The IP of the baseband chips Infineon makes (GSM, 3G radio) most definitely does not belong to Apple.

Infineon also sells the same chips to Samsung and Nokia. As one of the parents wrote, Apple may be their highest profile customer, but it certainly isn't their biggest.

Good to hear that you enjoyed your stay here - and even took the time to take classes!

The City of Munich has a population of about 1.36M, not counting the surrounding municipalities that are often connected to the S-Bahn and hard to tell apart from the actual city.

The city administration has about 30,000 employees. That might seem a lot, but Munich provides many services that often are outsourced in other cities, e.g. garbage disposal. There are many Bavarian state agencies located in Munich, but these are completely separate. I don't know your background, but keep in mind that generally speaking, European cities keep many more people employed in the public sector compared to cities in the US.

I don't know why there are so many separate IT departments - probably a mixture of grown stucture and bad planning.

Well, the article is about the woes of the linux migration. The blog post it refers to also mentions the positive aspects...

Well, I guess I can't salvage this one.

OP here. I have to defend kdawson this time - he just posted what I submitted.

Myself, I'm certainly no Microsoft shill - I'm a Linux proponent, and interested in the LiMux project because I live in Munich.

If the title seems overly negative, I apologize - I'm no native speaker and might have chosen the wrong words.

Ways off?

German retail giant Metro Group have been testing RFID checkouts since 2006 in their "Future Store".

Last I heard, they were waiting for RFID tags to get cheaper, so you could put them even on low-cost food items.

Coincidentally, a similar program was started in Germany just this week. Owners of old cars can get 2500 Euros for scraping them, but there are strings attached:

1. The old car has to be at least 9 years old.
2. It has to have been registered to the current owner for at least a year.
3. You have to buy a new or a year-old car (so called "Jahreswagen") and it has to meet a certain emission class (Euro 4).

Of course the hope is that most people will buy a German car; the German car makers had to face a sharp decline in sales, too, if not as bad as the Big Three. The budget for the program is 1.5 billion Euros and experts estimate that it might cause 300,000 additional car sales.