Now with the oppressive soviet porn filter removed, I believe we'll see dams bursting in record numbers. Though if it's green, you should probably see a doctor.

In soviet china, dam bursts you!

There's a reality TV show on Speed about a task force that puts out bait cars and then follows around the drivers of said bait cars until they get enough people tailing them to take them down. They track actual stolen cars as well, but there's never a mention of needing a new warrant each time the car is used. I believe the car is registered with all relevant jurisdictions' authorities, but aside from that, police observing a crime in a setting in which there is no expectation of privacy (e.g. in plain sight) arrest the perp for that crime.

Normally I'd say that artificial hearts aren't designed for strenuous activity, but you're a slashdotter after all...

Reports of my assimilation are greatly exaggerated.

There is no expectation of privacy or security in a stolen vehicle. In fact, there is an expectation of seizure.

"Your tracking device appears to have malfunctioned, citizen."

(or)

Seems that Inspector Gadget will have to figure out a new way to track the bad guy back to his lair.

Here's my problem with this whole line of reasoning. It's not like the judge heard the ruling and immediately said, "Yeah, no, I think you all suck, we're doing it this way." This is several years later. I'm assuming there's been a couple of eyes this case has passed in front of since then, and despite the glacial pace of the judicial system, it may be that cooler heads have prevailed for once, and your average slashdotter is pissed because M$ happens to have won for once in a case where they might have actually been justified winning.

(To borrow from someone else's sig: "-1, Disagree" does not exist. Flamebait, offtopic and troll are not acceptable substitutes.)

Tiers/Tears

Prejudice as in why should data center tears be more relevant than any other tears.

Only when coming from the eyes of data center owners.

Yes, but won't you just be hungry again in an hour if you eat one?

The statement was inteded as a commentary on the ignorance of the west as well as separately referencing a christian Jehovah, often referred to as God, as well as the judaic Adonai, in comparison with the Muslim Allah, singled out specifically.

Rather than say may Jehovah, Adonai and Allah all see eye to eye on this issue, I preferred my wording.

But thanks. :)

Unfortunately, given the current socio-economic state that the US and it's allies are in, Iranian leaders -- very possibly not being the caricatures many americans would assume them to be -- may be making a large bluff in this and other moves it has made. The US can ill-afford a continued string of wars in smaller powers that do not offer a consumer incentive; i.e. any war that doesn't have us retooling our auto companies to make tanks, telling our people that if they ride alone they ride with the ayatollah. If we're to go to war, it needs to be a manufacturer's war, not a war of attrition fought by a people that have sufficient stores of it's most important tactical resource (people) to not care about when it "wins".

Iranian leaders, if they have any semblance of intelligence, knows that we cannot call their bluff unless a larger ally steps in and makes the war "interesting". For now, despite the horrible situation in Iran, the best thing that we can do is encourate the Iranian people, and let them know that their voices are being heard, that they have the power to revolt and change their own destinies. Most of all, that if they take the initiative, we will respect any free government they impliment in the aftermath.

But we cannot help them with guns. We cannot help them with bullets. We cannot help them with manpower. Any fight we make on their behalf, is fighting their cause. Every bullet we fire at an oppressive Iranian government, we fire at Democracy. If we have learned anything from Iraq-ganistan, it is that a policy of policing the world leads to later generations of peoples turned from ally to staunch enemy with the memory of american guns killing their people outweighing the memory of american guns killing their enemies.

May God and Allah see eye to eye in this conflict.

By banning new public domain books from the Kindle, they are making an implicit decision as to which books people should read. You can argue that "you can get these texts anywhere," but by excluding high-quality Kindle books from the nascent Kindle marketplace, Amazon is implicitly deciding what is a valid part of our culture and what isn't. This trend does not bode well for the future of e-books.

Actually they're really making a decision on which books they wish to deliver on their service, paid or unpaid. Honestly I can get behind Amazon on this as the appropriate policy to have in this situation is broad-based denial to avoid exactly what they're stating; multiple copies of public domain works, whose redundancy will create a negative user experience, and to which the public (not an individual) holds the copyright. And in this situation, if the work isn't being provided for free (as a public domain work), the potential for abuse is extraordinary. I would chide Amazon for not providing a dispute process based on the quality of the supplied work, or an alternate pricing scheme for businesses such as the OP's, but I do not fault them for this policy in general.

...That's some tough sheet!