It's a matter of politeness and consideration as much as anything else. Even if someone speaks your language near fluently, you are showing respect and committment by learning and using even a fairly limited amount of their own language. Even if you are completely butchering it (or especially if), the effort is highly appreciated.

Put it this way, would you rather make a deal with a foreign businessman that speaks only through an interpreter, or one that still needs one for the actual business, but at least honestly tries to speak english with you socially?

If you look at the bottom of the post (I know, I know) you'll find that Chinese, Hindi, Japanese and Indonesian are already the highest priority, and the other languages are considered in addition to them.

"If I'm not so special, then why do my mundane activities need to be recorded? "

They aren't. I can't imagine any Glass wearer would waste battery life and storage recording you - or any other person. Expect Glass wearers to use it just like we all use phone cams and videos already. Except unlike phones, with Glass you have a decent chance of knowing when somebody takes your picture.

And this is what I find baffling: people are fine with hidden stills and filmclips taken by phones all over the place, but freak out about a headset that is much more difficult to use in secret. If you value privacy, wouldn't you prefer obvious, hard-to-conceal Glass over secretive phones?

Most of those rules either exempt small companies or they get reimbursed in turn by the state for the costs. In Sweden, for example, the employer pays for the first 14 days of sick leave (which is lower than your regular pay), the state covers anything beyond it. Same kind of thing with the other costs.

Nope. You drive drunk, people will find out about it. But it is common, I think (and based on what I see in newspaper notices and the like) that people are commonly sentenced to alcohol treatment instead of, or in addition to, the usual punishment.

Which is normally getting your license revoked and a heavy fine in mild cases, and prison (even for the first offence) in heavy cases, and that's just for you having eleveted blood alcohol. If you get caught after causing an accident or something things will really go downhill from there.

Basically, if you're not an alcoholic you don't take a chance. You don't drive the morning after a party, or think "I'm sure this beer will be gone by the time I need to leave" or anything like that. I know that at bike meets, where people will often party then drive back home the next day, the organizers will set up test stations with breathalyzers so you can confirm that you're completely sober before you hit the road.

Which is what Sweden has: 0%. But toallow for measurement error, the practical limit is 0.02%. Which may sound not too far away from 0.05%, but that is of course before a measurement margin is applied.

In practice, you don't drink at all before driving if you value your license. And you had better either be moderate the night before, or skip the driving the next day if you're going to a party. Good.

It's actually quite easy to legally get a gun in many countries. Typically you can get a hunting license or join a shooting club. And yet, the vast majority of people don't bother. In fact, a substantial fraction of those that do get a gun choose to keep them at the club or at some other separate storage, just so they don't have to keep a dangerous weapon at home.

So, there may be people that think this will revolutionize things, in reality it's rather a non-event. People without guns mostly can get them already, but don't want to. Those that want them, already have them.

It's different for different parts of the business of course, but the graphic designers I know personally (through a family member) don't care about monitor gamut or colour fidelity at all. Sounds odd, perhaps, but there's good reason for it.

Most graphic design is not for the web, but for physical objects. Anything you see around you that's printed or patterned - kitchen utensils, tools, and household objets; clothes and textile prints; books, calendars, pamphlets; not to mention the cardboard and plastic boxes it all came in - has been designed by a graphic designer. And it's all printed using different kind of processes, on different materials, with different kinds of inks and dyes.

A monitor, any monitor, simply can't show you what the finished design will look like, since it can't replicate the effect of the particular ink and material combination you're going to use. So they don't even try. Instead they do the design on the computer, but choose the precise colour and material combination by Pantone patches. We've got shelves of sample binders at home, with all kinds of colour and material combinations for reference. As an added bonus you can take samples into different light conditions and see what they look like there.

The finished design is usually sent off as a set of monochrome layers, with an accompanying specification on what Pantone colour each layer should use. They do make a colour version of it too, but that's just to give the client a rough idea of what the design will look like.

Google Glass flashes an LED at you whenever the camera is operating. Phones, meanwhile have lots of ways to stop the fake shutter sound (including apps, and just simply cover the speaker), and they don't make any sound at all for movies.

"You're more likely to notice someone holding out a smartphone taking pictures and stuff"

People have smartphones out in their hands all around me every day. On my commute half a dozen people could be taking my picture or filming me every second of the time without any way for me to know or avoid it.

Any privacy fear that apply to Glass applies to any smartphone as well. If anything, it's a lot less obvious when a smartphone user takes a picture or shoots a video than when a Glass wearer does the same.

If you worry about this aspect of privacy, you should have spoken out at about the time phones first started getting cameras.

Actually, not too many years ago, the Greens in Sweden (and, I strongly suspect, Germany) were the dumping grounds for nutjobs no other party wanted to do with. I strongly suspect that is a phase any new party has to go through on the way to become a long-term viable political force.

Mitsubishi isn't a major shareholder in the bank from what it seems. It's a merger of several banks, one of which (Tokyo-Mitsubishi) was owned in part by the Mitsubishi group.

As I said, I thought like you for ten years, and I still basically agree with you. It's not really inconvenient to be without a watch, even if you don't use a phone.

What happened to me was, my wife got her wristwatch repaired and started using it regularly again. And suddenly I found myself asking her for the time whenever we were together, rather than check my phone, look for a public watch or any of the other options. So, I got my own old watch fixed (change of battery) as much to spare her as to find out if perhaps a watch is worth using after all.

Turns out I really like using a watch. Also turns out I'm no fan of my old watch. Not really the design or the type I would choose today. A bit dinky and boring; I originally got it because it was inoffensive and fit my student budget. And when I started looking, I found lots of watch designs I really like. I picked one, and use it now, happily. I bet I'll probably get a second one with a different design in a year or two.

That's a major part of it, I think. A watch is a "permitted" accessory for men, and that surely accounts for a major part of the continued popularity. But that also means that, like other accessories, people want choice. You _don't_ want to wear the same thing as half a dozen other people in the office. That's the reason all watch makers have a huge array of models. And that's going to be a real challenge for any smartwatch maker.

I believe the problem with the coming crop of "smart watches" is that they all need a phone to connect to. They're really more of an extra terminal to your phone rather than a standalone device.

So if you're a rock climber or hiker, all the negative aspects of bringing a phone apply to these terminals too. You really need to get an actua watch with the appropriate functions.