...if the Chinese government wants records for an American citizen's account at Bank of America, then America will have no reason to protest since BofA has offices in China, and the principle of extra-territorial subpoenas has been established. If Microsoft loses this case, it will be a terrible precedent, and a victory for oppressive governments all around the world.

So don't do business with banks that have offices in other countries. Move your business to your local credit union. Demonstrating that big banks can be legally required to divulge your data to governments in any country where they operate sounds like a way to break banks' power a bit, and thus a win for humanity.

There is a reason there is *intellectual* property law.

No. There is not. There is copyright law, there is patent law, there is trademark law. None of these relate to "property". Calling them "intellectual property" is inaccurate, an attempt to obfuscate.

It's rather disingenuous to criticize them for not getting all the way to 100% in one fell swoop.

No it's not, not when they themselves are talking about getting to 100% in one swell foop, about building cars with no steering or brake controls.

Bwahaha you slackjawed imbecile, you realise you've just described the actual outcomes of everything marxist?

Bwa-ha-ha you slack-jawed imbecile, you realize there are more possible ways to structure an economy than capitalist so-called "free markets", and Marxism-degraded-into-Stalinism-or-Maoism, right?

On maybe, like most Americans brought up on a century of Red Scares, you don't.

The argument is that a concerted push to end sexism *just for women* is itself sexist.

Yes, it is. But for any given instance of sexism against women, some making a push to end it will be motivated only to end sexism against women, and some will be motivated to end all sexism. Thus one cannot determine merely from participation in, or advocacy for, a specific attempt to end an instance of misogynist sexism, whether one is merely misandrist or is truly in favor of equality.

How many women fly fish? Not many. Guess how much sexism there is keeping women from fly fishing? Zero.

You post about how it's important to provide evidence for a hypothesis, then spit out a hypothesis about sexism with zero evidence for it. That's so remarkably thick-headed I have to think that maybe you're engaged in some sort of meta-troll? If not, then let me point out that a minute with the search engine of your choice can help prevent you saying stupid things:

Angling and Sexism

SEXISM in FISHING ADVERTISING, SHOWS & MAGAZINES

Wanton Sexism in Fly Fishing (What is Going On?)

Bait Shop Sexism

Why not let women do what they want instead of trying to force them in to places that aren't necessarily their thing?

I see no "force" here. I see no objectification here. You are using hotbutton keywords that have no relevance.

If a certain group of people don't feel invited to your thing, it's entirely appropriate to re-write your invitation. If your infrastructure isn't supportive of a certain demographic, it's entirely appropriate to remediate that.

OTOH, if (at TFA suggests) you've got a demographic that's socialized to avoid conflict, and you've got a project that inherently involves conflict between different POV, you've got a problem.

According to the market...

...which is a completely irrelevant way to measure quality of tech. The success or failure of a company has more to do with its ability to manipulate markets than with the quality of its products. MS got its market dominance by making a deal with IBM, not by creating a great product. Apple got its market dominance by cultivating an image, not by creating a great product.

I really don't understand why people hate targeted ads so much. Sure they might miss the mark.

I care about the covert surveillance which enables targeted ads.

I care about powerful corporate and political interests attempting to manipulate my decisions. That's nothing less than mind control, black magic.

The ads themselves? Adblock Plus removes them from my sight anyway.

You do realize that settlements are basically private contracts right?

There is no such thing as a "private contract". A contract, by nature, is an agreement that the state will enforce. State actions are not private. If two people make an agreement and will never disclose that agreement to anyone else under any circumstances, then a court will never see it, and it is in no meaningful way a contract.

Of course that only goes double when one of the parties is a government agency. Nothing a government agency does is private.

But I shouldn't be forced to hire them or make them my friends.

No one is forcing you to make anyone your friend.

Commerce, on the other hand, by its nature involves the state. (At least beyond the trivial. Your lemonade stand generally flies under the radar here.)

If you want the state to issue a charter for your corporation or register your partnership, if you want to call the cops to use force against people your want removed from your place of business, if you want the government to enforce your business contracts, if you want to engage in interstate commerce and use the economic infrastructure that the state has created, you don't get to complain that the state is interfering with your "private choices" when it requires that your business not be racist, sexist, etc.

1. Censorship only applies to governments.

No. It doesn't. "censor...To review in order to remove objectionable content from correspondence or public media, either by legal criteria or with discretionary powers".

Please stop spreading the mis-definition that claims that private interests with control over information flow cannot engage in censorship.

A website or a store deciding that they do to carry a product is not.

If they decide "we won't carry this because our customers won't buy this", it's not censorship. If they decide "we won't carry this because we object to it", it is censorship.

I sure as fuck chose my lifestyle, thanks. Three bad engagements to women, and I made up my mind to date men after that.

Sounds like you're a bisexual person who made a choice to date only men. Ok, fine. Congratulations, even. But most of us could no more choose which gender to date, and to be sexually attracted to, than we could choose which sort of music we like.

I would go nuts if a "buy it now" button popped up while reading fiction, but this is a newspaper article.

When newspaper articles are written so as to be conducive to advertizing, they are fiction of the worst sort.

Is it possible to write code for the browser without using jQuery?

Yes, dammit, it is. 90% of Javascript use is Javascript abuse, and 90% of legitimate Javascript use doesn't need a fscking bloated framework. Stop it already, anyone with a clue is running some sort of script blocker and your page just isn't important enough to make them choose to open holes in it for you.

Now get off my lawn.