Germany’s Foreign Minister responds: “We did not conduct an extraterritorial search – in fact we didn’t search anything at all. No German officer ever set foot in the United States. The Stadtpolizei merely ordered a German company to produce its own business records, which were in its own possession, custody, and control. The American reporter’s privacy interests were fully protected, because the Stadtpolizei secured a warrant from a neutral magistrate.”

"[N]o way would that response satisfy the U.S. Government” because the documents held by the foreign company for safekeeping are private letters, not business records. And any attempt to take possession of those letters through a warrant – even one served on the company entrusted with those letters – would constitute a seizure by a foreign government of private information located in another country.

Sorry. Not being native and neither a lawyer my grasp of these things is limited. What's the difference? (honestly, I want to know in order to prevent misusing them in the future)

Neither are required for life in even the slightest way. Plenty of fully functional people have jobs, homes and families and they never fly and don't have Internet access.

Just as a reminder, since it seems to be forgotten so often.

Airplanes are barely a 100 years old.

The Internet, or more specifically, the web, is only about 20.

These are not 'requirements' for life. You will survive without either.

(i'm not a murkin) isn't the Federal Reserve's first duty to the private banks that own it and generating profit for them?

"Open". Then who was on the other side of these Fed bond purchases? There's no report out there that describes what the Fed buys and who they bought it from.

A regulation allowing anyone to legally work around its intent is more than ridiculous -- it has no substance and is the same as if it didn't exist at all.

The fact that he has spoken at length in multiple speeches against this film, without one word in support of the concept that even hateful speech is Free Speech and protected in America.

Why wait? I mean in my country the phones only come locked in a very limited set of circumstances and can often be unlocked for a small fee.

I'm in contract with my mobile phone company. If I use my phone with them I pay the phone + my monthly plan. If I don't use my phone I pay the phone + my monthly plan. While I was overseas for 2 months using my phone with another service provider on a pre-paid sim card, I still paid the phone + my monthly plan. Whatever I do with my phone these guys extract $43 out of me every month.

Where's the incentive to lock?

I will admit, I still haven't figured out the ribbon thing. I've used the hell out of Office 2003 and before. But, every time I sit down to a machine with 2007 or later I get frustrated and either go back to a machine with an earlier version I get frustrated and just install OpenOffice.

I am a "quick key" user (or keyboard short cuts) and none of them work the way I was used to in earlier versions of Word, so I have to "Icon Hunt" which is such an unproductive feeling.

Anyway, my point is even technical users are creatures of habit and can feel this frustration. In the case of the above posting, I think the real problem won't be non-techies (who are simply directed to the icon and application they need), it'll be the techies who want root access (and won't be granted it) and want to install every social networking and widget app known to man. They're so used to all the little windows hacks (that they never needed in the first place) and will get so frustrated they can't hack their system they'll stand around at the printer and bitch and moan about how "they can't do anything they used to."

Tamran