What this lawsuit requests is that operators of other search engines be allowed to pay phone makers and carriers to make a particular search provider the default on a particular make and model.

So, like the "HTC First"?

Makers and carriers are fundamentally mercenaries. They'll do what will make them money. I suspect the real problem that Microsoft (who I assume is funding this lawsuit) has is that aren't able or willing to pay what it'd take to sufficiently compensate a phone maker to produce and market to carriers something along the lines of a "Samsung Galaxy S5 Bing Edition".

Without seeing how it works on the tough woods I can't tell how useful this new axe would be.

Pretty much my feeling. Straight grained woods like maple, poplar, birch, etc are relatively easy to split by hand. Splitting fibrous woods like cherry or elm without a sledge and wedge is an exercise in frustration, and I suspect the added rotation would do some serious damage to the wrist; it's bad enough having a maul bounce back in a straight line.

They stated that they prefer a known corrupt leadership to an entitled leadership.

They stated that they prefer a known corrupt leadership that will keep the gravy train flowing to a known corrupt leadership that's going to do their damndest to cut if off entirely.

Nobody would notice just one more group with their hands out.

Exactly.

I didn't realize we had annexed Canada recently. I hope we didn't also get Quebec.

I'd be tempted to accept annexation just for the entertainment of watching the Quebecer's try to pull their entitlement nonsense with the US government.

Even though there's a name and history for it doesn't make the ruling any more satisfying: "we're letting him go, but don't get the idea that we want to, it's just because we're not willing to make any sort of actual decision about it."

If you actually read the ruling, footnote 5 strongly suggests that if they'd actually had to make a decision on the actual purported crime, they don't believe the government actually produced any evidence suggesting the New Jersey law was violated.

The abuse of medical and press credentials is really bad.

If the first sentence of his response,

As all of my close friends know, I have not always been a drug free citizen.

... didn't imply that we might not be talking about a "good citizen", the second and third sentences should nail it:

Prior to 1983 I was a synthesis of corporate manager and drug dealer. The drug dealer profession took priority, and for a period of time that was my only occupation.

Really, "corporate manager" is nothing more than a euphemism for "psychopath".

Besides, the abuse of medical and press credentials were well-established practices in espionage circles since long, long before McAfee discovered them. I suspect that the second ever laminated card saying "Press" was likely issued to an intelligence agent.

What bothers me about this is that there seems to be this idea that there are "school rules" that can conceivable cover ANY off-campus behavior, actions or activities.

There's an argument that certain off-campus behaviours should be covered by school rules; cheating (i.e. hiring someone to do a school project, etc), kids on a school team using performance enhancing drugs, possibly bullying. But there's not much, and certainly any kind of the speech, "decorum" or association school rules should never be enforceable outside of official school activity.

However, the idea that any private or public school administration has the authority to get the passwords for someones online service account and search the content is ludicrous, and for the organization to actually put that kind of thing into writing as standard procedure (if we think they're up to something, we'll coerce a student or parent into violating the terms of service of an online account) into writing is just begging for a lawsuit.

But the others, I feel bad for them

I don't. Those of us who've been around for a while remember when the current batch of editors came onboard, and compared to the original crew they're useless; about as effective at editing as patent examiners are at examining patents.

I used to have most of them filtered out, but unfortunately if I kept those filters Slashdot would be (more) content-free.

So, fuck 'em. And fuck beta, of course.

I wonder if beta comes with air freshener?

If you consider living next to a pig farm to be fresh country air, then I guess you could call it that.