"... which is why I'm moving to Reddit."

Yes, AC, but you have said that many times before!

Indeed! And also, there is sufficiently overwhelming historical evidence that English is not a prescriptive language that only arch-conservative grammarians would say the contrary.

"Can your superior mind spot a difference between the two scenarios?"

A matter of transparency or openness?

:...they have some of the best engineers of the planet."

That may be so, but the best engineers are still immersed in a corporate culture. A corporate culture that seems to have changed a lot since the pre-float days! It is quite different from the founders motto of those days!

I used to evangelize for Google, well before the float, that is. I am currently moving as completely as I can from all their services. I don't like the new deal about combining their various services one bit.

I wonder what they did before bananas were readily available in many countries. I can't remember reading anywhere that all people were dying from colon cancer.

Indeed they should be able to.

Unfortunately there is a certain asymmetry in the legal resources that can be deployed by Monsanto and by the small farmers.

I believe that when there is crop contamination of an organic farm it takes a very long time to re-establish the accreditation and all that time results in loss of earning that ought to be compensated by Monsanto, imo. Let;s add to that the cost to reputation, some opportunity costs, etc...

I hope Monsanto has enough money to cover all those for all those farm that have been and will be contaminated even by a single GM plant found on their fields.

The legalization of GM crop is one of the most idiotic output of the legal system. There is no way that cross contamination will not occur, even without any action by a legitimate organic farmer. What is worse, it will increase and spread. It is totally impossible to contain... the genie is out of the bottle and he is not benign, far from it.

The Monsantos of the world will be perceived in the future as worse than cigarettes companies are now, they have unleashed an uncontainable plague.

Let me simplify.

Instead of " He doesn't seem to have done anything which would deserve so much scorn" you could simply say " He doesn't seem to have done anything.".

Of course that is not entirely true. He is known for his running prowess and many other things totally irrelevant to a politician job. He dutifully exploits every photo opportunity although he obviously far from relishes them. Just looking at him, squirming whilst putting on an act in front of the camera, is an experience of discomfort I have rarely seen in someone so much in the public eye.

But all that could be, and perhaps ought to be, really tolerated did he have an intellectual stature up to the job he aspires to. Unfortunately, his understanding of issues of importance seems to be more in terms of populist memes than imbued with depth and substance. And when the delivery of the memes is so inadequate, I think, and hope, that it will be reflected in his lack of success at the polls.

Just to avoid being typecast, I think that Julia is the worst PM Australia has had in my memory. She stands out as one that has totally lost what her party ideology stands for and I so much regret having voted for her.

I will revert to informal voting in the next elections, as I hate when politicians claim a mandate because of the election results. The compulsory voting in Australia, and the fact that publicly encouraging informal voting is not allowed, makes that claim rather meaningless.

Yes, indeed!

I take exception with ["nothing" of value would be lost], and would replace "nothing" with "little", where that "little" does not come anywhere close to offsetting the great annoyance that "most" tracking and advertising according to the current model is.

By the way, I have run and build a number of businesses, some greatly successful, some less, and at least one an unmitigated disaster, to put the previous poster's mind at rest. :)

Thanks for your post.

And Dickensian, at that!

"They already committed the crime. There is no entrapment here."

They had committed one "crime" perhaps (presumption of innocence and whether there was a "crime: at all (a matter of opinion)) but not the one of attempted extortion.

"For example, I don't see a whole lot of homosexuals being hung from cranes in the US."

That is, probably only because the US has more than twice the incarceration rate of Iran.

It is more than annoying, it is plain stupid and bad practice.

I made the restoration disks. Now, I can't test them as it would destroy the original and if my backup is wrong I am up the proverbial * creek.

Later on, I need restoration and then I realize that my backup is not working!

It then comes to trying to get a restoration or original from the manufacturer... Good luck.

It maybe lore, but the initial research and development leading to the internet today was in part to circumvent some restriction to access information between academic institutions. If I remember rightly the restriction had to do with mixed use academia/military.

I wish I could find some information about this, but I have not got the time for this at the moment. I am pretty certain I did not invent it.

Google may not be a terrorist organization but the probably helping terrorists. Check some of their results in details.

"You do realize there are other search engines out there, some of which at least purport to respect privacy? I prefer ixquick.com [ixquick.com]."

Yes, and not only that, it now has a facility for you to do a google search without revealing your ip to Google! Check it out.