If it did, I'd swallow it and not care. Problem is, tax differential accounts for about 20-30% of the price differential. Small part of the rest is apparently used to "localize games (they don't localize for the part of Europe I live in), maintain offices (no offices here either) and other related spending".

Essentially they pocket the difference because European consumers can afford to pay more. Basically they have acclimated public to higher costs and now happily pocket the extra money due to lack of competition, or more specifically collusion.

Because electric safety rules are for pussies, real men use indoor electric appliances outdoors!

That really depends on the task. In some cases, like being a high level manager 24/7 on call is a reality today. The job description assumes this and compensation also accounts for this.

In some other cases, like base level IT workers, it can happen if you work from home without any kind of extra compensation and you're not strong enough to resist the employer's push. Many people fall into this category.

For many, if not most people it is. While seven fixed most of vista's epic failures to tolerable levels, it still contains quite a few.

Now you can in fact nullify most of the failures that are retained, largely using same software that helps nullify much of win8's fails, namely classicshell. But it's still worse, and personally I'd still be happily running XP if not for lack of proper 64-bit support (specifically lack of hardware drivers for 64-bit version of XP) and lack of DX11 ('m a gamer).

Other than those two features, XP is clearly better in my experience. I don't even mind EOL. I had a workstation in personal use that ran vanilla unpatched XP until well past XP SP2 age because windows update borked itself so hard on the system, it couldn't be updated. I just kept the infection vectors secure and it was fine. I.e. solid firewall, solid anti-virus software, up to date 3rd party software that could be used as infection vectors, no suspicious flash drives and so on.

Not a single virus. Hilariously, when I got myself an XP2 slipstreamed disk I forgot to unplug internet connection before installing. That machine got owned before I could install firewall software. I had to format and reinstall. But vanilla version with up to date firewall etc? No problems whatsoever.

This argument includes a massive lie of omission. It omits the fact that many of the IT services on the internet used by average citizens of those countries are US-based. At the same time few if any IT services used by US citizen are French/German/Russian/Chinese.

This turns the scenario from plus minus zero to one sided dominance. That does in fact have a serious chance of causing more then "scolding".

That said, considering the sheer amount of blackmail material NSA now has on most of the Western leaders and the fact that much of the EU agenda has clearly been driven by US interests in the last decade, we'll likely see more of the german style "verbal agreements to not spy" which will mean jack shit. But we'll see.

Has it ever occurred to you to look at the buildings they are installed in, and note the quality of roofing. I'd wager 10:1 that other parts of the roof, ones with older roofing will leak much, much sooner than the new part with bottle insert will.

You again forget the target countries and communities. Temperatures rarely if ever enter freezing there. This is like trying to argue that every house, including those near polar areas and at equator should have powerful heating and AC. It's simply complete ignorance of real world scenarios.

Even if they had a freak freeze, the ice would not expand enough to do damage, as temperature would simply not fall that much below zero. Essentially as long as the bottle holds, they're golden.

Every person capable of climbing up the political ladder in current political climate in a decently large country is a monster. Calling them monsters will do absolutely nothing to defeat them.

Still think that AC is actually anonymous to those we're talking about here?

Brilliant observation. Now kindly find us a near-free way to add windows that do not jeopardise the structural integrity of standard slum shack, while also providing shelter from winds and rain.

So, who do you think this particular article is talking about?

Most PET bottles can survive the ice expansion very well. It's the glass bottles that have most problems with it.

I know of a guy who takes water with him for long sport days by shoving the bottle into the freezer a day before. Ice slowly melts, keeping water cold throughout the hot day and bottle has no problems if it's a PET one.

Nokia got the memo. Rest of us saw what happened to nokia after believing the memo and used our common sense.

They're not suffering yet if the persistent rumors about what is about to get released are anywhere near the reality. Apparently the next batch will tell the story of industrial espionage as conducted by NSA and then provided as a service to US companies. If that gets confirmed, you can start seeing actual government sanctions from large trading partners like EU, China, Russia and so on. And it's then when the meaning of "suffering" for US companies will start to really be realized in this particular case.

Right now it's just cloud companies that start getting squeezed. That's nothing major when you look at US-dominated IT industry as a whole.

Basically they need something, anything to compensate for disaster that is windows 8, until MS comes back to reality. MS can carry over the dry period with it's MS tax and other parts of its business, OEMs not so much.

It's not so much lack of learning as desperation to keep the revenue flow going in the current market.