Not so. For example here is the privacy statement from a well-known university:

Privacy of Information
Information stored on a computer system or sent electronically over a network is the property of the individual who created it. Examination, collection, or dissemination of that information without authorization from the owner is a violation of the ownerâ(TM)s rights to control his or her own property. Systems administrators, however, may gain access to usersâ(TM) data or programs when it is necessary to maintain or prevent damage to systems or to ensure compliance with other University rules.

Universities usually operate under some concept of academic freedom. Total access by the public to every part of your existence is clearly incompatible with this.

OK with which part? Trying to repress work of scientists for political ends or trying to preserve their work for future study?

One is the despicable work of slimeballs trying to supress scientific inquiry or just simply punish people who have ideas they don't like, and the other is the work of archivists and libraries.

Clearly we have the former going right now. Fortunately the courts came to the right conclusion.

Lots of DC-3's still in use.

Next year the Gooney Bird will turn 80.

Not even close. I have a still working HP-35.

Bought in 1973.

41 year old gizmo.

They still pop up on Ebay from time to time.

Let's say we go after the bastards, then. Make tobacco illegal and drive them underground. We could outsource the production and distribution of tobacco to Los Zetas and it would be a net win, right? At least that terror Philip Morris would be out of the picture.

To some extent, I measure how threatening they are by how dangerous they are to me as a bystander. I'd much rather see a major cigarette outlet near my house than an illegal marijuana distribution center. I can avoid most of the problems with a cigarette outlet by simply not going in. Not so much with the drug import hub.

We seem to have managed to neuter them pretty effectively by taxing cigarettes and making the public aware of just how bad they are for us. It looks like smoking is down about 60% in the US just due to minor regulation and social trends. Our approach with other drugs doesn't seem to be following the same trend.

Finally, measuring "evil" in absolute numbers is fraught with problems. If all we care about is number of dead rather than how they died and why, we'd be pounding on GM's door too. And of course, I don't think we Americans would be so unconcerned about the drug war if it was our country that they were turning into a failed state. Deaths notwithstanding, the total collapse of law and order in a democracy is something that should be talled on the "drug cartels are bad" side of the ledger, even if it's not our country they're doing it to. Duffel bags full of the heads of police officers and elected officials in some foreign country aren't a really big deal for us, so we tend to turn down the knob on "evil" when we assess it.

Smart engineering thinking. These are the details that make for verisimilitude.

Sad. A future that could never, ever be. Remember when the situation of Kubrick's 2001 seemed not only plausible, but likely?

Was that an ironic comment? It's SO hard to tell these days. ;-)

Hey! Look! We're all meta!

That's a fact.

Nobody dealin' with that winter, for rent.

I searched for this "Yahoo" "Japan" website since I never heard of it. I used Google naturally since Yahoo.com's results, as this article points out, are worth less than nothing.

I found the website but it is absolutely incomprehensible.The writing is in mixed font characters on my computer. It looks like the wingding font. Do I need to install additional fonts?

Yahoo engineers should get on fixing this right away. They built a large presence with such gibberish, think of the possibilities when we can -all- read it!

1. Gibberish site
2. Fix fonts and spell-check
3. ????
4. Profit!!!

For all of the badness of Philip Morris, I think I'd still rather they be running the show than the guys who kidnap busloads of people, rape them or make them fight to the death, and then bury them in the desert.

I don't think that's just personal squeamishness talking. It may very well be that the sociopaths who did bad stuff for the cigarette companies are just as evil as the sociopaths who run the cartels. But they do seem to control themselves a little better when they can make tons of money by staying in the law's good graces.

Serious organized crime groups will just make up any lost weed money with other drugs.

If they were able to increase their profits from other drugs at a whim, why would they wait to incur marijuana losses before doing it? Why wouldn't they just do it now?

You're describing the "nobody goes there anymore, it's too crowded" problem, though. Major urban areas are hard to get into becuse they're super crowded, and super crowded means a huge number of potential employees and amenities. Plenty of people can get into San Francisco every day. Evidence: San Francisco is chock full of people every day.

Sure, it would be easy for people who live in the exurbs to commute to a Google office in their particular exurb, but there just aren't enough potential Google employees to run a Google office living in a single exurb.

It's not 100% of the problem, but rent control is a major issue. Given a choice between selling or occupying your property and renting it out, rent control gives the owner a very strong disincentive to rent. So even with the same number of units, the split between "owner occupied" and "rental" shifts strongly in favor of owner occupied dwellings.

Nah. By downloading their web page to my computer they are accepting my EULA agreement.