Time to watch out on Steam for discounts, I guess ...

Thanks for the info!

If that were so then Google could just show the ads randomly and besaid third parties had no way of ever finding out about their fraud. But it doesn't work that way. Besides, Google also sells data to the government, e.g. to law enforcement agencies. The average cost of a wiretap in the U.S. in 2012 was $50,452. Google does it for much cheaper.

Sure they are customers. They are paying with their personal data, which Google hords and then sells to third parties. Without the people who use Google's free services, Google wouldn't earn a cent.

In this case they might have a need. There are only so many needless gimmicks that even the most fanatic Apple fanboys are willing to buy, although clever marketing has been said to be able to turn a pile of shit into gold.

We'll see.

Well, for me the year of the Linux desktop is here since 2007. I just hope that not too many people get the same idea and decide to switch to GNU/Linux in future, because that would mean that I'd need to give free tech support to more people and I have no interest or time for that. It is better if GNU/Linux continues to stay under the radar of casual users, moms and morons (I was about to say "greedy business men" too, but then I realized that Android probably also counts as "linux").

Coincidentally, 100% of all people who write "100% sum game" have no clue about what that phrase could mean if it had any meaning at all, 90% of all people who write "zero sum game" know absolutely nothing about game theory, and 89% of all statistics are made up ad hoc.

I'm using GNAT Ada with GCC, as practically all other Ada users. GNAT is the only Ada version that implements the latest language features of Ada 2012.

Adacore alone is reason enough to continue developing GCC. The commercial version of GNAT uses GCC and is used in production systems like airplanes you fly with.

No, he surely thinks so but he is not (really) a realist. He has in fact a rather distorted view of reality, influenced by historical Tsar novels and shitloads of intelligence reports, but believes firmly that his assessment of the world and other world leaders is 100% accurate. The only people he knows and regularly meets who could object to his world views are filthy rich oligarchs whose only interest is in staying filthy rich. He lives in his own bubble like most slightly mad dictators in history before him, and his reality distortion will become worse the longer he stays in power. Like many people he also entertains bizarre and incorrect personal pop psychology views of other persons, which in his case are the result of a relatively rough childhood (including being beaten by his father) and extensive KGB indoctrination.

If he were a realist he'd be primarily occupied with Russia's economy, which could be flourishing by now if there was still a middle class in Russia, rather than leading his country backwards and annecting territory of foreign nations in the 21st Century.

The problem is that apparently some officials believe that school shootings would somehow become less of a problem if nobody is allowed to talk or write about them...

Perhaps some people prefer to be killed by other people rather than by a mega corporation like Google. Seems not unreasonable to me. Who wants his widow to have to fight Google lawyers after his violent death?

Oh man, some Google car managed to safely move around a cyclist once. I feel so relieved. Clearly they must be safe.

Nah, you're not very knowledgable yourself. I'm not an expert either but at least read up a bit on history rather than referring to wacky websites. You're mentioning one of their historical justifications, but one of minor importance. (It's also among the most silly ones, because the Kalifats they admire so much and wish to rebuild were at their height at a time when the Muslim world was the most tolerant, when people of all faith were living together without problems while Christians were slaughtering each other in Central Europe.)

If you want to understand the motivation of these terrorist movements (which are pretty evil, no doubt about that), you need to look at the colonial history of the Middle East and how the French, Brits and the US messed up the region. And if you think that's the past and they have learned from their mistakes, think again, because they have just repeated them in Iraq and, very recently, in Egypt. When you install dictators and puppet military juntas in foreign countries and the only notable opposition left is radical islamic, then you ought not be surprised if radical islam arises in the long run.

While I generally would agree with this suspicion, I don't think you're right this time.

IS poses a huge threat at least to European countries because they have so many fanatic supporters who will return with combat experience and indoctrination from Syria and Iraq. They are more radical than Al Qaeda in some respects. I'd be surprised if there weren't an increase in (attempted) terrorist attacks. Whether that justifies all the Western security theater is another question, of course.

It has nothing to do with moderation anyway. People on social networks barely interact with each other, they're reading about others like in news feeds, and they don't really do anything together. It's kind of obvious that things like (random examples) playing in a band, having a barbecue, watching a movie with friends or doing wild river rafting tend to make most people more happy than browsing web pages all day.

Classical fallacy. The safety records for human drivers include each and every moron who drives piss drunk or under other drugs or simply cannot drive. Unless you're one of those, they will give you almost no useful information for deciding whether you should consider SDCs safe in comparison to your driving skills. And by adding personal anecdotes you confirm the OPs point even more.