"A Google spokeswoman said via email the company does not provide encryption keys to any government and provides user data only in accordance with the law."

What does this mean, exactly? That they would provide encryption keys in accordance with the law? That they could?

A robust system would mean the hosting company wouldn't be more able to decypher encrypted damage than anyone else. Are they offering that?

... It's not going to be that interesting to make it into an interesting game. Which means a game people will actually play.

Sure, having those millions of eyes clicking away at real pictures would be tremendously helpful but it's not that easy to get them to actually look at said pictures.

Popular games are designed from scratch to be attractive, addictive, progressively rewarding, etc. And existent ones won't risk their popularity by introducing something that doesn't fit in that design. What kind of minigame takes you from staring at the Night Elf dancing on top of a mailbox in Goldshire into staring at blurry pictures of an intersection in Iowa?

Allowed? They have nuclear weapons and they are crazy. I obviously agree about the vile oppression taking place but there's only so much that can be done.

You know what's amusing? Through this lawsuit (and the good ol' Streisand effect) being reported all over the internet under the title "Guy Hingston... ... bankrupt" he's more or less ensuring the propagation of these terms' association while at the same time, since he likely has no viable legal case here, getting nothing back from Google.

I'd bet neither of those results were what he was hoping for.

I'm not saying Israel's defenses don't work (I've no reason to think that) but given the timing do you think we'd be told

a) If the defenses didn't work well at all
or
b) About all the instances the defenses failed to work?

Given the circumstances what we hear *especially* from official sources on either side of this conflict should be taken with quite a grain of salt.

Another question is how far their revenue will drop from now on. Sure, the chance of being sued is likely to be reduced, but so is the probability of their actual user base shrinking - including paying customers.

Looking the other way on what was rather commonly known as a piracy haven might have been a great deal more profitable than the company realizes (or, perhaps, simply more than they fear). Once the content's no longer there neither will users.

The extreme right-wing party in question - let's call it what it is, neofascist - has been a much mocked tiny minority for the last thirty years or so in Greece. They ran magazines praising the values of Hitler's Germany, the old dodecatheon (I kid you not) of Zeus and Hera and kept to their own niche of society talking about ancient aliens that gifted the race with superweapons waiting for the day to come to rise again. But no more. When the economy took a dramatic downturn they turned their preaching toward populism instead. Gone are the mentions of the Gods from any speeches or articles now that they figured they can catch a lot more followers (and votes) by supporting the most fanatical aspects of the Orthodox Church instead. So this is what it's all about. An opportunity to appeal to the masses as defending Christianity when several of their higher ups weren't even Christians up to a few years ago, and a party openly supporting racism making a bid for political power any way they can get it. They could care less about the venerable monk.

Well, Slashdot is a good authority in one-handed computer use.