Booting off Live CD or usb stick is not considered a normal mode of operation. It's only used occasionally by admins and power users, and almost never by normal consumers.

In many european countries there's laws against bundling two unrelated things together.

I think that statement is false. Without an OS, you can't even turn on your PC properly... The BIOS will error out saying "OS not found, press F1" or something like that, and that's broken from a consumer point of view. So an OS is not an unrelated part to the hardware, instead it's highly related and essential.

You can't sell a computer and an operating system bundled together without offering to sell the two separately.

If you want this option, you should build your own box. Normal customers want a computer with an OS installed but it doesn't have to be a Microsoft OS, just as the PC does not require just an Intel CPU or an NVidia graphics card.

It's like ordering a cheeseburger, and then demanding a refund for the cheese. Why didn't you just order a hamburger?

But you do have the right to choose a different type of cheese. You can choose microsoft cheese, bsd cheese, linux cheese.

I'm all for free software, but this reasoning sounds insane.

Even if linux/bsd are free, the company selling the linux/bsd PC will charge an OS bundling and testing charge. So the real question is, is the Italian Supreme court making it legal to sell hamburgers without the cheese?

Can I get a refund for my Mac OS too?

No, you can't. OS X was designed for Mac hardware and Mac hardware only. Also, what moron would throw away the best part (os x) of mac platform?

PC platforms are open architecture and not tied to Windows. You can run FreeBSD, Linux etc on these platforms. So, MS charging customers who use linux or BSD is fraud.

Why didn't they keep iphone 6 the same size as 5s as many people do prefer compact phones? They should keep iphone 6+ at 5.5".

What's the point of critical thinking if what your boss really wants to hear is whatever answer he thinks is going to benefit him (personally) best?

Isn't this an example of critical thinking?

You pretend that Google displaying more than the headline and the link would keep people away from visiting the news site.

A Google news link has the same format as a slashdot story link. Google news shows the title of the story and a small snippet copied from a copyrighted article. Are you telling me there are no slashdotters who went to the comment section without RTFA? There are plenty, and so your statement is completely false. Google news snippets can and will prevent newspapers from getting the page hits.

2. The newspapers themselves often put the most essential bit of information in the headline.

Then why does google news also display a snippet. Remove the snippet.

3. Google sends MILLIONS of visitors per month to the newspapers.Even if it was true that displaying some of the content would stop some people from following the link, the net gain for the newspapers is still enormous.

No, it's quite debatable that there is a net gain for the news sites. After all, if I can get all the news stories from google news, why should I bother visiting any individual news site? I can just browse google news, scan the snippets, for which google is paying nothing, and only read certain cherry picked articles that interest me.

It's time google learnt to pay for copyrighted content instead of strong arming weaker entities into an unfair deal (you won't give us free content, we won't give you free traffic).

It may be different in Germany, but otherwise I don't see how they are making money.

Well, they're still mulling how to make money off google news. Remember, google search and facebook also did not make any money for years after they were released. So, google news is not a non-profit, nor a charity.

I am far more likely to read more details (even with the 3-2 score type of thing you mention)

This is the heart of the matter... do you read every single article associated with a snippet you read? I highly doubt it. That's how many people read newspapers... they skim the articles (same as snippets) and only fully read certain very interesting articles. In this case, the copyright holder (newspaper) is not getting paid for the snippets consumed by the reader, instead the distributor (google) is getting paid (or will be paid once they have a revenue model). Google cannot and should not apply the same business model it applies to low-quality and/or free content it gets elsewhere from the web.

In fact, google owes the copyright holders a portion of its adsense revenue for displaying their content and profiting from it. Without that free content, adsense would be unable to make any money.

They wanted Googles money and tried to exploit outdated laws written 100yrs ago to modern technology to try and extort that money.

The laws are not outdated. They allow papers to make money off their work. Google showing your slashdot comment or other non-professional content without permission is okay as you're gaining any income from your comment nor is it capable of generating much revenue.

There is a big difference between amateur and professional content. Google should try to reach an agreement with the papers about what to display and what to skip. For example, if the snippet states "Italy Beat Germany 3-2," along with many details, many readers might skip visiting the original site as they already have the information they want from the google snippet. In this case, the distributor (Google) makes money but the creator/copyright holder (News website) makes no money, which is not fair.

Nobody reads all the articles in a newspaper. Most read less than a dozen articles and only skim the headlines and the summary of the remaining articles. Are the newspapers going to be financially compensated for the revenue generated due to the snippets? That revenue is going 100% to google and that's not fair. It's very much like music distributors making all the money, while the music creators make nothing.

But with all the advances in technology why is a Porsche still unaffordable for the common man as it was 50 years ago? Why are these products not getting any cheaper?

In fact, other than computers/Internet and effective employee wage/hour, nothing else has gotten cheaper over time. Yet the cost to produce products/services has dropped dramatically due to advancements in technology. It appears there is an ever increasing gap between cost of production and retail price.

Why can't the USAians get the enjoy the same?

I don't know the answer, but could it be lower cost/customer in Korea? S.Korea is much smaller than the US so the cost to provide gigabit internet is lower as you need less manpower, fewer routers and shorter cables to connect.

Calculations:
Population of s.korea: 50 million
Area of s.korea: 100,210 sq km
Percentage of internet users: 84.8%

Population of us: 318 million
Area of us: 9.826 million sq km
Percentage of internet users: 84.2%

Based on these numbers, there are 424 s. korean internet users per sq.km and only 27 us internet users per sq km. Because of the high number of users in s. korea, the cost provide each with internet service is a lot lower.

You could use unicode but, it looks like the Unicode 7 standard missed the opportunity to add air quotes emoticons

But who decided systemd is right, and init/upstart is wrong? The decision seems very arbitrary, fascist and non-community oriented.

Apple didn't have the first tablet. Microsoft has been trying for decades

Those pre-ipad tablets with their styluses are about as ancient as an apple newton. That's not a fair comparison.

Apple was the first company to get tablets noticed by general consumers,

That's because it had a great design, unlike its predecessors.

The Surface Pro was an incremental step from the many different types of convertable laptops.

Wrong. The surface pro is MS playing its usual game of cloning a market leader (embrace), in this case the iPad, and adding features to it (extend), i.e. a keyboard.

Wait a sec, isn't surface pro just a clone of iPad with a keyboard and mouse attached? Who's copying who?

But let's say apple did clone (stuff they already invented) the surface pro. Won't that hurt the market for ipads? So no, they won't do something stupid like that.