Hear! Hear! One of the sweetest things about irony is that you never see it coming!
Weird reaction too; I broke my nose and the glasses are somewhere orbiting my optical nerve right now, but the whole thing is in the cloud now! Happy happy joy joy! Hopefully the court will indeed say; that is your own fault for harassing people, now bugger off!
http://youtu.be/xKTseEpWrYc

That is correct. The list looks a bit like this:
1 - fighting terrorists
2 - fighting child pornography
3 - something with global warming
4 - helping the government spy on ordinary people.

There was!
On the right hand sight there is a magic coin that is used for mind control. It must be used for mind control!
Cause I dont believe it is there for scale, people generally have an idea how big glasses are...

It is not recording all the time. So either one could take the chance, or to more safe, attack from behind.
In case you are really against human-2-human violence, you could just rip them off from the side and crush it with your manly 'size 12'.
I just can't wait to see the video's on Youtube of the smug glassholes that all end with a good ol' fashion punch on the nose. Like those weird Russian dashcam video's.

(some rather big guy) Hey! Stop filming me!
Its my right to do so, this is the street you know!
I said STOP FILMING ME GLASSHOLE ! ! ! (guy is now approaching)
But.. but... its my right, its on the street...
And on the streets you need to be streetsmart jackass (Fist comes in real fast from the lower left corner... then black)

Must be hilarious IMHO.

> If I was 14 again, I'd sure as hell be hunting around frantically looking for a way out of this cage. And I'd sure as hell not be using any Microsoft products.

Hear! Hear! You are absolutely right! BUT...
If you were born today there is a good chance that your lovely mom put pictures of you on FB the very moment they cut the umbilical cord. And there you go, the game is on and in the very first moment FB scores 1, you... 0
As I am writing this I realised I sound a bit like an old preacher droning on about original sin :-S

<quote><p>The cloud bubble can't get much bigger than this. Can it?</p></quote>

A bubble usually bursts when even neophytes start talking about it as if they were in it for years. Or at least this is said about stock market bubbles. There is some overlap I guess. So will the cloud burst? (pun intended) Not yet I think. There are still a lot of people who are not at all aware of this thing called the cloud.

Actually I think that it will get slightly more big. Big in the sense that at a certain moment there wont be computers any more as we know them. Just devices with little computing power (risc) lots of RAM a small SSD just big enough to hold the OS. The OS is only needed to start a browser, hardly anything else. There will be bluetooth, wifi and XG (3G/4G/5G etcetera). Everything else is on the cloud. The data, the programs, the wallpaper... everything. Any picture made will get uploaded there, and integrated with all kinds of social networks. Instantly available for anyone in your network that you gave permission to view that picture.

Also it goes without saying that the company who has the harddrives with all that data can use it however they think is good. No more privacy, no more 'your data' even less than it is now. We will be of the complete mercy of the corporations. Even if you dont like it it, some glasshole makes a picture of you and your mugshot is out there as well.
The line between social networks, the cloud and the rest of the internet will get thinner and thinner.
And no, I dont like that. I think it's a dystopia.

Eventually people will realise that and resist it. THEN the cloud bursts I think.

>And exactly how do they intend to enforce this against sites hosted overseas, provided the owner of the site doesn't live in Singapore either? Do they plan to build really, really long canes?

Probably they will use their guns. In the battle of Singapore (February 1942) they had all their guns pointed towards the sea. Hours long they sat there with binoculars waiting for the Japanese Imperial Navy to arrive. The Japanese soldiers did... Over land... From the back... Completely circumventing the whole defence basically. (irony is a bitch huh?)
So the guns are still as good as new and ready to fire in 3... 2... 1...

<quote><p>Bluetooth earpieces are incredibly useful. They readily tag the "people I do not want to talk to" set.</p></quote>

You mean like an earmark? :-)
I Agree bro! Now lets sniff some coke from the tiddies of a 60 year old Thai whore with an arm and a leg missing ;-)

<quote><p>We had better get the etiquette of removing it before entering the locker room sorted out pretty quickly. Are people going to take it off when entering the men's lavatory too?</p></quote>

They are probably not taking it off. And if I am in the lavatory I dont mind you coming in. I dont mind anyone coming in. Its a lavatroy for crying out loud! However, I would mind if one came in with the power to transmit it to the rest of the world and any NEO with a broadband connection, for it will stay there FOREVER! The web has no issues with Alsheimer disease, it doesn't forget anything when it gets older. So, that is where I draw the line.

I might have a crack in my crystal sphere, but I predict you this: The same people that are going to be glassholes will be the same people who now say:
  - I don't need alcohol to have a good time...
  - I have no secrets to anyone, privacy is for creeps...
  - If you hate my googleglasses so much, you probably have something to hide! Are you a muzzy / nazi / pedo / terrorist / socialist???
  - My kids never have bruises...
  - "...and then I came home and kissed my wife goodnight" at the end of each story they tell.

So, you might want to consider the following:
  - stop being around boring people
  - Only be around the ones that are bro enough to sniff coke from a whore together with you. Even if she is 60 and missing a leg. And an arm.
  - Punch the suckers in the face till your hand starts to hurt, who are about to sniff coke from a 60 years old Thai whore with one arm and one leg, together with you while having the glasses on. They are bro's, but with a learning disability. They have to learn... You are the teacher!

Or at least that is my plan!

<quote>
<p>What do you mean, "not sure"? You think this whole project was started yesterday? As opposed to, you know, the end of 1990's, being the time when the whole thing got approved?</p></quote>

Actually the contract was signed 24 March 2004.
http://elpais.com/diario/2004/04/02/espana/1080856821_850215.html (Spanish)

In other words: It took those siesta sleepy heads 9 years to figure this out... It is partially because of working ethos I guess...

...Only wimps use tape backup: real men just upload their important stuff on ftp, and let the rest of the world mirror it ;)

I think you are right. But yet... Imagine this:
I make a little powerplant that, in it's core, works with a fairy inside it. But it works. All tests on the outside (measuring the output, no power goes into it, no additional fuel or whatever) - all tests - show that it really really really works.
I fully disclose the whole machine in detailed drawings, even give my customers and scientist the freedom to open it up. Once they do *pufff* and the fairy is gone, the machine doesn't work any longer.
Do you really think the patent office would grant me the patent?

Because I am not that sure if I am honest. Not even when it clearly, absolutely, beyond any doubt, truly works.

Even Andrea Rossi himself is a little afraid of this. He said that once you open the machine, the self-destruct function will terminate the working bits. He does this to protect his machine from prying eyes and people who want to steel this idea.

Define harmful please.
If a store owner sees me lurking around the high end laptops and comes to me to help me (and his income of course) I think that that is not 'harmful'.
If a server is tracking my every move around the web for years on end. Not so nice. Not harmful either, but annoying... yes, certainly.
If a company is tracking my every move around the web for years on end and sells this to who knows who, and has a 'privacy' policy of 24 pages in fontsize 5. Mmmmnot harmful in the sense that it will harm my health or quality of life, but back OFF!!
If a company is tracking my every move around the web for years on end and sells this to my future boss who wants to inquire my personal habits. This is harmful because it might deprive me of income (and with that food, medical treatments and so on). Yes harmful.

Privacy is not about harmful vs harmless. 25 Shades of harm I would say :-)
A lot of us here remember the time before internet and cell phones. When I wanted to know about herpes I would go to the library and look it up in a book on STD's. No one would ever know (to a certain degree of course). Now this search queries are logged and stored and available to the highest bidder. That is a completely different story!
The teens of today have no clue whatsoever how life would be without the web, social media, cellphones and the integration of all these. They therefore make different choices. Surprised? Not me. They have no 0. No baseline to what is intrusion and what is just fine.

But if youre finally at the questions, things go from bad to worse. One would expect a "Digital Crimes Unit" to:
  - investigate security holes (preferably before shiping it out)
  - make sure that virus-makers dont have a chance.
  - find, cage and string up the idiot that makes Win8 harder to get rid of than a bad case of Herpes.
  - see to it that three-letter-agency's (both US and nonUS) place backdoors in MS software.
  - Explosions, romance, fast car's, flashing badges and glue-on-moustaches

But noooooooh... They really rather cry about the baddies making stupid botnets.
DCU, pffff what a laugh </roll-eyes>