And there's nothing wrong with punishment without someone dying. If someone destroyed your car (physically or digitally) there is harm done to your wallet regardless. Of course as has been said repeatedly it is not yours nor my wallet/life/<important thing here> this is aimed at protecting.

completely agree on both of these! I would also say yatzee and scrabble are must haves. I always find myself replaying Super Mario 1 and 3, so personally I'd include them as well.

I don't mean to be picky, but this statement deviates as far as you can from instilling confidence or stating a fact. This equates to "definitely might", "100% maybe", "completely possible" or <insert your favourite overly supported flip-flop statement here>. While I certainly don't doubt COBOLs use in the banking system; unsubstantiated 'facts' are merely opinions. Java is embedded in everything these days and large companies hate change. While its evolution will probably cease to exist in the near future, Java isn't going anywhere.

One step closer to VGHS! I don't know if it should be called an athletic scholarship, but I'm all for it.

I can't argue with the good debate that has arisen from trying to come up with a great analogy, but I actually hadn't intended it to be so literal, simply that the ends don't always justify the means. I feel these sorts of law suits make the scope of the results too small, which makes it easy to get caught up attempting the wrong solution, despite the appearance of a 'solution'. Especially since the 'ends' in this case is to remove records from Google which, while a good first step, is far from the desired effect of removing it from the internet.

That is definitely one possible outcome. It is beyond ridiculous that this is Google's problem at all. Sue the company who is making the illegal product and force them to take down all sites and advertisements. Once the proper approach has been established, then requesting, not demanding that Google remove the historic links to fraudulent material would be in order. When your cat is stuck up a tree; shooting it gets it down... but that doesn't mean it is the proper course of action.

If this Public WiFi is free for Comcast subscribers without additional fees (and assuming the speeds are acceptable). Every Comcast customer should drop to the cheapest package and connect using the public connection SSID to receive all the free bandwidth they could want. I feel like there are some details that are being overlooked. The public connections will likely require a login of the comcast user and the wifi bandwidth used will come off the connected user's cap instead of the owner of the router being used.

Ranking MSDos over ME is reasonable, but realistically including it in this list is not. It is a part of every Windows OS in some form (no matter what M$ has claimed over the years) and while it may constitute an OS when installing the full versions (v6.* or 7.* were decent, I've used them to breath life into old laptops once or twice) it is not intended to 'compete' with the likes of a GUI OS. It's like saying RHEL or Ubuntu are better than the Shell. There are still things I can do more easily on Windoze with the command prompt than with any amount of clicking/GUI interface which personally would rank it parallel and equal with 7. (but still lower than nearly any Linux Distro)

My Blackberry has been connected to exchange for a few years and there have been zero issues with it since OS 10. Calendars, e-mail, etc. all sync perfectly. As for being irrelevant... even you who think so are still talking about them. They are not the biggest players in the game any more it's true, but all major companies go through ups and downs. Some users abandon them in an instant and others give them the slack they need to deliver good products again. (Apple is not exempt from this path either.) Simply the fact that people feel the need to constantly dog BlackBerry and 'remind' us that they were basically in the toilet not too long ago is a sign that they are still seen as a threat. If they held no expectation of competition they would not regularly be measured against the other major players.

Sadly your 1) is correct. If they tried to introduce this today as a new idea, the people would never have it. Allowing an easy bypass (not even a loophole yet to be exploited) to anything guarantees that it will become the norm and not the exception it was intended to be. We already have examples such as the NSA denial of FOIA requests simply because what they have (or don't have) on you /could/ be useful to someone or anyone with the slightest of misguided thoughts.

Another ridiculous case where the courts attempt to stop a leak by putting a bucket under it; instead of turning off the water. Whether you agree or not with the operation of the sites is not valid in this argument. The entertainment companies can't stop the real problem so they are targeting anyone who makes it easier to find. Perhaps we should think bigger. Sue the entire US government for supporting the Internet because it helps people find search engines which offer routes to illegal content. Or perhaps bigger yet, sue copper manufacturers or OS development companies for without them there would be no reasonable computer access... Just a farce as far as I'm concerned, they can't win the real battle so they'll sabotage anyone they can get their hands on... the media industry needs to grow up.

Exactly what I was thinking. Netflix has expanded its coverage of HD and 'super HD' while Youtube has increased the quality/resolution of its content as well. Increased quality comes with increased data transfer, while a 700MB file will always transmit 700MB. The customer base has probably grown and there is likely some relationship between the cost effective viewing and increased usage of these services, but overall they are simply sending more data for the same content which makes this a nearly irrelevant thing to measure. It would be like proving global warming by switching to Fahrenheit when you used to use Celsius... it just doesn't add up and the 2 are not comparable without conversion.