My licence agree for Win 7 Pro OEM does not prohibit me from installing it in a VM.

It says only that if I'm installing it for my own use, I'm restricted to installing it on a single computer that has a disk or flash drive and a case, that the COA must be affixed to said case, that I'm restricted to keeping a single backup of the installed OS for recovery purposes, and that the backup may not be used to operate a different computer.

Of course, this is from 2007, and it's an OEM version. Later or non-OEM versions of the licence may say something different, I dunno.

TFTFY.

And people wonder why I buy my own hardware for work, don't use a company-supplied laptop or phone, and always connect to the corporate net using a VM and never from the host OS...

It's been done. I've a friend who got busted at age 19 for selling heroin. The judge gave him the option of enlisting and volunteering for combat duty, or doing hard time in the state pen. He chose the former--which in those days, was effectively getting a ticket to Vietnam.

There's a photo somewhere showing one of the last US helicopters to take off from Saigon in April 1975. In the photo you can a soldier dangling from one of the landing skids. That's my friend.

It's common and reasonable to finance a home or maybe even a car. But a fucking iPad...?

I was under the impression that those phones are used mostly by salespeople and other frequent travellers so they can use the SIM/account that's local to the place they're in currently, without fumbling about for the card(s).

And other mental health issues. And a long rap sheet for various petty crimes.

He was a very recent convert to Islam. Interestingly enough, even his friend at the mosque thought he was "erratic" and perhaps "mentally ill".

You're already heaps more annoying than Haselton has ever been.

ProTip: If you don't want to read his submissions, DON'T READ HIS SUBMISSIONS. (And don't bother telling us about it. We don't give a shit what you read, or don't.)

The acting-out bullshit is about what we'd expect from a 14 year old kid who's pissed off because someone else got a date with a girl who wouldn't go out with him in any event.

Just because the US and USSR/Russia got rid of some of their nukes doesn't mean they don't still have plenty. Not to mention the other members of the nuclear club, which now includes the DPRK and possibly Iran.

So there's still at least some hope for a fiery Armageddon, for those folks who hope for one.

The characters don't take their meaning or pronunciation in isolation. Once you know a decent number of characters/radicals, you can often work out the meanings of other characters that incorporate them. Sometimes even the pronunciation.

Point missed by you != pointlessness.

This is what I do when my pronunciation fails.

It still impresses the hell out of the locals.

People here who don't know us assume that I'm a Swede and that my wife is Thai. (I'm originally from the US, and Mme Zontar is originally from China.)

What's hilarious is when they try to greet her in Thai, and I'm the one who responds in that language. :)

For some reason, /. ate my —. That was supposed to be "800-900 million"

You've no real need for Trad characters on the mainland unless you're doing historical research, or you want to write in Cantonese (and many Cantonese speakers can't actually write it); otherwise, they are used in only in Taiwan/Macau/HK and by some overseas Chinese communities. Singapore and Malaysia both mandate Simplified for their Chinese speakers as well.

Many of the Simplified characters are derived by regular rules from the Traditional characters, which helps if you're interested in learning both as I am, since on my trips there, I usually spend in both Guangzhou and HK.

You might also gain some perspective by considering the fact that 800900 million people write using Simplified, and maybe 1/10 of that number use Traditional.