Windows RT and Windows Phone both have walled gardens and only let you install from the Microsoft store.

Instead of asking for austerity, what the EU SHOULD be doing is saying to the Greeks "you wont get any more money from us unless you get rid of the corruption and collect the taxes your laws say you are supposed to be collecting". If Greece actually collected all the tax the laws say they are entitled to collect, they wouldn't be in the trouble they are in.

Only problem is that the same oligarchs, rich people, big companies etc that are not paying their taxes in Greece are also lobbying the EU under the table asking the EU to reject any Greek bailout plans that involve collecting these taxes.

Ok so the EU says to Greece that it has to do certain things (raise VAT, cut pensions, some other stuff) which will swing the Greek budget back towards surplus by x amount of Euros. Greece has then countered by saying that they can get the same x amount of Euros by increasing taxes on big companies and doing a few other things instead of doing the things the EU wants.

If Greece can get the money the EU says it needs to get in a way that provides less hurt to the Greek economy and to those worst off in Green society, why wont the EU let them do it instead of insisting on the economically destroying austerity?

What hasn't been said by Microsoft is whether or not all extensions need to go through the official Windows store (and be approved by Microsoft) or whether it will be possible to produce extensions that can be installed directly from non-MS websites and hence not need approval from MS.

Not if that database insertion caused money to be moved somewhere else and database entries existed on a system belonging to someone else.

Ok so firstly it still uses large chunks of OpenSSL (all the crypto stuff) and is still vulnerable to any security holes in that stuff. So its no good on that score.
Also, it disables DHE (which is supposed to be good for ensuring forward secrecy) claiming its a "security risk" (to be fair, maybe there is some security flaw with DHE that I haven't read about yet and that is why its turned off)
Oh and it still supports horridly broken things like RC4, 3DES, SSLv3 and TLS1.0 (all of which contain known unfixable security flaws making them unsuitable going forward)

It seems like NVIDIA have decided to become more "open" as of late releasing various pieces of documentation and header files as well as NVIDIA guys participating in the Nouveau mailing list. They are also working on the best way to make the firmware for their cards available for the Nouveau developers to use and distribute.

Do you see this as a sign that NVIDIA have genuinely changed their attitude towards Open Source or do you think this is just the actions of a company desperate to get more companies to use their Tegra SOCs?

We have the same problems of high rents, lack of housing stock, builders of apartments targeting the higher end in order to maximize profits, people unable to afford to buy properties and governments that won't do anything to solve the problem (whether that be by removing red tape and increasing the supply of land, reform of planning policies so its easier to get new residential developments approved, reform of zoning rules to encourage developers to build higher density, changing tax and other laws to stop the investment property speculation bubble or whatever else)

The real problem is that the systems contain hardware that isn't compatible with the standard Windows drivers yet is still showing up in a way that Windows will think it is and will pull drivers via Windows Update.

USB (even USB 3.0) is a documented standard that is supported out-of-the-box by Windows (and is likely part of the Intel chip-set they are using in the laptop), why would it need special drivers?

Too bad Section 1706 of the Tax Reform Act of 1986 makes doing that very hard (at least not if you want to not get in trouble with the IRS)

The replacement for airplane fuel is biofuels (made in a way that doesn't hurt the planet due to their production). A number of airlines have flown (and continue to fly) aircraft using biofuels (either 100% biofuel or biofuel/regular jet fuel blends). Even the US military has flown a number of test flights with biofuels of various sorts.

I thought I was a guru level C++ programmer (I have been programming C++ for around 2 decades) but even I am constantly finding out about new things I didn't know existed.

Ummm, I think Danial Andrews (current premier of Victoria who has just green-lit a MAJOR rail tunnel right under the Melbourne CBD) would disagree with what you said about parties that only build roads, roads and more roads.

But I do agree that in general governments in this country (at all levels) don't care about public transport anywhere near as much as they should (or anywhere near as much as they do in big cities elsewhere in the world)

If you think its only happening in the USA, I suggest you visit Australia. Many parts of Australia are being artificially held back from the kind of higher density inner city living that is badly needed (mostly by NIMBYs who don't want to see apartment towers in "their" suburbs and by backwards thinking planning bodies and councils)

They do when their boss says "we need you to be in xyz by tomorrow to visit a customer, you have 3 hours to go home, pack some bags and get to the airport in time for your flight in zero-legroom-class on bargain-airlines-r-us, if you dont like it you can go find another job"