Well, when they started talking to Microsoft it scared Google enough to buy them for $1.65B

You say the same thing about Youtube, and they have over 700 staff, plus whatever assistance they get from Google.

If anything, Socrates was executed for being sympathetic to the the Spartans, who had conquered Athens five years earlier.

Athenians couldn't vote until 18, were in school until age 20, they were not allowed to participate in politics until age 30. All in all not much different than our system today.

Well, to be honest, if you work with SAP everyday you can' t help but realize it sucks.

While this holds true for laws, international diplomacy is almost always made in secret. If you take secrecy away from diplomacy, everyone wants a voice, if you give everyone a voice, you end up with the UN. You can decide for yourself if that is more or less effective.

Unfortunately for us, the God in question turns out to be Azathoth.

Fourth paragraph: "And just look at how much more waste New York creates, per capita, than any other leading megacity:", followed by a graph that is in absolute numbers, not per capita. This article is not starting out so well.

The police are interested in anonymous tips insofar as they will keep your identity secret from others. If you call in warning about a bomb, they are damn sure going to want to find exactly what you know and why you know it. After they get that info, they very well might let you stay anonymous to the public.

I would say if you make a threat, which he did, and local law enforcement is forced to determine whether it is credible or not, you have already stepped outside of the bounds of free speech. Free speech most assuredly does not include threats.

Are you, or the people you asked, from Virginia Tech or the Blacksburg area? Maybe that's why they don't know. At Virginia Tech, they would almost certainly know about it, seeing as how there is a yearly memorial service that was all of three weeks ago. Context matters. Let's say your mother was named Mrs. Ememisya If someone sent me a message with "Mrs. Ememisya is going to die tonight" it wouldn't mean jack shit to me, I don't know who they're talking about. To you it would rightfully be perceived as a threat.

Clustering is a very real thing, especially when it comes to the very best workers. We are starting to see that in the DC area: For quite some time now, there have been a ton of tech workers for government and government contractors, but lately non-government related firms are starting to appear on the landscape, attracted to the amount of talent employed in the area. If you're building a tech startup, your number one priority isn't land, (you don't need it) it isn't taxes, (you aren't making money yet) it is top personnel, and it becomes much easier to go to them than have them come to you.

I think you are underestimating people's capacity to forget. Some of the same people who should remember "how things were" forget the salient details as they get older. A great example of this is the number of people who have forgotten how awful water and air quality was in America prior to intense government regulation, despite growing up with thick smog and polluted rivers.

So we take something with the same success rate, and give it a veneer of science and technology?

What world are you living in where the bush presidency started in 2000? He took office in 2001.