There's probably something in the Terms of Use that the only jurisdiction that would be honoured is that of California.

When I purchase from NewEgg.ca, inside Canada, paid with Canadian dollars, shipment 100% inside Canada, I have to agree to a stipulation that disputes (I forget the details) are to be resolved according to the laws of California, where I assume NewEgg is incorporated.

Yet I don't even have a valid passport to go there should I wish to litigate over some issue.

TL;DR version: Uber's rules say so.

If you believe that the US government, in the form of the NSA, is composed of 3rd-rate hackers, you haven't been paying attention at all to the Snowden revelations.

I don't entirely disagree, but it seems that the authors of shareware (or those in that spirit today) have switched to open source model (or mobile apps now).

It's the purveyors of software are the ones making the money here, not the authors.

I don't think Mozilla, for example, makes anything from downloads of Firefox via CNet or SourceForge.

I, for one, hadn't heard the rumours, so I don't think they held many people back from voting for him.

I cannot believe anyone was thinking of voting Layton but switched to Harper for any reason, never mind Layton's health. They were so diametrically opposed in style and substance, after all.

This I agree with, but the task is to vote someone in whose mistakes benefit the most people instead of "Ooops, the rich benefited from that mistake. And that one. And this one too."

Just for once it'd be nice if "the little guy" was the beneficiary of a government screw-up.

No.

If they were used only when space / bandwidth is limited, that would be a different story.

Instead they're used pervasively on forums where technical discussions are supposed to be happening:

How do I ___ the ___ from v1.2.1 via package manager XYZ *smilie* *winkie*

No character limits there, just an expression of idiocy.

Or WhatsApp - I've seen messages there (I don't use it myself) that were more emoticons than characters - and not infrequently.

And those are often in a pictographic language in the first place (traditional Chinese) - they still look stupid. And there are no character limits.

I'll only mention IRC as it's infested with them even though there can be good information interspersed.

It's a dumbing down of communication.

The internet does NOT need a laugh track. They suck on TV and they suck in emoticons.

Subject says it all.

A plague on the internet and SMS those shitty, retarded little pieces of shit.

To be fair, that happened in small-town Canada 45 years ago too.

Make no mistake, I think it's cowardly to capitulate to this threat against movie theatres, however shutting school due to bomb threats isn't new.

In a report on a previous ruling,

The Supreme Court of Canada says police need a search warrant to get information from Internet service providers about their subscribers’ identities when they are under investigation.

Not really. Canada is not as absolutist as the USA.

For example, from Wikipedia on The Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms:

At common law, all evidence, regardless of how it was obtained, can be submitted in a trial.[9] The US exclusionary rule excludes all evidence acquired through the violation of the Bill of Rights. Canada has taken a middle ground, sometimes allowing for the exclusion of evidence, whenever its use threatens to bring the "administration of justice" into "disrepute."[1]

Damn right!

I had to get up at the crack of dawn to tend my straw farm (on land I built with my own two hands) for it. Fortunately, in southern Canadian winters, the crack of dawn is not much before noon, but still...

I can't wait for global warming to increase the temperature; I'm going to switch to coconuts, I've heard they're easier. They don't need much sunlight, do they?

Our liberal plot of global warming is coming along brilliantly!

Remember, Somalia is also a liberal plot to make libertarians look bad.

I'm a self-made man - I built the hospital I was born in, started teaching myself at age 11 months, and I got to where I am on my own.

I don't need the nanny state to make sure I and my peers are fairly compensated.

What's next, mandatory clean water? Then clean air? Where does it end?

Socialism, that's where.

No way, not for me!

Old news, Slashdot has already had this feature for a long time.

So some internet retard is arguing that it's constitutionally protected speech to threaten to kill someone or to claim that one was raped by Anonymous Coward of 123 Coward Lane when it isn't true?

Well, the links you've provided to back up your "point of view" (being generous there) sure are convincing!

Oh bullshit. I'm not even American and I know that libel / slander / defamation / threats are not covered by your free speech amendment.

The trick is, what's a real threat, what's not? What's defamatory, what's not?

But there is absolutely no 100% guarantee of free speech for anything that comes out of one's mouth.