Since I was shopping for a new notebook recently:
there are sometimes notebooks without Windows preinstalled and they're usually cheaper.

There are shops where you can configure the OS and they charge you more depending on whether you selected "no OS" or on the Windows version (ultimate>pro>home).

Depending on the manufacturer and their deal with MS the amounts might differ, though.
Some examples:
* put Win 7 Ultimate instead of Win 7 Pro on a Latitude and your Laptop costs 61 EUR more on dell.de

* Schenker (mysn.de) allows for lots of configuration and the OS options (besides "no OS" for 0 EUR) are:
95EUR -108EUR for Home Premium OEM
133EUR-143EUR for Pro OEM
175EUR for Ultimate OEM

* at a local Lenovo reseller you can get notebooks without Windows; they have, for example, a Thinkpad Edge E525 for 399EUR without Windows and with similar specs and Home Premium for 494EUR

As to (a) and (b): under German law you have a right to your own likeness, i.e. in theory other people aren't even allowed to distribute materials depicting you without your permission. No idea how that is done in the rest of the EU, though

Not that surprising.
There's usually stuff you post yourself (e.g. this comment) and then there's information about you that the company collects (e.g. tracking what websites you've looked at or who you've interacted with).

Sorry, but this is simply not true.
Except for "When it became clear that the Pirate Party would likely get into the parliament (predicted to get 6.5% at most), they were already scandalized, how anybody could vote such loonies."

I'm not sure what you've watched, but it certainly wasn't the coverage by ARD or later the local RBB. Or not a lot of it.

Other parties had no problem naming them and dis so frequently as the success of the Pirates and the catastrophic result of the FDP were the main topics of most discussions.
Yeah, of course they also called the Pirates "new", but so did the Pirates themselves.
During a talk with representatives of all parties (that matter), they even did a little "special" analyzing where the pirates' 9% came from and asked everybody's opinion about that and why their parties didn't manage to get those votes.

Some politicians from the "established" parties even congratulated the Pirates. I remember people from the Greens and the Lefts doing so.
And they certainly didn't say "Congratulations to those others".

And I don't remember a Left party guy talking about "they overestimated themselves".
But I do remember one pointing out how the Pirates _under_estimated their own chances and that the Pirates obviously were surprised by their success as much as anybody else, citing (almost) not having enough candidates listed to fill the seats they won as a proof.
And he wasn't alone, several Pirate candidates repeatedly stated how they were "baff" (perplexed) or "still a bit in shock" in view of their success.

I also have no problem with Künast claiming they gained the most as those gains and losses are calculated in comparison to the last state election in 2006 and the Pirates weren't yet on the ballot back then.
If you say the Pirates gained 6% to reach their 9%, you're comparing their result today to the 3% they got in Berlin during the last national election in 2009, i.e. you're comparing apples and oranges because
a) people vote differently in state and national elections and
b) the gains and losses of the other parties were based on the results of a different election.
Yeah, technically the Pirates gained the most since they went from nothing to 9%, but I don't blame her for ignoring the n00bs when the main intent is to show how they are more awesome than the sucktitide that's their traditional enemies or their (realistic) competitors when it comes to building the government.

I was tempted to do that.
I didn't have a fax, just a PC with an old fax modem specifically kept around to be able to send faxes.

So when I had to cancel a hosting contract and the hoster would only accept a hand-signed letter or fax, I had to print the letter, sign it, scan it back into the computer and then FAX the scanned image.

Since photoshopping (well, GIMPing) is a hobby, I was really tempted to do a "convert letter.pdf letter.jpg" (should turn out shiatty enough to look like a real fax) and slap a scan of a signature onto it.

You can already do that in the other direction.
A friend of mine went from Europe to Beijing by train for the experience and to visit a friend living in Beijing.
She took a train from Germany to Moscow, got onto the Trans-Siberian railway, took a break in Mongolia to go hiking through the prairie for a couple of days and then continued on the Trans-Mongolian route of the railway to reach Beijing.

If the real unix men's attitude is "Sorry, I can't hear the specification over the sound of how awesome Perl is" and they ignore the requirements at hand to produce a really awesome Perl program that can't be executed in the target environment, I would rather give those fannies a chance.

Actually, it is the "least prestigious" form of the "most prestigious" decoration.
There are several classes of the Cross of Merit and from the picture it looks like he was awarded the "Medal of Merit", i.e. the lowest one.

..which sounds a lot like optimizing the heart rate. ;)

Those things can be quite helpful, especially if you're a fatty not used to running.
You'll benefit from one of those things indicating when to slow down and take a short walking break.
Because if you're an unfit - not necessarily tub of lard - , you should start easy and gradually increase how much/fast you run depending on your progress.
Nothing more counterproductive (for body and mind) than going to your limit and being sore for a week afterwards.

Doesn't work for me.
That URL still forwards to google.de when I'm using a German IP address.