Huh?? Care to elaborate, or am I supposed to guess?

Maybe later today I'll look for somethig else to buy. I'd like to hear someone announce a valid reason why their hatred of the US is so blindingly intense that they consider actions like this appropriate. In the meantime, I'm going to support Amazon and any other victims of these people.

I've worked at a lot of different companies, and some are targets...not just for terrorists, but kooks. The company I work for makes eeeeeevil weapons of war. We've had people sneak past security and try to wage a protest in our offices. We've had people try to sneak in weapons. We've had people try to damage our products. We've had people SUCCEED in damaging our products. We know all to well that we are under threat.

I also worked at a chemical company. We knew full well that some people objected to anything man-made and might attempt sabotage or worse. There is a reason why we had on-site security.

If there are groups planning to protest at our work site, YOU'rRE DAMN RIGHT we would like to know about it. Do we need to know about the individuals involved? Maybe. I consider it a judgement call based on their history. If one person had a history of illegal or violent protesting actions. Once again YOU BETTER BELIEVE that I want our security staff on the lookout. 99% of protesters are perfectly peaceful, and I'm not concerned about those...it's the unhinged kooks who tend to kill people.

If they really want IE6 usage to reach zero, the people at MS will have to swallow some pride and realize that there are some of us who refuse to 'upgrade" like little sheep. Otherwise, IE6 will still be around for quite some time. Oh, wait, Firefox 3.6 runs on Win2k...never mind...

... to still be running Windows 2000. It received patches for the same vulnerabilities as XP, but it's running just fine.

Stephen Hawking might be interested in this. On the one hand, I shudder at the risk to him, but on the other hand I wonder if he might consider the potential benefit worth it.

There's something about this, and cases like this, that just stinks. We all know it does, yet sometimes it's hard to put a finger on it. For me, the amorality of the lawyers just rubs me the wrong way. Someone says, "Mr. Lawyer, I'd like to sue X for Y, and I'll pay you handsomely for it." And the lawyer does, because it pays. It doesn't matter if the reason is bogus, it doesn't matter that X has to spend lots of money on a legal defense against something that has no merit. It only matters that the lawyer is being paid.

Of course, at this point, someone will probably pop off that I'm some sort of Commie or something. Nothing could be farther from the truth. Just because you CAN perform a service (regardless of whether you're being paid for it) doesn't mean you SHOULD. I have numerous skills, and I almost always expect to be compensated for my work, but there are some things that I simply will not build, for any price -- because I would consider it wrong to do so. It seems to me (and perhaps to a lot of people) that there is a dearth of lawyers who would say in the face of a paying potential customer, "No, I won't take your case. You're asking me to do something that's dishonest and immoral. Now get the hell out of my office."

There's a difference between working for money and working MERELY for money. In that sense I would term the latter type of lawyer as also a mercenary, and there seem to be entirely too many of them.

How do you deter a mercenary? I invite suggestions, but the only way I know of is through fear. With the collective intelligence of those on this forum, it shouldn't be hard to come up with some creative ideas on how to make a mercenary lawyer think twice about working MERELY for money.