You cannot debunk what he said by just calling it racist. Is it true what he said? If it is, its not racist - a fact is not racist.

The situation where Office is still offered as a one time purchase is probably just transitional. It wil vanish as soon as Microsoft manages to shove the rental model down its customer's throats.

Are the houses metered by hour at all there?

Where I live, residential areas are metered by the month - so you make the most out of it when you face panels south as the only thing that matters is HOW MUCH kWh you push into the grid, the hour it is produced in, is totally irrelevant.

How does one harvest a "voice" "quietly"?

Its just marketing. If the base model was 32gb not many would shell out the extra 100$ for 64 model. But 16 vs 64 - even i am considering it...

I dropped my iphone 5 from 2 meters (i leave it to the Americans to make out how many badger's kidneys it is) to a hard, stone floor. Glass intact.

Actually i would recommend m0n0wall. This is what pfsense is built upon - but without the kitchen sink its even lighter. And m0n0 does everything he asks excellently.

Also - how is that news? Crucial MX100 256GB that became available in the beginning of summer costs 110$ at Amazon. That is less than 0.5$/GB.

If Putin is against it, then probably because he has no trouble getting people dead or jailed without involving the pesky little thing called law.

Yeah, lets all forget that the soviet regime persecuted millions of people because:
a) other people have done crimes too
b) couple of lads were quite well fed

I am sure that there were some people who had a pretty decent life in 3rd Reich as well (probably not of jewish origin), so why are we depicting it as some kind of Mordor, eh? How does it justify a criminal regime that some people had some reasonably priced food and 20 square meters of living space "free" from the government and it sounds so lovely in the horrible capitalist world?

Ok, lets settle on "labour camp", not Siberia.

Perm-36 was in full swing until 1988. And now the russian government tries to phase out the Gulag museum there, so that the people who like to remember the soviet union as a nice, cosy place to live, can more easily forget the crimes against humanity and say that "living space was free and everybody had food and it was not so bad after all".

I am talking of a much smaller place called Perm-36 http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/P...

Sigh.

There was rent as well as utilities. As i said - rent was quite reasonable, but it was NOT universally free. Maybe it was free for some people who got their apartment from their employer (you?) but not "guaranteed by the state". I have actually paid rent to the soviet government, so there is no argument here.

As far as a "certain amount of personal living space" guaranteed by law you are talking about - it might have been in the law (i really do not know), but you could easily be "waiting in line" for getting such an apartment for DECADES. While living with your parents, grandparents and children in a 1 room apartment.

If it was free, how come I HAVE PAID RENT to the soviet govenrment?

YOU brought the dissidents into the argument, saying that even they were guaranteed living space. I just asserted that even if it was guaranteed, it was in Gulag, which hardly qualifies.

Stop romanticising the Soviet era, we already got that you are the type of Russian shill who yearns back those "golden" years.

I am saying: no, there was no guaranteed living space, and no, it was not free
You: there was a kid who got an education

Nice argument.