This stems from the longstanding conundrum of national identity in Canada. We're a small, mainly English speaking country sitting border to border with the cultural powerhouse of the English-speaking world. So we ask ourselves, how are we unique? What makes us different? And how can we preserve these differences when American culture is so pervasive? It's not a question of embracing other cultures, which we do readily. It's more a concern that our essential character (whatever it is) will be steamrolled by Hollywood media.

Personally I couldn't care less; I already see us as the 51st state. Let us have Pandora and Hulu already!
But for many Canadians, the protection and nurturing of Canadian culture in the shadow of the U.S. is a preoccupation and an imperative.

If you find the closure of Megaupload troubling, just read the indictment. I won't consider the legal matters here, but the emails cited in the indictment paint a pretty clear picture of intent. They show that:

A) In many cases, Megaupload employees knew that *specific* files on the site were in violation of copyright, but they took no action to remove the content
B) Knowing specific files were copyrighted, megaupload still paid out rewards to those files' uploaders
C) In a few instances, staff members shared links to copyrighted content with eachother and with the internet at large.

Those are just the most egregious points, which basically demolish their claim of safe-harbor. But there's more: The claim of conspiracy at first sounds ridiculous and overblown, but it begins to make sense when the indictment describes all the ways Megaupload is alleged to have actively worked to conceal piracy. Claims of DCMA compliance are shot to pieces by an allegation that certain links were the subject of takedown notices, but remained active for over a year. I could go on, but just read the thing yourself, it's actually pretty interesting for a while.

The guys at Megaupload sound hella guilty. The only other explanation is a massive conspiracy involving the FBI and the Justice Department, but I have trouble believing that.

Well, for one thing, you're missing that the peace prize and the literature prize are awarded by entirely different bodies. The 18 members of the Swedish Academy award the literature prize, after nominations are made by a smaller committee. The separate Norwegian Nobel Committee, whose 5 members are appointed by the Norwegian Parliament, both nominates for and awards the peace prize.

That hardly begins to cover it. As noted by Gamasutra, they created one game in 2005 called "Assault on Iran", about attacking Iranian nuclear facilities. It's described in detail here but a few excerpts quickly reveal the flavor of the thing:

I dare ANYONE to call this anything other than propaganda. And though it may not be CIA sponsored, the company has developed software for the US army in the past, so it's hardly a logical leap.
All of that said, creating propaganda shouldn't be a crime. I too hope this man is freed.

You'll have to forgive me for nodding off there, but the phrase "out-of-control spending" is repeated so often these days that the sight of it is enough to bore me asleep.

Anyway, that's off topic. What really bugs me is the whole "selling us to China" meme. What percent of public debt do you think china owns? 50%? 75%? The answer, if Wikipedia is right (and maybe it isn't, but I'm going to ask for a citation if you think so) was 8%, or about a trillion dollars, as of may 2011. The U.K., not for nothing, held over 900 billion dollars as well but I rarely see the same self-induced hypoxia over that. Isn't "selling the entire nation to the Chinese" a rather hysterical instance of sinophobic alarmism?

I stopped my formal education one year into a highly math-centric university program, so I often find that my knowledge of even modern history is woefully inadequate. Histories written for mass audiences (just like pop science books) sometimes get a bad rap, but I've found them to be both enjoyable and stimulating. They generally highlight a specific thread of events (the ascension and rule of emperor Hirohito, Churchill's effect on the middle east) while furnishing plenty of interesting background that should spur your curiosity about the context surrounding the main thread (modern Japanese political development, circumstances and attitudes in Europe before the first world war).

My policy in picking these has generally been, did the NYT / TLS / NYT BR / New Yorker like it? Did it win an award, or appear on editor's choice lists? Does the prose appeal after a couple pages of browsing? Perhaps least important, does the subject sound interesting? If you can answer yes to a few of these, pick up one of these books and give it a read. I'll close with a few recommendations:

A Peace to End All Peace - David Fromkin (the Ottoman Empire, Churchill, the great war)
Hirohito - Herbert P. Bix (the rearing and reign of the titular emperor, and developments in 20th century Japanese politics)
Citizens - Simon Schama (the french revolution, the decline of monarchism)

Do you really know what you're talking about? Because it sounds to me like you actually prefer to go by your own "make-believe magical fairytale unicorn definitions".

Hydration absolutely does not "equate" to intake of water, despite the magical mystery powers of "common sense". There are in fact three types of dehydration: Hypertonic, which is the only kind you've ever heard of; hypotonic, which is a loss not of water but of electrolytes; and isotonic, which is a loss of both water and electrolytes. A hypotonic or isotonic patient could be given litres of bottled water without recovering, since they also need electrolytes (notably sodium).

If you don't believe me, Wikipedia is of course your friend, have a look for yourself.
I advise you to remember that science and common sense are rarely on speaking terms, and that people who live in make-believe magical fairy unicorn land should not throw stones.

What the fuck?

What the fuck!?

Seriously?

Holy what the flying shit!?

I'm calling the gun store with all my phones at the same time

I've been an android partisan since way back, but credit where credit is due: Siri blows Voice Search out of the water. On my Galaxy S II, I can say "Send text to Bob... Hi Bob" and the result is a text to no one with "To Bob hi Bob" in the body. This is a well documented bug. I can say "set an alarm for two minutes from now", which results in being told I need to download a CLOCK from android market. This is another well documented bug (hilariously, it sometimes searches google for the phrase instead, and the first result is a thread on the google forums saying "set alarm does not work").
Siri isn't a big enough deal that I'd trade in my Galaxy for it, but still, it's a piece of software without a contemporary equal, and there's no point in pretending otherwise.

You're right to worry about transparency. From Ars Technica:

In other words, you can make FOIA requests until you're blue in the face, but it won't get you anywhere.

They replaced the keyboard in my laptop after I got coffee on a key and it wouldn't work. On the other hand, when the back-light in that computer's monitor died, the only thing they could offer was to replace the entire top half of the laptop. A little goggling found me an independent operator who replaced the back-light for a tenth of the price.

You mean Pees at the Keys? No, I don't think so.
Tickles the ivories.

Newspapers is an interesting comparison. Should we make it illegal to talk about the news? I hear about lots of topics like Iraq or the Japanese quake from friends before I'm exposed to any articles about them, but somebody had to work to acquire the facts that I'm hearing for free! Don't they have a natural right to profit from their labors? Clearly it should be illegal to conversationally repeat any information found in a copyrighted newspaper!
I'm pretty sympathetic to copyright holders, but I think it's time that we admit there really is no fair solution here. Copyrighted material shouldn't be available for free, but people also shouldn't be labeled felons for sharing that material.

I could be wrong about this, but as far as I'm aware, the full content (including edit history!) of wikipedia totals less than 5TB, which should by no means be difficult to house. Now, perhaps there are architectural considerations that I'm not taking into account, but even if that's the case, remember that these deletion discussions often grow to a size eclipsing that of the article being discussed.
This isn't about space. It's about image. Some Wikipedians don't want their encyclopedia hosting frivolous or trivial information, because that conflicts with the air of solemn academia they affect.