon as possible.

Also, consumer (and mass storage) grade 7200 rpm drives have significantly lower power surge than 15K drives.

Microsoft security, the gift that just keeps on giving. Note the elapsed times between vulnerability publication and update.

Their only hope is to bulldoze the Windows servers and put in nice Linux clusters like everybody else. Otherwise, the inevitable result will be high comedy. Except for those unfortunate victims who decide to throw their corporate fortunes in with Microsoft's big system expertise.

I thought that .NET was dead. Does anybody really know?