I noticed this when I moved to China. If I asked where we were going on a supplier visit out of town I was always given just a travel time not a general direction and distance as I would normally expect. I came to realise that was because of until a couple of years ago people did not own cars so all travel of any distance that could not be walked or cycled was via bus or train, so they though of a trip as time, not distance.

Even today, with many of our staff now owning cars, I am still given just time as an answer by default.

Yes, from what I'm told I would have had to pay for a full version as the OEM version does not support add ons. I have no idea what that would have cost. As another poster pointed out it would be near impossible to physically buy a real copy of Windows in China but a pirated can be purchased at any computer shop.

If I had purchased a full copy of Windows I suspect my bargain purchase net-book would not have been such a bargain. Fortunately it runs well on Mint and I'm very happy with it.

We have a lot of Windows PCs at the office, all legal, but we buy the Ubuntu versions of the Dell PCs and install PCs fresh with Windows which I assume we are buy directly from Microsoft.

Yes my heading is incorrect, it should read "can't", not "can", sorry I'm human and the title can not be edited on submitted.

Where did I say I was upset? I was surprised, not upset. The ability to run Windows was never a purchasing requirement, simply a side effect of the purchase.

Where did I say I was mad at Samsung for not including an English keyboard? It has, like all Chinese PCs I have seen, a standard USA keyboard.

I'm sure the more expensive versions of Windows have multi-language support but version shipping with PCs here does not. I guess as long time Linux user I am spoilt but having everything I want. My point is if you buy a PC in another country and you want to be legal and use a Microsoft OS you may find you have an additional cost, which can be a motivator for piracy.

I live in China but don't read Chinese. Last year I brought a netbook here with the intent of running Linux Mint. Because I wanted more than the 2GB RAM limit on the knock-off models I brought a genuine Samsung which came with Windows 7. Having paid for an unwanted copy of Windows I thought I would look at dual booting it. It's been a long time since I used Windows so I had a play to see what Windows was like. I found I could not change the language from Chinese. Some research showed I was expected to pay for an upgrade to get Windows, that I paid for, to actual be usable. Microsoft really don't promote legal use of their products with such attitudes! I personally didn't mind as it just meant Linux got 100% of the HDD.

In fairness to Microsoft I suspect Windows would be pirated here unless it was free or very close to free. People here don't seem to care. I guess it is one of the reasons for the low uptake of Linux here, no price difference so less motivation to investigate alternatives.

261mS from China via a VPN. Given the state of Internet access here I might as well be in space, at least it wouldn't be deliberately broken. I do wonder how much The Great Firewall of China is holding back the economy here given the disadvantages it put Chinese businesses at compared with countries with real Internet access.

I just hope they did proper thermal cycle testing before deployment. My Nexus One had a thermal related fault from the date of purchase that rendered it useless over time and HTC didn't want support it. Now it's just a pretty brick.

If their's fails too it could make for a funny support call:
Support: "Ok so you need to send it to our service center"
Owner: "Sure, just give us your Lat/Lon and we will de-orbit it over you, can you have someone go outside to catch it?"

I do a lot of commercial audio products, including evaluating cheap Chinese tablets. My ears are not picky about quality so I never make the final call but even I can hear the problem with some of them. One common issue is they are designed to play audio to headphones while running on battery. Connect then to decent speakers while running on external power and you can get terrible audio. The reason can be as simple as ground loops or more detailed problems with the switching in the charger circuit.

Many people here are rubbishing your idea but really the simple thing is to try it first and see if it sounds ok to your ears. Just remember to try it connected as you will actually be using it, presumably with the charger connected, before you invest time in finding apps and mounting options etc.

Last year I set up a facial recogintion system. It needed to be able see faces in crowd clear enough to determine age and gender. While this is a different requirement from what you need it did share three features. It ran on Linux, used a webcam, and needed high quality. The recommend cameras, which we used succesfully, were the Logitech HD series. While not a cheap camera I think they are still reasonably priced, do a good job and work with Linux (Cent OS in our case).

I tried in the shop and it was as bad as I expected. As a power user creating stuff I like multiple programs open and clearly this not the OS for that. I guess they are targeting the 90% of users who simply consume and only single task. That's fine, I have the choice of sticking with what I like, Linux Mint Cinnamon edition, but do I really?

As I looked around the shop at all those Windows 8 laptop I wonder how many of them have locked down boot loaders that won't let me install Linux? And how many retail store are going to let boot a USB key and have a look at the HDD with a partitioning tool to see if it will be possible? I left the store depressed about the loss of choice. Maybe the old joke "We have both types of music, country and western" should now be "We have both types of OSes, Windows 8 and Mac OS 10.8".

I'm living in Jiaxing, China, a medium size city of 4 million people. Google Maps is close 100% acurate, but Bing thinks the whole city is just a single T junction of two roads. Guess which mapping application is often blocked here...

I had the Toshiba Portege 3500 convertible that ran the tablet version of XP. The hardware was hugely expensive but nicely done. The software was good at first but XP was not real time enough to handle the handwriting capture once a few programs were installed. Something would want some attention for a few hundred mill-seconds, such as a mail notifier checking for new email, and your handwriting became a straight line for that time. A pity as it was great product that was let down by an OS that wasn't designed for the task.

As for the Suface tablet, I wouldn't count on it doing any better than the Zune or a Windows phone.

Not sure why this new worthy of Slashdot? It's just general news.

Firstly, the list is stolen so could the Greek government legally use it?

Secondly, tax evasion is illegal but tax avoidance is not. Since when does having an off-shore account prove anything more than you money outside saved the country?

Thirdly, while the penalty is harsh given the unimportant nature of the information publish the principle and crime is valid. If it was a leaked list of patient medial records for off shore treatments would it acceptable?

I would agree. I can't see how the fares could be much cheaper and is simply the best public transport I have used anywhere in any country. Jiaxing to Shanghai is 30 mins and cost 39RMB (USD ~$6) and is a very pleasant trip. By car is about 90mins and will cost over 50RMB for toll roads and more for petrol. A 125cc motorcycle would cost about 40RMB and take about 3 hours ignoring toll roads. The Jiaxing airport is a military one is flying is out. There is the option of a normal train which I assume is slower and cheaper but I don't know the details. A bus trip is about 2 hours and about 20RMB. If someone else is paying I would take a car but for my own money it would be the high speed train. I think locals agree as it very popular with them too.

There are many things to annoy you in China, but their high speed trains are something they can rightly be proud of. Well run, practical, comfortable, pleasant and affordable, what other public transport system can make that claim?

I like these little cars, so cheap and fun. I'm in China for a few years so I just brought a BYD F0. Better looking than the Nano and for an entry level car it even has keyless entry. Airbags would have added another USD 1K but complete with factory mags, body kit, tinted windows, registration and insurance it was only USD $7500 on the road. I'm not sure where is stands on crash testing but it is proabably safer than my prefered mode of transport, a motorcycle.

When I read stories like this one it makes me glad I'm not an American, and then I remember that America dictates the law for many contries, such as my own. Bugger :-(