"Sony can't (successfully) sue for whatever else you can dream up, because that would be the government enforcing some law restricting the press from doing their job as the press, a clear violation of the first amendment."

No. Proof : press is bound by copyright law too. Press cannot give the full copy of a book in an article and pretend it is covered by first amendment and freedom of press. Freedom of press is not a get-free-out-of-civil-liabilities card.

Bottom line : the first amendement and freedom of press is about not allowing the government to limit and infringe on press. It is not a "get free" card for all laws whatsoever, including copyright, 3rd party liabilities and so forth. If you spread private confidential or copyrighted document, you will get bitten in the ass , and it will be by civil lawsuit.


In fact remember : free speech mean the government cannot stops your speech. It does not protect you of ANY private consequence for that speech. If that would be the case journalist would never be sued for libel.

"Some historians see the Crusades as part of a purely defensive war against Islamic conquest; some see them as part of long-running conflict at the frontiers of Europe; and others see them as confident, aggressive, papal-led expansion attempts by Western Christendom." You can check the source link at encyclopedia or wiki , this is not a consensus. It was probably a mix of all. Plus how many crusade were they over how 2 hundred years ? It was not ONE crusade, it was like 7 or 8. And there is a huge political influx of the byzantine loss of land.

A few decades ago with the IRA and separatist activities in spain, the biggest terrorist threat in europe was "christian" of origin, and in the c ase of Ireland arguably religiously motivated (protestant versus catholic).

All the classical , especially Bach, on organs... Now that's heavenly. I went into a lot of cathedral (notre dame in paris, and the one from saitn denis among others) just for the music.

The problem, if I understood it correctly (not a given as I know only the german taxi situation well), is that french taxi have some hoop and loop to go thru (http://vosdroits.service-public.fr/professionnels-entreprises/F21907.xhtml roughly translated says you need a licence, you need to not have been guilty of certain crime, there is some lessons you ened to follow). All costs. But Uber does not follow those restriction, no formation, no licencing, no background check (except the one they say they do... And we all know company cut corner soemtiems and do not do proper checks).

That said all french taxi driver can go and take a dump for all I care. As soon as they announced blocking other innocent third party they lost *any* support from me they could have had.


A much better solution would have been to NOT work and massively go protest by foot before the assemblé or something. But hurting others innocent third parties ? A big No.

To me , those "warmth" argument are really about psychological bias. Sound warmth is one of those term which are never really defined properly and means everything and nothing. The only really objective measure is amount of noise , and fidelity compared to the original signals. I have never met an analogue system (even a high range one) which objectively reproduced the sound as good as a digital HD one could. Not to mention you better replay your LP in vacuum , because no matter how careful you will to clean it, you will get snaps, pop cracks, dust, flutter, variation speed, etc...

There was this new add - on reported a day or two ago which auto clicked on ads. If really the advertising industry is losing money on that.... Maybe I'll look again into adding that addon on all PC I install FF onto (with the rest of the gang, nos script, no flash, ad block)...

People advocating torture always forget how many "witches" were hanged (or killed using other way) after they confessed all sort of satanic rituals and demonic concourse.

Sure nowadays the torture is less likely to leave physical traces in america, beside that torture is maoral and unethical, the lessons has long been known that torture is useless in getting informaztion out of people. Heck they might as well have asked the guatabnamo prisonner if they were witches and gotten positive answers.


But in the end for American, now their security is WORST than it was before. because 1) for decades they wilkl be known as hypocrite torturing people and putting them in prison forver without due process 2) they won't be able to pretend to have any moral ground whatsoever if somebody else torture an american to get "information".

"I'm fairly certain that they didn't actually light the cig for me, nor did they put it in my mouth or anything else."

But they did. They paid and sponsored programs to show smoking happy people, you couple in love, or "heroes" all lighting cigarettes. Never sponsored a program showing you a 50-70 guy dying horribly of cancer. They influenced the culture to to make people smoke more and more, all the while knowing they were sending death sentences down the line. WITHOUT that cultural influence,a dvertising, and glorification in the media of the cigarettes until recentely, I can wager that you would not have lighted a cigarette. In fact now that smoking stopped being cool, cigarette smoking in high school has dropped like a stone in the last 40-50 years. 50% of youth smoked by the end of high school post war (50ies), nowadays it is less than 20%.

Your smoking was not your decision alone, but also a product of a culture of praising smoking in media.

"The era in which one group of people will be able to control the commercial activities of third parties is coming to a close."

That worked with napster or anything fully digital, but will not work with service or good provided in the real world. Once the government steps ion and say "you are not allowed" they can simply catch you at the payment , or make a take down on your server on non compliance. And as such service multiply take down will simply be quicker. And frankly as a customer there ARE some law i want respected, no matter what you young guys think of them. The law for example enforcing some taxi standard by the government is among those I applaud (in my country there is no artificial limit on the amount of who may be a taxi, there is only requirement on driver license, insurance requirement, and checks on metering system by the government metering entity, so that you cannot make your system add the money "quicker").

Firstly the distance was almost half to Paris (lower if you count the army basis in the Ruhr), making it very easy to crush anything or send reinforcement, bombing, and the german had a very good air and tank superiority (even if they still used a lot of horse caried stuff lilke everybody) etc... Secondely the climate , the countryside, is much harsher toward the east than toward the west. There was a running joke that the best german soldier killer of the russian army was named "colonel winter". Winter on the other hand is way survivable with the quasi oceanic climate north of France. Finally the capital with 15-20% of the french was already at the mercy of an attack, with practically nothing to stop german. That made the french position untenable no matter what resistance you could offer. Russian position was more tenable because they could play with the time and meat grind people.

Secondly do you find it really good to send human to the meat grinder like the russian did ? Personally I think people like you which think sending millions of people to the meat grinder is a valid tactic disgusts me. It is neither courageous to send people to their death that way, nor is it cowardice to admit defeat when your position cannot be maintained. Hey anonymous coward, WW1 missed you !

I am ready to bet you would not be in the first wanting to be grinded in such a way, but I am also betting your FAT ASS is nice and comfy in your parents basement typing your usual "surrender joke", far away from any risk of war.

Apart for maintaining thousand of miles of cables no matter remote or even no matter the weather, and making sure they have overgeneration for when people with solar suddenly have a longer period of "cloud" or bad weather. See nothing at all.

Look we all know of those joke daily mail equation about "best" day of the week to do x,y,z , all having no causal relationship whatsoever. It is an equation, alright. The problem is that the drake equation is about as useless as it can be , and still it let people drop a lot of ink. The main problem is that many of the term cannot be estimated.... Until we visit far flung corner of the galaxy or the unvierse and find no life/life there. Ultimately int he absnece of facts too many term are simply down to whether you are "optimist" for certain term or "pessimist" on them.

If somethign depends on your opinion it might still be an equation by the virtue of having a right erm and a left term and an equal, but it is not anymore science. It is religionm fantasy, politic, fiction, but not science.

The drake equation is not science. It is a garden variety water cooler conversation about what you believe.

"New York prosecutors successfully persuaded a judge that the ancient law could be used"

The law was not sunset-ed, the law was not stricken down by another law, the law itself was not repelled on its own, the law was not stricken down by the supreme court.

So what is the problem ? Until a repell/strick down , ALL those law are still valid. Cue the shooting down welsh with a bow, but this is the basis of our judiciary process. just because a law is old does not make it invalid.

You know, people were panning germany for forbidding uber. But we do not have (as far as I can tell) a "medaillon" limit. All you need to be a legal taxi is :
* make a "taxischein" (driver license allowing you to transport people)
* Have insurance which allow commercial transportation of people
* Have a metered reader which the government checks ("geeicht")
None of which is an artificial scarcity like the medaillon mentionned.



And yet what do we see in the article here ? Artificial limitation in the country of the "free market" which are even worst than in Germany.