Oh my fucking God! Shoot him! He made a fucking TYPO!

Asshat.

Nonsense. Microsoft is a multi-national conglomerate with seperate corporations/business entities scattered around the world. Those seperate entites are not US businesses, though they are owned by a US business, they are subject to the laws of the jurisdictions they operate in, not US law.

The US could take a page from the Russians on the whole issue of legal jurisdiction. The Russians have mandated that all corporate and personal data hosted by "the cloud" must be on servers on Russian soil so there is no question of legal jurisdiction when they're trying to investigate and prosecute a case involving a Russian entity.

The US and every other nation should be doing the same thing: mandating that the data owned by their citizens and corporations be hosted in country so that it can't be "hidden" by legal loopholes of the jurisdiction where the data resides.

But, hey, the US cloud operators don't want to invest in that many offshore nodes/clusters, and they're the ones paying off Congress and the Senate, so I doubt we'll see such sane legislation passed in my lifetime. Far easier to try to shove your legal system down international throats, eh?

Pffft. I fart towards the south...

The US needs to wake up to the fact that they are not "world law." Their law ends at the boundaries of the US.

It doesn't matter if the email account in question is owned by an American. It doesn't matter if the servers are indirectly owned by an American company.

They are in a foreign jurisdiction and the US government needs to go through the judicial and legal processes of that jurisdiction if they want access to the data.

Quite frankly, fuck the "war on terror", the "war on drugs", and every other tired old excuse the US government and it's subservient courts use to try to justify shoving the US legal system down the world's throat.

The information is still available if you choose to browse at -1, so no, it's not censorship. Now if they were deleting -1 rated posts, then there would be an issue.

...marijuana doesn't replace the pain relief of opiates.

No, for many people it's more effective than opiates. I know literally dozens of medical cannabis users who have given up opiate pain killers completely and replaced them with medical cannabis. But it's important to experiment with different strains and find what works for you; all cannabis is not created equal.

Personally, I use Kush and Afghanistan strains and crosses for migraines. Over the years I've tried literally hundreds of strains, and looked into their breeding history, and came to the conclusion that it was Kush and Afghanistan strains that are the most effective for my migraines.

Where an opiate pain killer will dull the pain of a migraine, the proper strain will completely eliminate all migraine symptoms for me within 5-10 minutes of consuming a half gram dose. Triptans, on the other hand, only work half the time and take half an hour to have any effect, if any. Opiates only dull pain and actually make the nausea of a migraine worse because they upset my stomach. Add in the addictive nature of opiates, and I think you can understand why I'd much rather use medical cannabis than prescription opiates for what ails me.

There's a difference between having a thick skin and intentionally wallowing in a sewer. :P

Hey, if you want to torture yourself with a thin-skinned attitude by going on the 'net, go ahead.

But don't expect the 'net to change just because you're offended. It's not going to happen.

Trolls like you amuse me. Didn't your mama call you upstairs for breakfast a few minutes ago?

Yeah, my original trackball lasted me a decade, too.

The new one I bought last year made it a whopping 7 months.

If you haven't got a thick skin, get off the internet. People will disagree with you, contradict you, post things that make you uncomfortable or that you find downright revolting.

The world is not "your oyster." People who disagree with you and that you find disagreeable have every bit as much right to be there as you. And when you consider the fact that some people find your Bible quotes and homilies offensive (as do I), it soon becomes clear that it's impossible to please everyone.

If you only want to hang out with like-minded people, form a nice little coffee-clique of people and socialize instead of trying to find "happiness" on the 'net.

Muscle memory is ingrained after 30 years of using it...

It has nothing to do with "closed source." Show me what info is available when you do an "apt get upgrade". :P

BTW, that 20 hour job is running on a Core i7 mobile/laptop chip, not my P4. I shudder to think how long the P4 would take...

Working on my pet project. Having Eclipse start in under 10 minutes. Being able to run *all* my code manufacturing jobs all at once, instead of having to run three at a time on my laptop (the longest job takes 20 hours to run.)

Believe me, I could use the CPU power. I'm not an "average" user, just a broke one. :P

*drool*

'nuff said.

I'm still clunking along on a P4 3.8 GHz. I'd love a new box that fast!