Criminals can promise things that legit marketing emails can't.

I suppose that doesn't quite answer the question of whether any of those pieces of software actually produce documents that comply with the standard, which is what the actual requirement is.

But in any case the practical difficulty will be that people will say they have complied with the requirement by saving as ODF from Word, whether or not that actually enables interoperability with non-Word software.

Assuming there's compliance with this edict at some point in the foreseeable future (which is questionable); what's going to happen is that people will save as ODF from Word. The question is then whether you can truly use other software to work on those documents. MS has a long history of failing to properly implement standards; or even their own specifications.

Truth might not be an absolute defence to defamation in the US, but it is in English law.

But in any case this is not about defamation. It's a different thing.

99% of the stuff that gets send as word processor files could be plain text.

Only in the US would 3 weeks be regarded as a generous holiday allowance. In most of Europe 4 weeks is a minimum - many people have ~6 weeks+.

The summary suggests that plug-in hybrids are something different from hybrids - surely that's wrong: they're just a particular kind of hybrid.

Huh? If the newspapers don't want people to view their content via the web then they should stop publishing it on the web.

err typo: "what Google plan to do"

It's not at all clear that this is want Google plan to do. The BBC are reporting that google.com will not be affected. Whether the Google Spain ruling actually says what you say it does is not clear. The judgment says (at para 88) " the operator of a search engine is obliged to remove from the list of results displayed...". There's nothing in the decision that specifically addresses deleting copies of data.

With some provisos. There are contexts in which the fact of the convictions can still be used. For example in a subsequent criminal trial evidence of the conviction can be given (subject to the usual rules of evidence about such things).

You ask "what exactly does google sell apart from ads". This misses the point. Google makes loads of money from ads. Everything else is really there to make sure that nothing interferes with that. Android? Google doesn't care about 'phones per se... what they care about is loads of Iphones that don't have google as the default search provider. Chrome? same thing, get a decent market share of the web browser market and you're protected against directing traffic away from google one way or the other... and so it goes.

Most diamonds mined are used in for practical industrial purposes and have value for that reason.

If you're going to install solar panels then putting them on a car port is often not going to be the smart thing to do. You want to pick the place with the best exposure to the sun, which will often be the house roof. And you don't want to use the power generated just to charge up the car - if you've got the panels you might as well feed the power into the house for general domestic use. There is some additional overhead in sorting that out - buying an inverter and doing the wiring - worth it in the long run if you're buying and installing the panels anyway.

I tend not to take notes at all during class/lectures. The material is not unique - there are plenty of other sources for that information. The point about attending is to have someone explain stuff to you in a way that makes it easy to comprehend. The best way to make use of that exposition is to pay attention and make sure you understand what's being said, asking questions if necessary.

Make notes later.

Contemporaneous note taking is for situations where the information that is is only available from that source and needs to be accurately recorded. Examples include doing an experiment where you need at accurate record of what was done, or taking a statement from a witness.