Where do people get this idea that company directors are bound by law to make as much profit as possible? "Fiduciary responsibly" simply means telling the truth about company finances in a timely manner, it has nothing to do with the desire or otherwise to make a profit. The law is that the directors must do what the majority of shareholders want to do, if the shareholders vote to spend more money than they earn then that's what the directors are bound to do.

# - Name one case where that is true.
Property law.

Capitalism cannot exist without property laws.

The only people who can't see that left and right extremist are cut from the same cloth are left and right extremists.

Glad you cleared that up. I would have thought the fact that they have a large number of retractions indicates their peer-review system is working, not failing. For comparison, how long did it take before Andrew Wakefield's "research" was retracted?

Came here to say the same thing. Job's shunned the medical profession in favour of new age mumbo-jumbo, he basically killed himself with his own arrogance and hubris.

Came here to say the same thing. Anyone who thinks knowing a bit of math gives them the ability to become an instant expert on every technical subject is an arrogant fool.

I hate to dampen anyone's outrage but it wasn't a secret, none of the data stolen was classified.

The most important detail is AWOL in this discussion - none of the data stolen was classified information.

Agree, lying to authorities and/or lying to consumers is a crime in the developed world, it has nothing to do with "free speech".

In general, Aussies don't fear their neighbours. Hell, even our prime minister walks around town and rides on public transport without a small army following him.

The net inherited neutrality from well established international treaties governing the global telephone system, not sure how the FCC can dump it without breaking those treaties and pissing off every other nation on earth? Regardless of who owns the wires, the telephone system is global public infrastructure (much of it was originally funded and built by various governments). If they want to stay hooked up to that global infrastructure then they should follow the established rules and stop pleading for special treatment for their lackluster regional networks. The place to lobby for a change to the rules is somewhere like the WTO, or whatever organisation monitors the existing treaties, not a parochial bureaucracy such as the FCC. Problem for the US phone companies is that they cannot bully or bribe the WTO into doing their bidding for them.

I'm pushing 60, life has taught me to "never say never". Douglas Hofstadter makes a good argument that artificial consciousness is possible and provides the mathematical framework to back it up, I first read his book in the late 1980's while studying for my Math degree, probably before your time. Also most of my projects in the 30yrs since then have been on time and budget. ;)

Enforcing trademarks is a civil matter and it's up to the trademark owner to police their own trademarks, failing to do so may result in the loss of said trademark.

BP's trademarked green and gold is a better example, doesn't matter where you are in the world if you see a green and gold petrol (gas) station you know it's BP. The problem with the cheerios claim is there are already heaps of direct competitors using a yellow box, which makes me think they were trying to create problems for competitors more than they were trying to protect their brand. Theoretically they could have trademarked it back in 1945 (if they were first) but since they didn't and have left it for over half a century before deciding to claim it, they miss out.