Especially since the alternative is for the government to delegate the monopoly to another company. It's a monopoly either way.

Has anyone ever done a comparison of color vision before and after laser eye surgery?

Have none of these places heard of replacing a system piece-by-piece? Or agile development? You don't take a decades old system and replace it in one step. You replace it piece-by-piece. That's not trivial to do, but these stories about "5-year project cancelled with absolutely nothing to show for it" are crazy.

Have you ever listened to the audio chats of FPS co-op games when men are playing with men? I've heard straight guys who threatened to hunt down their male opponents so they could rape them and murder them just because they got their ass handed to them in a game. The usual response is to laugh, then shoot faster.

The rules are completely different when warrants are involved.

I thought the judged dinged them only for using the data, not retaining it. I am under the impression retaining it is standard practice. Is that not the case?

Who holds and filters the data in a civil case?

This "long-established practice" has always been a violation of the 4th amendment. The recent case where the US government used hard drive data from a *different* case is proof that they should not do this. They should never get the entire hard drive contents. A neutral 3rd-party should copy the drive, perform an appropriate search, then erase the copy. There's no reason for the government to indefinitely hold copies of data they should never have had in the first place.

Just imagine if they had a warrant to get your address book, but they kept a copy of every piece of paper in your entire home, just in case it became relevant later. There is no way that would be allowed. But the digital equivalent is somehow acceptable.

I don't think that word means what you think it does.

Thank you for quoting the text. I've never seen this before.

If it said that then there might be more agreement. But that isn't what the words you quoted say. It has no such caveat. The only caveat at all is the word "arbitrary" which is a legislative weasel word. If it said "libelous" or "untrue" or something to that effect then it would not be debatable. It simply looks like it is poorly written, even if it is intended to mean what you say it is.

Actually, it turns out that the DOJ did do this. After coming back to the Slashdot discussion I see some other posters providing links to the DOJ's actions. Hunt around the discussion and you will find it. Clearly it wasn't enough though.

The executive branch decides what projects to work on, but but when the engineers calculate the height of levies, they are using current science and weather data.

In France, what would the lawyer have cost her? More or less than the fine? It seems quite sad that modern justice systems require lawyers for common sense rulings.

It seems like the FTC or the DOJ could address this by going after the car dealership cartels.

Obama gave the only reply he could. It essentially says "I don't control that, I can't help you. Sorry."

When your local state passes a bad law, don't cry to the federal government. Call your local representatives and fix the law yourself. It's easier to get local laws changed, and that is the appropriate level to do it.

Actually, there are: Google: "Coldest on record", first hit is "NOAA: Winter 2013-2014 Among Coldest on Record"