Well all they can do is lobby against these measures which they do (in UK at least). I guess Americans are scared of being called unpatriotic or something.

UK Should Not 'Kowtow' to the US on Flight Security
http://www.cnbc.com/id/39863854/

Airport Security Checks 'Bizarre, Ineffective': Ryanair CEO
http://www.cnbc.com/id/39950166

Let me put it this way. A businessman (Google) sells bicycles (You). The businessman builds a factory (Gmail) to make bicycles. The businessman sells bicycles to kids (advertisers).

The bicycle is just the product, it doesn't pay anything.

When you don't have ads? I guess Slashdot's slashvertisment is the best way, it's certainly the least unobtrusive way of advertising.

It's works many places. I just travelled to a bunch of countries in asia, australia and new zealand with an IPod touch and the maps app invariably gave me an exact location. In places like Singapore it was outstanding, it could give me precise location down to the street corner as I walked along.

Right... Because Microsoft are really losing sleep over the negative comments posted on slashdot, so they have assembled a crack team of slashdotters to game the moderation system in their favour.

You have to be kidding me.

Falcon 1 contains something of an abort mechanism. Half a second after launch a diagnostics check is done and if anything looks wrong the mission is aborted and the rocket remains on the ground. This protects the payload from being destroyed if the rocket does not fire exactly as expected.