I see that the creator of the poll got that Data was not a "possession" but didn't quite get Roddenberry's point that he could even be considered a "loved one."

You're going to get a lot of replies about U.S.-centric or U.S.-favoring media. And there's some truth to that. But a much bigger issue, methinks, is that the modern American media is _really_ lazy. It takes legwork to sift through gigabytes of information and follow up on leads. On the other hand, checking Twitter is trivial -- and it even comes in chunks of the right size. My grandfather used to criticize the news for "man on the street interviews" because it was really easy to do but virtually devoid of content. I think the same criticism applies to tweets, emails, random and radical guests (or worse, celebrities), and most everything else they do, these days. But this sort of non-news constitutes the bulk of American media on a good day.

None of this is to say that there was anything damning, vindicating, or otherwise valuable in the last batch. Merely, I wouldn't make inferences from the media's relative silence regarding the content.

Hamsters on wheels. I feed them alfalfa and call them all Harvey, starting with Harvey 0. I zero-index my hamsters because it makes me feel like I'm conserving something.

/If this gets modded Insightful, I'm swearing off /. for a whole week.
//I mean it this time.

Read a lot of Fark, do we?

People can manage turn signals where you live?

This is a terrible rationalization. America kills tens of thousands of innocents, so Sweden should sleep comfortably knowing they've only knowingly killed a few hundred?

That blood aside, you don't seriously think the loss of informants will cause the U.S. to step down its attacks, merely because we have less reliable information? I mean, I like Obama, as politicians go, but I don't trust him. When it's been expedient for him to follow the Bush policies, he's done so.

Not removing critical names from documents is criminally irresponsible. The informants knew they were putting themselves in danger by helping the U.S., I don't think they expected their names to be posted on the web.

I don't think it's about selling more albums at all. It doesn't really matter whether they do.

The issue is that if they have a bad quarter (or worse, a series of bad quarters), they need to justify it to shareholders. Illegal downloading is a good scapegoat (and, for all I know, that's what's causing lost sales under their current business model), but in order for that excuse to work they have to launch a campaign against illegal downloaders. It's all about the perception the shareholders have of the executives.

By this reasoning, almost any amount of money they spend prosecuting illegal downloaders is justified because it's fighting a war against piracy. This is doubly effective if they have a successful quarter in which they sell more albums because it ostensibly means that their campaign is working. And now shareholders are convinced that these executives are the right people for the job.

Simply create a GUI interface using Visual Basic to track his IP address.

I'm taking bets on how long it takes NASA to discover blue aliens on Mars.

When I die, I have a feeling my corpse will be mailed to somebody my dog doesn't like.

Intel (and other manufacturers) caters to whatever market segment their customers want. /. has a disproportionate number of people who buy shrink wrapped CPUs, but that's a piddly market. Chip manufacturers sell to computer makers like Dell, H.P., and Apple. If these companies want gaming CPUs, Intel and AMD will sell them gaming CPUs.

All that said, I'm not clear on why you're complaining. Are modern chips not fast enough for you?

Stallman? Is that you? I thought you lived in your office at MIT, not in your parents' basement.

Nom nom nom.

I notice you didn't sudo. Aren't you worried that some nemesis will break into your (mom's) house and change all your passwords or download Metallica music or google "osama + bin + laden + bomb + making + instructions + pr0n" or post to /. under your username while you're taking a bio break?