Actually quite the opposite. As far as I know, this planet here is the only one in the existing universe that produced chlorophyll. Quite seriously, if aliens ever came to Earth, I wouldn't expect them to mutilate our cattle but rather steal our trees.

You have a rather odd concept of the looks and the space travels of Icelanders...

It's like the difference between having moral values and having a religion.

So if someone went and, say, cut a deep scar right across her face...

No child left behind.

In 1984, people also weren't always under observation by their telescreen. Actually, they almost never were. What made them "behave" was simply that they didn'T know when they would be.

So just not having a camera "trained on you" every second of your life doesn't make the total surveillance any less invasive. When you cannot tell whether you have privacy, you have none.

The NSA should pay for the information just like everyone else who wants it! A national security letter must not be the crowbar to getting for free what others have to shell out quite a bit of money for. Security and all that, ok, but there's money to be made and a business model to protect!

Huh? Oh, I mean, we protect our customer's privacy! That's the reason!

No, it means that whoever wrote the book should now be entitled to a few bazillion bucks, payable by Sony. Or so says Sony et al. when it's the other way 'round.

Why is this different now that Sony is accused instead of being the accuser?

Of all the books in the world, of THOSE two books?

Besides, for something like this some "standard" dokuments that satisfy some, well, standards would be more likely.

Oh sure, it's the great hacker conspiracy.

Let's go with Occam's Razor, shall we?

The problem ist that the assholes justifying their entitlement with this sentence are usually closer to the ox than they are to being a god.

The beer may have been better over there 30 years ago, but there's no way that's true now. In most places in the US you can't swing a dead cat without hitting half a dozen craft brewers making outstanding beer. You literally can't sample what's available in liquor stores fast enough and a lot of it is really good.

I don't know if this is a trend that has been embraced by Ireland or not, but I would imagine that in many Irish brands suffer from what many "traditional" European beer brands are no different than most American beer brands -- owned by conglomerates, brewed on industrial scales. Maybe it makes you feel more exclusive to drink Harp over Buweiser, but I'm pretty sure its moslty psychological.

Samsung 850 1 TB drives are about $0.38/GB.

They're not as fast as these drives but it looks to me like flash vendors are kind of inventing a new category of benchmarking stroke artistry around storage.

I can't even begin to imagine what usage advantage is to be gained from some of these over the more traditional SATA SSDs outside of very marginal activities, except for benchmark chasers.

The relevant law is here. In most cases they have 70 days to bring you to trial after the information is filed/indictment is handed down. When it takes longer than that it's usually because the defendant is the one requesting the delay.

Oh the humanity!