What I don't get is, if you say there's 25M of damage, isn't that supposed to mean it would cost 25M to repair? If you have an estimate for the repair, that means you can repair it; so why is it written off, instead?

Because obviously none of the Wikileaks documents offered clear evidence of US involvement in the Spanish download laws? Shill.

> getting carted off to the gulag by the Belgian military

Oh, that's rich, that is. Last thing you lot saw of our military was the then-minister of defence getting drunk off his arse in a bar in NY, and then getting the (belgian) barmaid who blogged about it fired. Google translated article here: http://preview.tinyurl.com/7zl5o2v

The only thing the Belgian military is likely to do is have a pint with you while explaining how a 10 million inhabitant country has no less than six governments.

Apart from that, you're making valid points, of course :-)

As long as you get the job done, you are NOT a slacker.

There is no such thing as criminally overdesigned. The only type of design that is downright criminal is planned obsolesence.

If the order matters, and the lists are disjoint (as in, different every time), just a few fails on the first entry will quickly reduce the number of recurring thumbnails to barely a handful, no?

Better to have the exact same list in each step, but maybe vary the location of the different icons.

Be fair. Credit where credit is due: that approach was pioneered by the MAFIAA.

I'd save the "clearly not intentional" until after the court's findings. I most certainly wouldn't put it past them, especially not back then.

My thoughts exactly :-)

Not quite. Operamail is also a service, and has been for over a decade. I've long used it, even as a paying subscriber, but at some point they moved to some kind of hosted platform which pretty much took all the awesome out of it. That's the point where I switched to Gmail. In the mean time, I've set up Zimbra on my own server, so I'm no longer dependent on Google, either.

> made with butter rather than cheap cooking fat,
The major factor in the list you give. I can't believe someone wouldn't believe it's not butter.

> where the chocolate is real, high-quality chocolate rather than cheap cooking stuff,
Biased for being a spoiled Belgian, I suppose, but the cooking stuff [we get] is still pretty reasonable chocolate. The "chocolatey" bits in B&J or various glazes, on the other hand, are indeed quite a different thing.

> where the flavouring is essence rather than artificial flavouring,
The difference very very much depends on the actual flavour, I believe. For the amount used, I don't think the utter majority of the people are going to notice wether you use bourbon vanilla or vanillin in your dough. Toppings use more, so may or may not be more sensitive.

> where the decorating is done by hand
Doesn't change the flavour, although one does eat with one's eyes :-)

> and includes fancy shapes made out of florist paste
Muh? I suppose you mean decorating marzipan? Marzipan quality varies a lot, it's true; and the texture of the cheaper stuff can be very off, too.

> as well as a generous topping of buttercream.
And, again, real butter is indeed quite a distinct flavour.

So, yes, you're right; but I'm not convinced the difference in ingredient prices alone makes that much of a difference - I'd imagine the raw ingredient price of a single cupcake will still not rise over 1£. Labour of handmade vs. industrial, however, is going to be a much more major factor, as will be pretty shop vs. cheapo supermarket.

Quite. The very very simple issue there is that "trickle down economics" and "global marketplace" are mutually exclusive buzzwords. Not that that's particularly relevant to the article, tough.

> The live streams I've watched so far were a painful raping of my eyes and ears.

it pleases your corporate overlords that this is the most important thought in your head while watching people protest the social injustices and abuses of power in today's world.

What makes you think they've stopped fucking over other nations, too? They've still got quite a few wars - sorry, liberations - going, but most of the fucking over is now happening on a more subtle level, from global McDonalds to pressuring the passing of MAFIAA laws.

Which makes it safe to assume they haven't, or they would have been waving it in someone's face.