Agreed. If you're going to demand that a cookbook, even one for beginners, define "dry wine" before instructing you to use it, then you should demand the book define what "boil" and "carrot" mean. Jeez. "Dry wine" should be common knowledge among any adult.

What does this mean (if anything) for region-locked movies - can I legally break the region lock (or buy a player that does it) so I can watch a movie I bought overseas?

Not comparable issues at all. This opinion is only about re-selling items.

In your implied analogy, the book is the DVD, the re-seller is a re-seller. This case essentially says you can buy a Region X DVD in country X and re-sell it in the States provided that the Region X DVD was legally made. So this means if you buy a legal Chinese DVD in China, you can sell it in the US. It does not mean you can buy a pirated DVD in China and sell it in the US. It does not say anything about region unlocking.

You should always read SCOTUS cases narrowly. Anything that the decision of the Court does not rest on is called "dicta" and has no controlling authority, but merely persuasive authority. This means if the decision of the Court does not rely on a statement in the opinion, then that statement can persuade other courts, but it doesn't instruct them to do anything.

The breakdown of votes is very different to what I'm used to seeing on Supreme Court cases – you've got Breyer, Roberts, Thomas, Alito, Sotomayor, and Kagan in the majority, and Scalia, Kennedy, and Ginsburg in dissent.

Actually, if you look at actual voting records, it's not unusual at all. 2012 2011. In 2012, of note is that the lowest affinity with the majority was Sotomayor at 82.5% (she was around 79% for 2011). This suggests all justices, regardless of political affiliation, agree more often than they disagree. If the breakdown was along conservative vs. liberal lines like the media would have you believe (hot Supreme Court catfights! more on TMZ!), you'd see a lot more clustering somewhere closer to 50% than 90%.

Also note that the links above are just for the opinions. Those are the ones that are supposed to be most controversial of all the SCOTUS hears!

I wouldn't say Roberts "crossed the line" with PPACA when his decision really came down to:

1. The commerce clause is overbroad and doesn't uphold PPACA. Fortunately,
2. Obama lied. It's a tax.

Both CVS and Walgreens have their business model in "spend 30 minutes getting anything at the grocery store; spend 5 minutes getting it here [but pay more]."

I can run into HEB (the local grocery store chain in the better parts of Texas (suck it, Dallas)) and grab some Gatorade in about twenty minutes after parking way in the back of the huge parking lot, running across the huge store to the sports drink aisle, coming back to the register, waiting behind a bunch of people buying at minimum 15 items, and then cross the parking lot again to get to my car (while dodging tons of foot traffic and waiting in the driving lanes for minutes while some lazy bastard waits for some person who hasn't even started his car yet to back out so he can get the parking space about 20 feet closer to the entrance to the store.

Or I can go to Walgreens, pay $1 more for the drink, park right by the entrance, wait behind at most one or two people buying a mere couple items each, and walk out the door and there's my car. No one else is driving in the parking lot, so I'm in and out in five minutes.

Sometimes it's worth the extra $1 spent.

That is how Walgreens stays in business compared to the big grocery store. CVS is the same way down here.

K-Mart isn't in business anywhere around here, though. Maybe for the very reason you mentioned. The last K-Mart I saw closed about ten years ago in my hometown. I have not seen a K-Mart since then.

Regarding sports fields, that stuff is funded through ticket sales and boosters. You have a problem with that, complain to the parents of nerds who don't donate money to the school for new computers for the science club.

keeping them out of the public indoctrination academies by sending their children to private schools or homeschooling them

Funny considering basically 100% of all private schooling and home schooling is done by Christians wishing to indoctrinate children into the faith.

Because some of us don't mind being advertised to provided the advertisement is entertaining and useful. The nine Best Picture nominees are all excellent for different reasons, and the show itself was entertaining. I imagine Slashdot wants to hate Seth Macfarlane for Family Guy and other reasons, but he was a pretty funny host.

That might be a relevant point if he weren't directly responding to the assertion that plastic bags "aren't actually a threat to our ecosystem."

Who solves social problems? Hint: It's not the techies. We techies generally have no power to solve social problems. The evidence is all around us. It is how the world works. That power goes to the socialisers with their ass-kissing, smooth talk, pointless speeches, and the riches and charisma to reach positions of influence.

I really resent your implication that I am not a socializer with ass-kissing smooth talk and pointless speeches.

You are correct about not upgrading. I am general counsel for a tech company. We will not be upgrading Office on our employee-issued laptops, and I'll be using this as fodder to push that we move from Office altogether.

Further: If you're a rich American and left (and renounced US citizenship) to avoid paying taxes, you'd leave for Switzerland or somewhere like that, not corrupt and poor Belize. Any money he makes now is almost assuredly capital gains, which is taxed at one tenth or one twentieth of the US rate in Switzerland (depending on long-term vs short-term, tax bracket, etc.).

US citizens living abroad still must pay US income tax. So I don't think it's that.

John Huntsman waves "hello" from his little tip of the GOP iceberg, having been prematurely and foolishly jettisoned by the rest of the pack.

Hmm,
-Office
-Visual Studio
-Bing (Bing Travel is actually really useful)
-DOS
-SharePoint