Not mad - but rather, scripted. Deviate from the script = lose your job. It's the script writers that have killed intelligent responsiveness in the "customer interface department". No longer are people employed because of their knowledge of the subject, but because of their ability to "follow the script". Reminds me of a story of contacting BT's Tech Support on behalf of a friend. I told the woman (in India) what steps I'd tried (all the steps anyone which any person with reasonably high levels of IT literacy would try) and she then took me through scripted steps, all of which I'd already tried, all of which I told her I'd tried, and when none of them worked she said "contact your pc vendor" and hung up. She didn't know ANYTHING about computers, just how to follow the script on the screen. Not technical support at all really.

But your great, great, great, great, great grandchildren will be employed monitoring the "by-products".

Who is Earl? Sorry, from the UK here -US cultural references are lost on me.

...with a free copy just for me, I would point to the Debian logo on my t-shirt and raise one eyebrow, Spock-like.

I had CoD4 for a while - it made me extremely uneasy. I'm not sure if the Middle East or the Balkans are suitable arenas in a game. There's too much recent history, bad blood, generational resentment etc. WW2 is far enough back to be comfortable, with the added bonus of the now almost universally accepted mantra that it was "a good war", perhaps the last good war we (US/UK etc) have been engaged in. It has the potential tactical scenarios that WW1 didn't. A WW1 game would be mostly pointless unless one wanted to show the mindless horror of it. I also had the game "Vietnam", again, made me uneasy. Too recent a war perhaps but mostly too immoral to celebrate with a game version however "clean" it might portray it as. Making a game of a "war" that's still underway? Bad taste - extremely bad taste.

The potential for evil in Google has been foreseen for a lot longer than a year.
I started "going on about them" as a company at least 3 years ago and haven't used them as a search engine for over 2 years.

Google - if you're not scared - you're not paying attention.

But they specifically don't filter out titles known to be unavailable for free. Ergo they allow such titles to be searched for and found, ergo they intend that result.
Re your last paragraph - agreed. As I said, as to whether these sites have committed a moral crime is another matter.

The intent of the site is that people searching it can find the location of copyrighted materials.

Since the consequences of putting up such "sign posts" is that people will find this material it is therefore arguable that the consequences were foreseen (if disregarded).
This is called inferred intent. The principle comes from UK Criminal Law but is applicable universally because it speak of a basic truth. That to recklessly ignore the natural consequences of your actions, but to carry on with those actions anyway, is tantamount to intending those consequences.
Ergo - the site's purpose is to facilitate the downloading of copyrighted materials.
Ergo - they are guilty.
As to whether they are guilty of a moral crime is another matter.

Currently rather busy emptying the public coffers into the pockets of the banks. Unemployment is rising rather quickly so the tax haul is reducing - thus, a new income stream must be found and the internet is untaxed.
You could argue, and you'd be right if you did, that connection prices in the UK, as say compared to Europe, are extremely high with a seriously sh*tty service for your money and that this constitutes a form of tax. Call it a "ha ha, you live on an Island, where are you going to go for a cheaper connection?" tax *(the same principle can be applied to most things on the particular bit of dirt we call the UK).
It says everything you need to know about Government, the ISP's and capitalism in general. Profit is privatised and loss is socialised.
WIth a bit of luck it will be a voluntary tax and we can all refuse to pay it and f*ck the lot of them.

...and the periodic screams of horror as people realise that they got taken in by "even faster and even more secure" AGAIN, provide a good one.

How many iterations of Windows is it now?
And every time the same crap. Every time they promise that "this time we've got it right" and every time they haven't.

This isn't Stockholm Syndrome this is closer to a Loony Tunes cartoon. Maybe Ballmer should appear at a press conference with a hand held sign with "This is silly!" written on it.

"a growingly sophisticated audience" - is butt-ugly English. Surely, "an increasingly sophisticated audience"?

Does it work on animals? If it does it almost certainly is real, if not then it's probably fake. Can't speak for most of the mentioned remedies but herbal remedies (what are drugs based on?) usually do work on animals.

Must be some sort of chaos field around that headline because I saw "11,000 yr old turkey found in temple" as well. I am not alone!!!! on behalf of the Church of the Subconscious Wishful Reader