The article claims 'the Chinese government hopes to have “40 million families connected to fiber networks by 2015,” which is almost one-third of the country’s entire population.'

Since when is 40 million families 1/3 of 1.3 billion people? How big are these families? Either there should be another zero and it should be 400 million people, or this 1/3 claim is bogus.

40 million families represents ~10% of China's population, no where near 1/3.

I find unity a highly productive DE. Workspaces work fine, I have the dock/unity bar/whatever only show up when I forget what workspace I put something on. It's not quite as customized as my Gnome2 set-up was, but it was easier to set up and works equally as well. Anecdotal evidence for the win and all, but I'm pretty happy with Unity from a productivity stand-point. I didn't much care for the versions pre-12.04, but by and large Unity stays out of my way, which is what I want from a DE.

Depends on the offer, doesn't it? Isn't it a little speculative to advise him whether or not to take a deal without knowing what it is? I mean, he already has 150k in funding according to the article, and presumably they wanted something in exchange for that money...

Since fire tends to burn up (hot air in general being lighter than the alternative), you're actually considerably safer than in a skyscraper, where your only additional exit strategy is the aerial route...