A couple of *real* bullet holes and some blood should make it manly enough. Will probably keep women away, too. Chuck Norris has one and it makes women feel insecure.

And how do you hibernate all those VMs?

Sure. I'm a so-called "proponent" of LaTeX, I guess because it's the easiest, quickest, and most complete way to write my documents. I'll be a "proponent" of Word when it allows me to write my articles quicker than LaTeX. I learned it quickly and I think it's a good tool. No religious war needed here.

Many people think that kWh is "kiloWatt PER hour", and confuse watts for energy and watts-times-hour as power. It looks to them as a division rather than a multiplication. They wouldn't distinguish kWh from kW/h. This guy is, therefore, three out of four times right :-)

Good point. But mafia is indeed involved in white collar crime, as its politicians control some contract works for building apartment blocks and major infrastructures. I would not classify that as corruption/concussion, which is a "softer" illegal way to favor an individual. The sat-TV VAT being increased to 20% is only the latest trick played by the people around Berlusconi. He succeeded in creating a consensus machine that turns voters away from his legal problems and hides the appalling lack of competition in most of the Italian industry. His methods are very much from the corruption/concussion "soft" illegal tool box, with one of its closest collaborators, Cesare Previti, being found guilty for corrupting two justices, however another of his closest allies, Marcello Dell'Utri, co-founder of B.'s party, was found guilty of collaborating with the Sicilian mafia. One of the reasons why he is still in power (making the Italians the laughing stock of Europe) is that his consensus machine convinced a lot of people that the Italian justice and media are biased against him, and while distracting people with Fox-like journalism he undermined the judicial system, making legality an option for Italians. This, in turn, spurred the ease of having things done the illegal way and suggested that that is not only not too bad, but also cool. Another reason is the lack of a strong opposition, or even worse, the opposition caring for the interests of the companies lobbying them. Let me not mention the Vatican.

In the north of Italy, mafia does exist because there are criminals and entrepreneurs up there too. Entrepreneurs with little care for legality and criminals with a passion for power are not only from the South. You may wish to use fewer urban legends and a few more facts next time. The mafias are firms with hierarchies, business targets, and competitors. They lobby the Parliament and consider the law in a more elastic way than others. They exist where the law is not enforced or is changed in order to favor them. It is true, some idiots consider southerners Italian-speaking africans, and I know a few, but the people from the North of Italy are not that different, let alone better. [A guy from Bergamo, a stronghold of southerner-bashers]