"Yea, I don't get that. We (USA) could literally send a uniformed soldier in there to shoot him in the head while he's in the UK, say 'My bad', and they'd give us our guy back and say 'shame on you!!!' and then ask us over for tea later. If we wanted him, we'd have had him long ago."

"Enemies of America have accidents or become the target of international wars. We don't fuck around with trying to get him from you legally, we just shoot him and go home. Its better to ask for forgiveness than permission."

I wonder why so many are now turning anti-USA. This seems to be a country the rest of the world out to put back in its place. Much more evil and dangerous than Iran, Iraq, North Vietnam and others it seems. The United Nations ought to take immediate action!

Indeed, I have tried submitting a post here on slashdot and have posted elsewhere including on chromium site.

It seems that there is little interest in security and privacy.

It is however a great concern of mine. I guess I go against the grain. :) I posted on this thread knowing that it was only remotely related to the topic in the hope that someone would see it and that it would not affect my karma.

Chromium has bizarre behavior as well.

With everything that could even be remotely related to Google turned off and cleared in chromium, the browser connects to Google Plus of its own volition, opening a port in the ephemeral group of ports and keeping the connection alive! It is doing this with no activity whatsoever following invocation of the program with a blank home page. What is worse, and by all appearances could be construed as intentionally surrepticious behaviour and perhaps malevolent, it does this only after a certain amount of time has elapsed following the start of the program, and again, with no further activity on my part, simply having the browser opened on the page that says "For quick access, place your bookmarks here...", with hands off the computer and nothing else running on the workstation.

You forgot to mention that they can unilaterally modify the contract terms to the detriment of the counter-party without fear of retribution or being sued?

Can someone explain to me what is the value of a contract in the US? Or does the value of a contract only apply to one of the party. I don't get it at all/ I mean I keep hearing about free market and all those things and how "cool" and fair they are as exemplified by the US, but I must miss something because I cannot see it.

:...So how do you explain all the intelligent people using it? ..."

Umm. I have to revise my definition of "intelligence". methinks.

If I had some mods points you would have had one for sure.

"... 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.