This reminds me of the following footnote from "Good Omens" By Terry Pratchett and Neil Gaiman:

Double post but this one is from 2002

There, a working implementation from 2006 and as far as I remember it was not the first one.

Not really... HIPPA seems to apply only to the US, while SOx applies to any company quoted at NYSE, so quite a lot of various international corporations need to comply.

I wonder: will at least some of those companies start leaving the US and moving to places where the laws are less draconian? The EU voiced its opposition to SOPA so it might become a safe heaven to some extent. Iceland after recent reforms is trying to become a "free speech paradise". Of course someone as large as Google could not move its entire infrastructure overseas overnight but such dumb regulations might actually spur an exodus of many companies and there are plenty of countries which will welcome anyone with open arms as long as they are willing to invest there.

The EU finally admitted that nobody reads ToS and it's going to curb such practices.

IIRC it was Karl Marx who said that unlike in case of free market, capitalism is a system where capitalists use _all available means_ to maximize the profit, e.g. buying favourable bills in order to prevent other companies from competing in the market. The Microsoft's policy of "embrace, extend, extinguish" is also an example of such actions. I'm not a communist but I think that this distinction between the free market and capitalism is quite interesting. And the second thing you mentioned - availability of content. I live just across the border from you and I have the same problem: I'd be glad to pay a decent fee for access to services like Hulu or Crunchyroll but the US studios obviously don't give a damn about earning money in Europe and would rather complain about piracy. If you refuse to take my money don't be surprised when I get my fix of content from different, more convenient and free sources.

Well, where I live you don't have to register even if you're homeless and you still get to vote. Apparently we're not as democratic as you...

I remember reading somewhere that after the war the Soviet military even fitted such decoys with hot air fans so that they would have IR signatures similar to real tanks.

Wrong. If you go to Germany or the Netherlands you'll see that coal is not the only alternatives. Those places are crowded with wind turbines. In the Netherlands it's mainly along the coast (at least the last time I went there) but in Germany they're all over the place. True, the infrastructure probably is not as simple as you need to connect each turbine to the grid in stead of connecting a single power plant but there's no real risk of a disaster in comparison to a nuclear power plant. That said, I think that the fear mongering by media after the Fukushima disaster caused a real outburst of hysteria in Europe (although the country I live in confirmed the plans to construct the first nuclear power plant but we have the highest electricity bills in the EU)

FTFY

What makes you think that the government and corporations are going to have to comply with those regulations? Responsibilities and punishment are only for peons like us

only when I'm logged in but most people I know don't log in just to search google

still, neither points me to their G+ profile...

As much as it pains me to say this, nepka is right in this case...