I only speak a tiny bit of French, though this seems to be greatly appreciated. I could imagine being treated rudely if I didn't know any of the language (and rightfully so).
I couldn't disagree with this statement more. I spent my school years learning Spanish. I believe I should be treated well even if I go to China or France, places where I have little-to-no language ability. That said, the French people I met in Paris and Nice when I visited seemed quite nice to me. All this is predicated on the traveler treating the locals respectfully
t-mobile's phones are generally as locked down as any other vendor
I find this statement to be mis-leading. While locked-down out-of-the-box, t-mobile has far and away the best policy when it comes to unlocking the phone. If you're a customer for over 90 days, in good standing, they'll unlock the phone. At AT&T, you can only get that if you have a nice store rep. At Sprint and Verizon, dream on.
I could go on listing issues all day, but it suffices to say, the OS is terrible. I'm willing to believe that M$ can improve this product, but they have so far to go from my original Moto Q. Also, any copy paste support yet? I don't get why Apple and MS didn't have those working out of the gates.
Halo Highlights (from 1 and 2, unfortunately don't have a 360):
I would tend to give Halo the edge due to multiplayer being so fantastic, but I haven't given the HL2 partner games a fair shake - CS or TF2.
Living on Earth may be expensive, but it includes an annual free trip around the Sun.