I'm running Linux on on a Zenbook, and this is what I really prefer to a really crappy "netbook", thank you very much.

My claim here is that the calculus is such that as NK just doesn't matter ideologically anymore to China, so they have no motivation to "support" it in any meaningful way, regional stability concerns aside. International diplomacy is often a matter of trading concerns, so if I were China I would just hope the NK crazies went away and I didn't have to "take their side" when I have much more important issues to defend (trade, Taiwan...)

I'm not all that certain that China will unconditionally prop them up. They already have quite a problem on their hands with NK that they are no longer ideologically interested, and that China's real interests in international trade and so on are just hurt by any overt support of NK.

What China is interested in is that their border region with NK doesn't get flooded with refugees if NK suddenly implodes. So I'd say that China might be our best bet at encouraging internal changes inside NK.

If only it were Chihuahua... chien is "dog" in French :)

Last time I checked Nokia is based in Finland which is not in the US...

How exactly is public healthcare to blame for the situation in Greece?

As someone living in a socialized-medicine country and with a very rare disease, I'd say my specialist treatment has always been excellent. I bet I'd have issues getting insurance in the first place in the States, and it certainly wouldn't cover the "pre-existing condition". I'd be willing to bet that it is indeed the rare-disease people who benefit the most from our kind of a system.

I'm not really sure I am all that interested in "having choice" in my healthcare as I believe that medicine is a science and that doctors are far more qualified to make decisions about effective treatment than I am. Of course, I am allowed to refuse treatment in the style of your example. After that, it is simply a matter of making sure that the delivery mechanism of this known best practice works; it is relatively easy to optimize and you can leverage economies of scale.

As for the funding, as it is fairly easy to objectively agree on what we're seeking to achieve, IMO only someone opposing the "entitlement mentality" would be opposed to universal insurance that guarantees the broadest insurance pool. Having "choice" in insurance essentially just breaks the pool up, lets the insurer play games with excluding people from coverage and requires quite a lot of knowledge from the insured person so that he doesn't get screwed buying the wrong kind of insurance that doesn't cover this and that drug...

There's an interesting double standard by the way that relates to this rhetoric on "entitlement mentality" -- the opponents of public healthcare are opposed to both using money to treat other people's illnesses in a universal insurance sense and they are also opposed to any kinds of controls on making sure the money gets efficiently spent, calling that "rationing".

It's a convenient argument -- damned if you do, damned if you don't.

What exactly do you think was missing of S60 for example so it was not a "true" smartphone OS? I have always been a bit disturbed by these definitions that seem to assume that iPhone == smartphone...

Interestingly here in Finland which seems to be the envy of the world in kids' education, we have always done everything in a very integrated way and we seem to be successful. We don't sacrifice the intellectual weaklings to give "more attention" to the stronger ones, although special ed classes do exist for those with un-integrable special needs. It is only recently that we have started to have a discussion about what to do with exceptionally gifted kids; it seems like it's sufficient to give them extra material to work on.

I was probably among the top 5% of the students in my age group by results, when everything is highest mark possible you can no longer really tell. But at that point I'm not sure it matters anymore; we'll just educate ourselves throughout our lives anyway. School was easy and I wasn't hurt by being top of my class :-)

With their great maps, up-and-coming location services as well as their brand presence in those aforementioned emerging markets.

I recalled she was some kind of "communications-manager" in a prior life? It would explain a lot, as she certainly seems to know how to do efficient propaganda in the vein of "we are so innovative and cool that you must look like an idiot if you don't join us". Also, her machinery is just a bit too slick to come from one person alone, I am willing to bet there is Magma (Fenno-Swedish think tank that produces slanted research and opinion pieces) people behind her and she's just the public face who somehow just "happened" to want to share this wonderful language with the rest of the world by any means necessary.

It does not matter what her native language is. A lot of Finnish-speakers are more Catholic than the Pope in this issue in order to demonstrate their ideological credentials in this matter.

The factual basis in the comment is that this is just part of the effort in Finland to really strongly push Swedish on a purely ideological basis -- it has been systematically stepped up in recent years, and Senja is part of the "movement" to sell the language as somehow particularly "innovative"... hence these crowdfunded things and so on. It's not as if Swedish textbooks don't already exist. Nobody would complain if it were a Mathematics textbook, or perhaps we would not have the need to anything to that effect either to be crowdfunded. I wonder who gets to decide what is in that textbook...

I do respect you for bashing where bashing is due though :-)

Being oppressed again when something comes in the way of making everyone worship their language above all others... or else :-) This Senja Larsen person is quite an annoying example of the idea that being a member of her language-cult is an expected feature of a person who isn't somehow particularly closed-minded, uncivilized, yadda yadda. Perception is everything, and she and her kind truly know how to push an agenda.

It's not as if our tax money aren't already being used to fund Swedish textbooks... I wonder when contributing to her cause twice becomes mandatory? "Status of Swedish" and all, you know.

Like the Communicators or the E-series business phones?