With the original whistle-blowing, I could understand that his actions may be interpreted as ethical. Now he keeps pushing it, he's gone from "good citizen" to "he's probably a Russian Spy." And I'm not with the U.S. Government making this claim. It's just, a lot of what he's doing no longer looks like run of the mill whistle-blowing. Either he's basking in the glory of attention, or he's a Spy. Eitherway, the buggar needs to be extradited to face the criminal court he deserves. He has broken multiple federal laws, and at this point has razor thin justification in doing so. There are much more appropriate channels to go about doing what he did.

ORGANIC FOODS ARE NOT MORE NUTRITIOUS. Good gravy on a stick. Unless you take a really weird definition of "nutrition" that means the "extra nutrition" comes in the form of "less pesticides on food." There is no additional vitamin, mineral, or other such content. The only difference is one has more pesticide residue. "That" is what is being hailed as "more nutritious." Which is a load of bollox. Just go wash your damn fruit and they're both be equally "nutritious."

Hypothetically speaking, Google probably could let an individual read your personal information. But these targeted ads essentially just issue ads to gmail accounts which fit a specific set of criteria, which is entirely machine automated. If /. wants to see which users use the letter "a" the most, they would just have an algorithm which inspects each user's post in search for a's. It would be absolutely silly to think that this is violating our privacy *until* a person goes and reads the results. But Google employee's aren't supposed to be doing that. If they decide to though, all the machine automation or not it won't stop them, because your info is already on their servers. If an MS employee wants to snoop on you, their lack (or presence) of aggregate info will not change a damn thing. In otherwords, a machine is reading your email, not a person. And a person can read your email whether or not a machine is scanning your crap.

They find ways to make billions of dollars off of foreign companies. I bet all of you my hat, big record penalties are going to be imposed. Just in time to fund some bailouts (how lucky!)

Lets make a more accurate analogy. Someone steals my computer, flees to the UK, and then sells it. The UK decides to keep the money. The EU has a debt crisis, and conveniently they start making billions off of foreign companies.

"The Eurozone needs a good windfall so we'll just help ourselves to those profits." The only bigger parasite than the RIAA/MPAA: European courts sucking money from foreign companies.

At least then something funny might come of all of this.

I browse /. on my Nexus 4 and iPad, both of which display the full /. site perfectly. The layout of the site downscales rather nicely, and I've never had an issues with it. The "mobile" site, on the otherhand, is not my cup of tea. It just doesn't feel very slashdotty.

I'm more inclined to cry "Cognitive bias!" For example, I recall reading a Wired article on cognitive bias, which essentially proclaimed "And that's why some people don't want to vote for Obama!" Nearly everytime I see someone discuss thinking biases, they almost always try to link it to their pet ideology that's a hot topic. "And now we know why some people don't vote Democrat, like me!" "And now we know why some people want to ban guns, when clearly that's stupid!" etc etc. The researcher's have made a huge fowl by trying to tie their research to a hot-button issue like Climate Change. But of course, suggesting the authors of an article talking about conspiracy theories might actually let a cognitive bias slip into their work -- well, I must just be a conspiracy theorist to suggest that, further proving their work!

Lets see an international law that says a corporation's country of origin is allowed to choose a charity to donate the money to. Taking billions from foreign countries is far too tempting, especially when you're having money problems. This is much like in ancient Rome, where tax collectors were given their pay as part of the taxes they collected, and they were responsible for deciding how much tax to take -- and we wonder why no one trusted tax collectors! This isn't much different. An appropriate law enforcement scheme would see sentences that directly impact the governing bodies of the corporations, while not creating a conflict of interest with fines that are exacted.

In more recent times it has become apparent that people have an extraordinary capacity to deceive themselves. A couple of short examples include the argumentative theory of reason and the concept that social interactions can change how we remember events. Given this, how do you resolve Biblical scriptures which ultimately say, if you [yourself] were genuinely confused, only divine intervention would be able to resolve the issue. E.g. "No one can come to me unless the Father who sent me draws them, and I will raise them up at the last day."[John 6:44]

From 2nd grade to 12th grade, my primary curriculum was based on the "PACE" system. The way PACE works is, each subject (math, science, etc) is broken down into individual sub-subjects called a "PACE." Each PACE has reading sections, exercises, and a final test, all of which cover a very specific topic. I clearly remember that my one of my PACE physics books (devoted to gases) used the second law of thermodynamics to "disprove" evolution. The "evidence against evolution" was even on the test at the end of the PACE. I also remember one of my early science PACE books covering the "hydrosphere" -- a sphere of frozen hydrogen which covered the Earth in ancient times -- which supposedly collapsed during Noah's flood. Despite some of these quirks, the PACE system was actually pretty solid. The explanations, questions, etc, were all very well structured. Honestly, looking at some of my niece's/nephew's course work in my local public school system, the PACE system was bread-and-butter by comparison.

When you "steal" a movie online, the studio only loses "potential" sales. Likewise, when you do (or do not) watch a movie, the resources used to produce the movie remain constant. When 100,000,000 people watch the same movie, the production costs of the movie to the studios are the same as if 10 people watch it. In otherwords, supply and demand does not apply when we have infinitely reproducible units of trade. You do not "steal" a movie, rather you "unfairly take advantage" of someone else's hard work. It's similar to the stolen valor act. You can't actually "steal" valor, but you can take credit for something you don't deserve credit for. Movies expected to "make more money" are given bigger budgets -- they have more "viewers" which distributes the production costs. Movies expected to make less money are given smaller budgets, and the distributed viewership shares the lower production cost of the movie. Finally, "gambles" are factored into other movies, so a movie that loses money is compensated for elsewhere.

It's not really "greed," if you're demanding to see the biggest explosions. If you want cheap movies go order a low budget foreign film online -- and you'll pay for the corresponding lower budget. Or, you know, stop watching movies. No one is twisting your arm to shell out $$$ on overpriced movies. If Hollywood loses enough viewers, they'll scale back production costs, until the average viewer feels the cost is worth it. As long as people shell out premium $$$, movies will have premium production costs. Big fat corporate greed problems don't apply to ridiculous luxuries like big budget movies. The MPAA is not "forcing" you to consume their products, and it won't hurt you one bit if you don't buy their stuff. If you expect them to lower their costs, as if you're entitled to that, then you're the one being greedy.

I swore to never buy an Apple product, lo and behold I ended up with an iPad 2. Ultimately, the aspect ratio of the Android horde was the deal breaker, the only one to successfully tempt me has been the Tab 10. The iPad 2 is smooth, sleek, works great, and most importantly works in portrait and landscape mode (I find myself using it in portrait more than landscape, since most web pages are vertical.) But the iPad 2 is not "magically better" than the other tablets. Having fiddled around with the Tab 10, I can say it's just as solid of an experience as an iPad 2. The problem is mentality. People have this strange idea in their head that Apple products are "the best" simply because of a logo. And honestly, the iPad 2 is top notch, and will stay top notch, until other designers are willing to go balls-to-the-wall and compete on equal grounds. That means getting over the "Apple is better by default" mentality. And this CEO literally just said "The iPad 2 is better than our product!" Which is even stupider than Motorola overpricing the Xoom.

My brother met his wife on World of Warcraft, and since they lived states apart at the time they had "web dates." They used to have a date night where they'd get on the cells and watch the same movie. They did all sorts of creative things to keep the relationship going, before she finally moved to live with him and they got married. So sorry Gates, couple's who met online have been doing this stuff for ages.