There is a difference between being *called* windows and *having* windows. Yes, of course window-based system existed before microsoft copied them. But here we are concerned only with the name. (And no, if one says "windows" he never means the x-window system, and it never was so. It was "X" or "X-Windows" or "X-Window", never "windows".)

Nonsense, when you say "windows" in the OS context, you always mean Microsoft Windows. The term has not become generic, that would mean that people use "windows" to refer to OS that is not in fact Microsoft Windows. On the other hand, you could easily say "app store" and mean the android application repository. The term has not even become generic, it has always been generic. It never exclusively referred to Apple app store.

As someone who does not live in USA, I have to ask: Can you still call this "democracy"? I thought the point of elections was people choosing the candidate who they think is best. Now you are voting for the worst candidate in order to get one of the better candidates out of the way. A few years ago you had the candidate who most people voted for lose the elections. And even if everything works fine, you still choose from a very limited set of candidates, offered by two major parties.

As a programmer, I see the specification is "choose the person wanted by most citizens for president", but the algorithm is a bit too complicated and obviously does not work according to the specification.

(preemptive comment; Yeah, who am I to talk, I am probably some European commie anyway.)

Ah, the ultimate free speech test. Can you talk about things that government does not like? Will SA pass? Stay tuned.

Then TFA is talking nonsense, sugar contains glucose and fructose in similar ratio as HFCS, the difference is that they are bonded into sucrose molecules by a weak bond. Sucrose is broken down to fructose and glucose in your digestive system and from that point there is really little difference between digesting sugar or HFCS.

It seems that most people who reacted here misunderstand me as some commie who just feels he has a right to everything. The opposite is true, I respect the companies decision, I just wish they based it on some real analysis instead of arbitrary borders. But it's their right to act arbitrarily, and it's my right to complain about it on Slashdot :D.

Thank you. I suppose you have to live through it to understand.

I am not talking about an insult. It's merely an inconvenience, and one that does seems to be easily fixed if the company in question tried just a little bit. I am not saying I am entitled to anything. All I am saying is that it would be nice of them to do a proper analysis before making a decision. Apple may have good reasons why they don't want to sell music here, I can accept that. But if you visit web shops that list countries that have not existed for years, you can be sure that they did not care to do their homework properly.

Actually, there are companies that try to fill the gap. They have an address in US that you can use when ordering in an US-only online shop, and they will re-mail it to you in Europe. It is not cheap and a bit complicated, but it works.

Also, if you read my comment carefully, I used the word "half" a lot. There are many online shops that have no problem with shipping to eastern Europe. I can get my stuff online, it is just much less convenient.

The problem here is really simple. People in countries that are being left out have a strong feeling that the decision many companies make, not to ship to these countries, is often not based on rational reasoning. Yes, we can use the gap as an entrepreneurial opportunity, but that is beside the point. The point here is that we want to alert the companies that reconsidering their policy may be beneficial to them as well as to us.

(Try to walk in my shoes for a moment: You find something interesting on Amazon, try to order it... bang, not shipping this there. You search for it on google, try a few other shops, and maybe the third one will ship it. Even though you succeed, you still feel... discriminated.)

Sorry, this is just plain prejudice. For business purposes EU is one big country. OK, certain countries are well known sources for fraud. My country is not one of them. There is no problem with doing business here. Dell and HP have support centers here that support users all over Europe. IBM has a sales/purchasing center here, they handle accounts all over the world. SAP has a software developer center here, too.

Maybe Apple has some IP related reasons why they can sell media only in certain countries, but most other cases when shops do not ship to eastern Europe are just a result of prejudice and lazyness. The person who fills list of countries into the shop can either investigate which countries to include, or he can just decide to include western Europe "since they are OK" and ignore the rest.

Mostly it's not about product availability. Often those are products I can buy in a stone shop here without problems. The problem is that if you try to order them online, you often find that your country is simply not listed.

But why? I mean, the cold war ended 20 years ago, count them. We have had democracy with a market economy since then. We have been in EU for 6 years. Our copyright, patent and consumer law is up to date with the EU law. There is no jungle here, people are not being eaten, this is Europe. And still, half of the times when I try to order something from the net, I find out that they will either not ship it, or ship it for some ridiculous price because we are included in the "rest of the world" region that includes Antarctica and probably the Moon. Even if the web shop is in Europe. And mostly the problem is with big companies, like Amazon or Apple. The small shops are usually fine. I have bought a notebook online from US, and loads of stuff from Germany and UK. Never had any problem. Except that half the time when I found something for a price that seemed OK, I then found that Europe means "west from Vienna".

Ok, everyone has a right to choose whom to sell and whom not. I don't have a problem with that. But I would like them to make the choice based on some rational thought, not randomly as it seems to be now. People who own web shops just automatically exclude central and east Europe. Other thing, I have seen shops that still list "Czechoslovakia" as one of the countries. Czechoslovakia does not exist, it has been 17 years. Where did they get such an old list of countries? If they don't care about this, I can be sure they don't care whether someone from eastern Europe can order or not.

Well, one disadvantage of many current tablets is their weight. I did a quick research, 2710p is not that bad (starting from 1.6kg up to 2.0kg). TC1100 without keyboard was 1.4kg and TC1000 was 1.35kg. For a computer that you are usually holding in one hand, weight is important. Even 1.35 feels on the heavy side. I read lots of books lying down and partially holding it, partially supporting it on something. I could not do that with a 2.0 kg notebook (tried it :).

Another thing, TC1000 was beautiful (ok, that is subjective :), TC4200 which replaced it was just a standard looking black notebook.

I miss my TC1000 very much, currently I am using Lenovo X61 which is very good, but I am still searching for something as perfect as TC1000 was.

If this is true, then go to hell HP. First you discontinued the TC1100, which even until today is one of the best slate tablets made, and now this. Next time you announce a tablet, you can count on me not caring.

Bad guess, I did read the article. And I even understood it. Did you? And did you understand my post, specifically the part where I say "if there are no more IPv4 addresses available"?

"They also recognized that there would soon be some organizations that would need to deploy new networks and services on IPv6 without the benefit of IPv4. As a result, the decision was made to retain some IPv4 address space so that new networks could put up their IPv4 DNS and run protocol-translation services."

Yeah. How many months do you think these extra addresses will last? Six? And what will happen afterwards?

I see, if there is a significant number of ISPs in US who provide IPv6 to customers, then the solution may be closer than I thought. Of course the country where I live is usually five years behind US in technology, most ISPs here would just look strange at you if you requested IPv6 service. We will have a lot of fun once IPv4 runs out :D