IRDLOL (I really did laugh out loud)

Why are the news publishers never up in arms about Yahoo News? Yahoo News is more popular than Google News by a significant amount.

I guess they realize there is more money in going after Google than there is in Yahoo.

I see Google is rapidly replacing Microsoft in the minds of the tin foil hat crowd as their massive corporate oppressor. I can't wait to see Eric Schmidt as a borg. Maybe we can start using Googl€ too.

I feel the same way. It is very irritating to have to sit through an ad on Hulu just to realize that you need to jump to the next section of the video and then sit through another ad. They should have a system that only shows you an ad every 30/15 minutes of video regardless of how many different shows you watch.

IANAL but my understanding is that any developer that has code in a GPL licensed project has standing to sue for violations of the license provided that they didn't assign their copyright to someone else. I don't know if Busybox forces contributors to assign their copyrights to someone but it doesn't appear as though they do.

Perens's major complaints seems to be that the lawsuits are damaging his consulting business and that Andersen, Landrey, etc. removed the copyright statements of other developers. While I sympathize with him on both points, they are entirely unrelated to the merit of the SFLC's lawsuit.

According to the Australian Election Commission there are a lot more than 2 parties.
http://aec.gov.au/Parties_and_Representatives/Party_Registration/Registered_parties/index.htm

I fail to see what is so evil about socialist/communist ideas. They don't work in practice but that doesn't make them evil.

I don't see any evidence that this is anything other than the fevered dream Kaspersky and DeWalt. Though I'm sure that won't stop the tin foil hat brigade from going into full on freak-out mode.

It seems to me you have two options. 1) Accept the trade off of having Google uses your information for targeted advertising in exchange for their service. 2) Stop using Google's services.

Use Bing instead of Google search. Switch to Hotmail, Yahoo Mail or use an email client. Use Bing's maps instead of Google Maps. etc. I don't think any of these options really ensure your privacy any better than using Google does but if your fear is of Google specifically (sort of irrational IMO) then these are options.

Personally I don't mind the first option because honestly I'm not that interesting. I don't do anything with Google services that would be very interesting to anyone at Google or an intelligence service. There seems to be very little risk for a decent reward.

The people who exposed this are heroes, not criminals.

Being a criminal and being a hero aren't mutually exclusive things.

Wouldn't a tungsten telephone pole going .99c punch right through the Earth and keep going?

Unless Microsoft is going to pay Mozilla millions to be the default search engine in Firefox like Google does, he is just pissing in the wind. What exactly are the Mozilla Foundation's sources of funding other than Google?

I realize I'm posing on Slashdot but I thought we at least read TFS here.

In an interview with DesktopLinux.com, Orr made clear that the 32% Linux netbook market share did not include either user-installed Linux or dual-boot systems, but was confined to just pre-installed Linux shipments

Just to clarify in case that isn't clear it DOES NOT include pre/fast boot installs (which would be dual boot systems).

How come the tin-foil hatters never seem to bring up the fact that you can simply vote with your feet if you don't like Google's privacy policies? Is Google pointing a gun at your head forcing you to use Google instead of Bing, Yahoo, Ask.com? The reality is those sites are probably collecting just as much information about you as Google is but they don't get nearly the same amount of attention.

You can't opt out government surveillance but there are plenty of ways to opt out of Google's.