Yep, they sure can. But if they try to use Japanese laws against American news organizations, the American companies can tell the Japanese courts to go to hell, which would bring the ball back to SCOTUS.

This is a scientific definition of life, so why the hell would we use the colloquial definitions of the other terms? They don't give a shit what you think the definition of movement is, so long as they are using the consistent, agreed upon definition.

I disagree. In order to be accurate you need to "censor" speech. Wikipedia has positioned itself as a reliable source of information. Even with a moderation system similar to slashtot's, the user would have no way to verify what speech on Wikipedia is accurate and it would quickly become useless. It works on slashdot because we realize that the user comments are just that, comments and we don't take them for accurate information. That system breaks completely in an encyclopedia replacement where errors and misinformation needs to be kept to a minimum.

The problem with that thought is, when they become contagious (symptomatic) then they'll need treatment. The thing is, unless you decide to just not treat them (mortality rate goes up) then the same people are at risk even with a quarantine in place. The fact that, even without mandatory asymptomatic quarantines, the only people who've gotten infected in the U.S. are two nurses that treated a symptomatic ebola patient. Quarantines are not necessary.

Quarantining people to ease public perception are a completely different thing, however. The public is a twitchy, panicky beast and we all know it. If pointless quarantines are what it takes to calm the beast down, so be it.

Nigeria had 9 deaths out of a total 20 confirmed cases. Not exactly 9 out of 10 people unless your concept of numbers is different than mine.

Short answer? Yes. Since he wasn't contagious during his time a the bowling alley, I absolutely would. Whether people would use the items in question is a matter of public perception, not safety. Even if he was contagious at that time, after the sweat dries, your chances for contracting it go down dramatically. After an hour or two, the chance is nil. Wet sweat from somebody showing symptoms? Maybe, but then again, I wouldn't touch wet sweat from a healthy person either.

I guess I'd have to not touch their bodily fluids for awhile then, huh?

They're not "contaminating everything". The disease isn't airborn. Unless they're licking, or shitting on everything they see, and the concentration of ebola is high enough, they're not contaminating a damn thing. Sending in a crew and burning everything because somebody suspected of having ebola was there is a gross over reaction. The Texas hospital had to quarantine 70+ staff members and shut down because they were dumb and didn't put a confirmed ebola patient who was spewing bodily fluids out of both ends in proper isolation. That's the hospital's fault, not the patient's.

After symptoms start showing, the patient needs to isolated, not quarantined to some degree, isolated. The best chance they've got for survival is in a hospital bed with doctors and nurses doing things to counteract the effects. But, even in a hospital, they need to be in isolation. That means they're own room with nurses in full gown and limited contact with the rest of the hospital. Don't worry though, you wouldn't need to keep them locked up to do it. It doesn't take long for an ebola patient to go from just a fever to a volcano of bodily fluids. They won't even want to get out of their bed while this is going on, much less leave the hospital.
Before they start showing symptoms is really more of a public perception issue. If you think you've got ebola, stay away from large crowds so people don't freak out, but that's about it.

1. Nobody said he was a linux user. In fact, judging from a 5-second reading of his post history, it looks like he's a Windows fan.
2. This is not an apt analogue. It doesn't do dependency management, otherwise known as the main thing people like about apt. All this is, is a way to download and run the installer with a single command. The packages downloaded from this can still shit all over your system.
3. Who's controlling the main repository? Is is Microsoft? Because if it is, they haven't had a very good record of keeping the Windows store clean.

Wow, you must use a cheap airline.

Yep, totally not ignoring the last sentence of his post at all. But you're right, after a few time going up the same stairs, you know how many calories it takes. Here's the thing though, fitness is all about habit. If the FitBit is helping him to build new healthy habits through information, I'd call that a win. Wouldn't you? Perhaps he won't need it down the road, but that doesn't mean it's not useful now.

Everybody knows what the Pyramids are. The fact that you had to explain who Jonah was tells me the Pyramids are somewhat more iconic.

True, but that's not the situation I'm dealing with on a daily basis. Most of the time, I deal with semis that go inconsistent slow speeds on a two lane highway. That gets worse if it's windy out, as it frequently is. I run greater risks if i stay behind the semi or pass it at the speed limit than if i just speed up and blow by it as quickly as possible. That's where I need to be above the speed limit.

That... is a situation I've never run into. I hope to never run into that situation but it is an interesting question.