At which point does an entity get to decide that it owns a random word that forms *part* of its name?

Easy, in 1988 when McDonald's counter sues (and wins) against McSleep.

I will now be the first human being to have Linux installed ...
*puts Linux ISO on USB flash drive and drops his pants*

No, wait! Be extra careful with eunuchs-like systems!

CmdrTaco writes:

I've always envied their ability to maintain control over their brand and ...

That reminds me of the time they signed away their book publishing rights and nearly lost the rights to their intellectual property and the name Penny Arcade. Except for that, I agree.
I'm a big PA fan, but they totally needed a business manager. And since I'm writing about him, I love this anecdote about Robert Khoo.

Wait, 2-digit year format? If you're having problems with the transition from "09" to "10", then you'd also have problems with the transition from "2009" to "2010". A Y2K-like bug would mean that the INPUT value is incomplete, or essentially pre-truncated. What you describe is code that intentionally truncates the value itself. The client had better not get any blame for this.

what person? That's the whole point.

No, it's not. The premise of my scenario was "you're looking for someone in a city", meaning that you already know the identity of the individual.

Looking at the general issue that my example was trying to address, the 'whole point' is that most of the information overwhelming intelligence agencies is probably entirely irrelevant.

1. Having information expire before it is discovered follows practical usage of encryption.

2. Basically, an extra layer is being applied at the content level: slang and the like are just word substitution.

3. Too much information probably indicates that attention is being diverted to cover unnecessary discussions. Think of it this way: you're looking for someone in a city. You could wiretap a few people close to that person and hope you catch some bit of conversation OR you wiretap the whole city guaranteeing you have every bit of conversation. The first approach will offer information in real time while the second approach will take years to discover relevant information. The first approach is adopted for speed, while the only reason to adopt the second is for archiving.

FTA:

"Specifically designed for a stealth attack on the U.S. East Coast--perhaps targeting Washington, D.C., and New York City--the "samurai subs" were fast, far-ranging, ..."

I have doubts about this - with the Panama canal under Allied control, getting to the east coast USA from Japan would have been VERY far-ranging.

Stealth bombers have one fundamental design problem - none have equally stealthy bomb bay doors, when open.

You get the stealth advantage going in, but now they see you and you better hope the non-stealthy parts are superior to the countermeasures of your opponent.

Inflammatory? You mean like:

ZOMG!!!! A massive explosion!!! A six mile high explosion!!!!
Or would that actually be a very, very modest explosion (especially in astronomical terms) triggering a six mile high debris plume?

Right, astronomical terms. On that scale, one could argue that Earth occupies an infinitesimally small volume so destroying it should be of only minor consequence as well.

How about we limit destructive tests to things that we have in multiple quantities?

In the meteorite marketplace, any that have hit a man-made object are significantly more valuable, given the rarity of such an occurrence.

A meteorite known to have hit a person would be even more so.

But anyone in such a position would be considered lucky if it doesn't kill them.

Another would be to point out they didn't spend thousands of hours grinding pawns so they could finally take down that bishop.

When I grind pawns, they sort of look like rooks. A decent upgrade, IMO. :)

There's a Democrat in the White House who's in the process of making his own blocks on this chart look like the freakin' Sears Tower in comparison to what's there now.

That chart doesn't include 2006, 2007 or 2008.

30-Dec-2005: $8,170,424,541,313.62
29-Dec-2006: $8,680,224,380,086.18 (CY06 increase: +$509,799,838,772.56)
31-Dec-2007: $9,229,172,659,218.31 (CY07 increase: +$548,948,279,132.13)
31-Dec-2008: $10,699,804,864,612.13 (CY08 increase: +$1,470,632,205,393.82)
Source: www.publicdebt.ustreas.gov.

That CY08 number is close to TRIPLE the size of the maximum from that chart.
Your Sears Tower was already in place before that Democrat was sworn in.

There's one 'glitch' listed for Oblivion that is not: slaughterfish gasping.
A fish could spawn over land depending on the location of your load point - THAT issue should be the glitch.
But if it does appear over land, what do you expect a fish to do?

A gasping fish is an intentional feature, not a bug or glitch.

Sometimes we are blessed with the opportunity to provide real world examples.

In the case of FaceBook, the user grants certain content usage rights to FaceBook (presumably to advertise FaceBook itself).
In the linked example above, the user granted Creative Commons licensing to everyone.
Technically different, but it seems similar enough to properly illustrate your point.

By the way, this seems to be a follow up on that example.
The lesson: you give your privacy away, others will take it.

Never mind looking for the hidden doors or avoiding poisonous frogs. In this game, every key you touch could be the one that causes you to lose.

hmm... this game you describe sounds familiar...

Sincerely,
I.M. Rogue

Of course! A Roguelike game. Yeah, those are impossible.
My wizard puts on his robe and cornuthaum...
:)