I think I just realized one of the few advantages of coming from a Soviet country - I was surprised by a remote control as a luxurious item in around 1995 ;)

/rant mode on
GP is probably Russian - quit pointing out unimportant grammar errors as if they diminish his actual point. His English is likely better than your Russian, or whatever GP's first language is.
/rant mode off

While I'm the anti-Unity GP, I still recommend you try it, if you're half-way proficient with Linux and know how to easily switch back and forth. I mean, sometimes you end up liking something that most people don't, and with a desktop environment there's little to lose. It's not like it takes time to install or to switch back to another one later.

Case in point - I happen to like the MS Office ribbon and think that, except for the Office button (fixed in 2010), it's considerably superior to the old menus, but most people here on /. disagree.

Yes, Unity 2D is what she's currently trying. Switched to that from 3D quickly because 3D simply isn't suitable for a netbook. I'm surprised some post-install scripts don't switch the default environment to 2D for computers with weak graphics cards.

I just had a new bit of Unity experience yesterday. I had tried the early horribly unstable versions but switched away very quickly. Yesterday, I did a long-overdue update of Ubuntu on girlfriend's netbook to 12.04. Here's how it went after the upgrade.

She logs in, the computer seems a tad slow (yea, Unity 3D on a netbook). Figures out the icons for launching apps are on the left panel, wants to add GIMP there. Types gimp in the search bar thing, its icon appears. Right-clicks it hoping for a context menu, instead GIMP launches. Tries again, left-click, it launches. Tries again, drags the icon to the panel, it works. Sort of - the panel gets a button for the GIMP, but there's no icon on it, it just appears blank. Next she wants to run Chrome. As she types "chro", the UI freezes and shortly thereafter there's a message that Compiz crashed. It restarts, now GIMP's button shows the icon, too. She browses the Web for a bit, then I take the computer to see if I can turn some stuff off to speed it up. I open a terminal, check performance data there, try alt-tab, doesn't work. Okay. I open the control center, go to Appearance, Compiz crashes again. Then I find online that, to change Compiz-related config, I have to separately install a settings plugin for it. It's not available by default even through Unity is the default DE. At least then I found you can switch to Unity 2D.

I was pretty open to seeing how Unity would perform now. After all, I had only used the early versions. But this experience was horrible - 2 crashes within the first 15 minutes, definite slowness, and I'm pretty sure my gf will soon be asking to switch to a different interface, she's really uncomfortable with Unity so far.

Within the EU, there's a requirement that all phones - including public payphones and mobiles - be able to dial 112 for free. Usefully, 112 is also in the GSM standard, so calling 112 will work even in the USA, connecting to 911. Not sure if dialing 911 in Europe would work.

GP is, as he notes, talking about non-commercial file sharing. That != copyright. The Pirate Party (in Sweden, at least) does not advocate abolishing copyright, though it does advocate reducing the term to 5 years, precisely on the logic that it gives the author enough time to make a profit.

Legal filesharing is compatible with copyright. It just means you're not violating the law when you torrent something, but still violate it if you go and resell that content. Or, say, claim authorship.

Idiotic argument. The problem isn't the criminals having the card numbers per se. The problem is that these numbers can then be used to steal your money - as in actually steal because you won't have the money afterwards.

Read the booklet - apparently I'm a terrorist. Or would be if I were in America.

* Concerned about privacy, attempts to shield the screen from others. Sure am concerned about privacy, and I find it rude if others look at my screen, so yes, I prefer to position my computer so that others don't see the screen as easily.

* Use of multiple cellphones. Yeah. I recently moved to another country, so I have two phones, one with a SIM from the old country and one from the current one. Very convenient.

* Anonymizers, etc. Well, I run some anonymity plugins in the browser, also have Tor installed, though I almost never use it.

* Suspicious or coded writings. Ah yes. I like encryption, codes and the like. I also like languages and writing systems, I came up with my own back in school and still sometimes use it. I may also be found reading/writing something in languages with non-Latin scripts, which is, I guess, suspicious.

* Encryption or data hiding. I'm currently doing research on the latter, in fact. Very interesting subject area.

* Communicating through a PC game. What is this about? Sure I've communicated in games. How is that even slightly more suspicious than communicating in Skype or IRC?

* Downloading information about military or defensive tactics. I like tactical games, and there are aspects of tactics I find very interesting intellectually. I don't read about that a lot, but occasionally I certainly do.

* Downloading information about electronics. As just about everyone else with a computer science degree, I also had to study some electronics. It's something I found difficult and very far from intuitively clear, so I did check some online information about electronic circuits and components.

Ah well, it's still good to know that the booklet has small print that says the behaviour may have an innocent explanation...