Hmmm.... Has the author ever visited Russia's finest - Sheremetevo 1, or Moscow Vnukvovo? They're certainly a match in craptasticity.

While I agree with you in more than just principle, I find your metaphor (with the cars and tire slashing and so on) a little less than apt. Although phones (ESPECIALLY iphones) are expensive, there's a reason it's cheaper to buy one with a contract to a specific provider than just to buy the phone and sim card seperately - the providers subsidize the cost of the handset. Most companies have their phones locked, and without the "subsidy code" you can't put another card in a phone and have it work - unless you pay a small fee and have your phone bricked or download some software off the internet. However, when you buy a car, the only subsidy you're getting is from (maybe) the goverment that is continually bailing out the big car companies so the US doesn't face massive unemployment. Anyway - if Wal Mart suddenly started subsidizing cars, with the requirement that all of these cars it was paying part of the price for be used only for trips to wal mart, or requiring you to sign a contract saying that you would only go to Wal Mart for your car parts or accessories shopping, then it would be natural to expect that there would be consequences if you broke that agreement. Now, iphone buyers aren't required to sign anything when they buy their phones, but with (presumably) AT&T subsidizing (it would be interesting to know to what extent) the cost of the iphone, it isn't surprising that Apple and AT&T are trying to protect their investment. What would have been smarter would have been to sell two versions of the phone - a cheaper AT&T phone, and an unlocked, more expensive phone - and require that people buy the locked phone under contract not to brick it, with consequences stated baldly in said contract: "you brick, we break it." But of course, Apple's genius PR people said "oh, no we can't appear to be harsh like that and scare people" - hence the current idiotic fiasco.

And now imagine that your shoes mean 1 hour of 5 cents an hour with no bathroom break labor in some small corporate sponsored village. Keep buying America, and keep making it sound like consumption = culture.

Assholes.

The PS3 released in Europe will no longer be backwards compatible with PS2 games - which would be a bummer had there not been so many backwards compatibility issues in the first place (quite simply - it didn't work). HOWEVER, who has a bunch of PS2 games sitting around but lacks a PS2 to play them on?

But still, $560? That's STILL insanely expensive. Especially for a console that has been plagued by technical issues from the day it was released until... well until now, and all the seconds after now. Simply, you don't buy a play station because you want to. You buy a Play station because you feel you have to.

WII4EVA

... it's what they want.

The Ukrainian airline is called AEROSVIT, whereas Aeroflot is Russian. There are, of course, Aeroflot flights to Kyiv (note the proper spelling of the Ukrainian city) mostly from Moscow and other Russian points of origin. The author seems to imply that Aeroflot is a an Ukrainian airline.

Boo to that.