Well yes, it all plays upon a certain innate sense of social control that people ( still ) have. I have a dog that once - uncontrollably - shat in the middle of this smaller city's main shopping street. No poop bags in sight, all gone. I will never forget the dozens of angry looks cast upon me and my dog. And yes, I ever since scooped up his poop. So does nearly everyone here. I do not tend to agree with the "conservatives won't play along" response above. Austria is known to be a fairly conservative country here in Europe, yet the principle works. Why wouldn't it work in the US of A ? For sure, you need the initial investment in a media campaign by the city, or county. But then again - isn't this *exactly* what public money is for: the benefit of all, by solutions as simple as possible ?? Or is it exactly this that keeps such solutions from being implemented in the US: the aversion to spend public money on social problems ? [For sure, it *is* a social problem. Ask any citizen in any other major European city about the main social problems in his / her city: dog poop will be among the top 5]

I live close to the city of Vienna, Austria. It is famous in Europe for its campaign a Sackerl für mein Gackerl, literally "a baggie for my poopies". The accompanying media campaign initially played upon civic sense, and still exclusively plays upon civic sense: have a dog, walk it, wait for it to poo, scoop up poo with one of the free plastic bags provided everywhere in and around Vienna's green zones (parks etc. ). Works splendidly. Costs almost nothing. Poop problem solved.

is how, all over the interwebs, comet ISON is being described - and sometimes outright mourned - as if it had been / still were an animated being. Strange. If it had been my dog, or any dog for that matter, not surviving a close encounter with the sun - well then, hell yes. But ISON is only a chunk of dirty ice....

In the Netherlands, a man was recently controlled by police ( routine identity control, the police need not even give a reason for the control, but that is another chapter of the nascent-police-state discussion ). He carried € 30,000 in a plastic bag with him, and could not provide immediate proof for the money's origin. He was arrested. Only after a couple of day, when nobody could prove the money's illegal origin, he was released. Without the money, which remained at the police precincts. Injustice ? Yes. Police state ? Yes. But this anecdote adds another bit of momentum to Stallman's plea.

That is Italy-specific, within the legal framework of the ( much-needed ) fight against the mafia and camorra.

to India, and to ISRO. Excellent engineering. I am genuinely glad for them to have succeeded here. The more countries master this, the better it is for the exploration of space, for technology, and maybe even for peace: engineers employed at carrying out TMI are not working on, say, ICMBs and their ballistics. Goes true also for China, Russia, the US.

I am the original poster. Snowden never alleged that this is against Dutch law. The newspaper that published this ( in the very early morning hours, btw, they did not wait for daybreak and people getting out of bed ) alleges it. So do I. I read the law that governs the AIVD's activities. This is clearly outside of the framework set by that law: "... and [ is allowed ] to infiltrate organizations which endanger national or public security...". Now, an internet forum is not an "organization which endangers national or public security", unless you live in Iran, North Korea or China.

That is a tough one both for 20-ers and 50-ers or 60-ers. For the rest of TFA, you have a point. At some point in my career ( recently ), I simply decided to never retire. As a software engineer, I had the best idea of my career only last summer, and I am 46. Plenty of potential ahead.

Second this. On the semantic search thing, we are generating ideas in-house right now. Contact me if you have an idea for better UI.

second this. This is my second business in a row that equips all its IT workers with a Dell Latitude laptop of their own choice. If we need more computing power, we are free to order a Precision work station. I take my laptop anywhere, and am sure to be able to upgrade it whenever I need: more RAM, extra HD, other NIC, you name it. IT hardware maintenance personnel love the things. Yes, they're ugly - so what ? At home I have a very good-looking Asus K53 that gives me the black screen every 20 to 40 days, I have a love-hate relationship with it. The Dell laptop just runs, on and on and on an on.

Well, you are on to something here. I live and work in a German-language country. As a matter of fact, using the word "nazi" is simply not done here. People cringe if and when I literally translate "grammar Nazi" or "spelling Nazi" into German, even this long after the war. So I use "grammar taliban" or "spelling fundamentalist" instead. That has the strange property of making people smile uncontrollably. Va comprende, Charles...

just pulled the most recent english-language wikipedia dump, and made elasticsearch ( via the wikipedia river plugin ) run over it. 13.9 million entries now on a small server, answering times ~ couple-of-millisecond order. elasticsearch rocks !

...and there won't even be neither turkey nor booze, over here in Europe *g