smallblacksun

They could argue that Google has a monopoly on online search, and that excluding people from their search results is an illegal restraint of trade. I don't think that such a case would be a cut-and-dry victory for Google if the spammer (as in this case) has the money to fight them.

The idea that reducing language barriers will reduce conflict is questionable. There is a huge amount of conflict between the left and the right in the US where there is no language barrier, and the actual differences are far less significant than between the US and the middle east.

I wasn't really "defending" anything, but whatever. You're the one saying that someone (the privacy advocate in this case) should be able to unilaterally violate someone's privacy, not me.

"tape made by a privacy activist who sneaked into the event." Anyone else find this statement ironic?

I don't buy it. Data collection is much easier today than even 10 years ago, and I don't see any evidence that "more people will live a reflective life and make better choices."

Consumers will be buying advertisements?

This is 100% about saving money, not being green.

That's what I do when my relatives ask for tech support - I'll do it for a home-cooked meal.

Don't forget about the porn!

But that's not irrational. They have too many legs, and they bite!

Because terrorists would NEVER use children in their attacks: http://www.literaturejunction.com/showthread.php?8100-Iraq-i... (sorry about message board link, the linked yahoo story is down). As you allow one group to bypass security, you have two problems. First, you open yourself to discrimination charges by people you don't let bypass security. Second, you run the risk that terrorists will recruit someone in the protected group to carry out an attack.

The problem is that a lot of people are irrationally scared of anything with the word "nuclear" in it.

A Javascript benchmark without IE seems incomplete.

IE, Silverlight, Express editions of Visual Studio off the top of my head

But the military and NASA don't claim to be generating reproducible knowledge through the use of their code. In particular, the military doesn't WANT other people to be able to reproduce what their code does. Also, there is a difference between operational code (code that runs a physical object like a lander or a UAV) and analytical code. NASA makes some of their code available here: http://opensource.arc.nasa.gov

A correct answer for California says very little about a correct answer in Nevada, let alone in another country.

Agreed. The NSA employs the most Math PHDs of any organization in the world, as well as a lot of CS PHDs. They also have a huge budget and some of the most powerful computer clusters in the world. Further, they almost certainly know more about China's cyber-warfare capabilities than anyone outside the Chinese government.

It's hard to have a rational discussion with "Corporations are evil! Mcirosoft is Evil! Bill Gates is EVIL!"

> most head to D.C. as paupers and leave as kings

Um, most senators head to DC rich and leave richer.

Freedom of speech doesn't mean people can't say you're an idiot for what you say.

"The reports of my death have been greatly exaggerated" -Microsoft

I remember reading that a center in the NFL had been mic'd and that he said "fuch" an absurd number of times during the game (three or four hundred).

And you can get comparable (minus the patented touch wheel thingie) mp3 players for 50 bucks.

In the US, you will be accused of being sexist if you say that there are any differences between girls and boys that aren't due to "gender stereotyping".

Having Chesapeake split by Baltimore-Washington is unfortunate too.

The "City and County of San Francisco" is one legal entity.

You're right, I should have worded it more like sdurkin did.

Funny how the left is suddenly opposed to this sort of thing once they have a majority.

number_format returns a string - I would expect it to return null rather than 0 for bad input

Um, what? You want your compilers to be very fast, otherwise you end up wasting a lot of developer time (and thus money) waiting for compilation.