True, but irrelevant in cases like this. The US government does have jurisdiction over Microsoft's US operations, and Microsoft's US operations have the ability to retrieve the information from Microsoft's servers in Ireland. The mere fact that the data is in Ireland is no reason that the US company can't be ordered to retrieve the data they control and have access to.

Similarly, if you were being investigated for a crime you could be required by the courts to turn over the records of you Swiss bank account. The court couldn't issue orders to the Swiss bank (though they could make a request, which the bank might choose to honor, or they could ask the Swiss authorities to issue an order to the bank, which the bank would have to honor if the Swiss government chose to cooperate), but it absolutely could issue orders to you, a US person in the US, and your failure to comply would result in you being held in contempt of court, and jailed or otherwise punished until you do comply.

You're a bit late on that one. Pretty much everything is propaganda, and what's more, virtually all of it is fear-based; the remainder focuses on allaying fears, often reasonable ones. My favorite example is automotive advertising. As much as half of it is designed not directly to sell cars, but to make customers feel better about their purchases to try to induce repeat business "down the road", pun intended.

If it bleeds, it leads. Hope is not interesting to people who have more than they need.

It was that. Sorry.

Thats exactly what I had. A pair of factory overclocked and watercooled (EVGA) 8800 GTXs in SLI.

Like I said, it worked fine on my rig.

Yeah they've been really playing that up angle when competing against Google Apps for Business in particular.

That appears to be the argument, yes. The court isn't claiming authority to send police officers to Ireland and physically seize the data, or authority to force Irish police to conduct a search. Instead they're demanding that Microsoft (a U.S.-based company) produce the requested evidence, if indeed its U.S. staff have access to it (which they probably do).

I think it's problematic from a practical perspective, but I could see how someone could reach that conclusion. Usually jurisdiction of U.S. persons does extend to their overseas assets, e.g. in an investigation of fraud a U.S. court can demand that you turn over your Swiss bank account records, even though these accounts are (of course) in Switzerland.

The main problem IMO is that it puts companies operating in multiple jurisdictions in a bit of a bind. For example, Microsoft Ireland may have responsibility under EU law to not release data except in certain cases, while Microsoft U.S. is required to release it, meaning the company will violate the law somewhere no matter what they do. I'm not sure whether it's possible to avoid that by really firewalling the access, e.g. make Microsoft Ireland an operationally separate subsidiary whose servers cannot be directly accessed by Microsoft USA staff. But that would certainly complicate operations in other ways.

We got there because of decades of people systematically giving their money to the most sensational press, which enabled them to become more powerful. It's not something that just happened.

I think that there probably oughta be a law that you can't knowingly tell an outright lie and call it news, but even that seems to be a minority view, which is just another symptom of the same damned need for entertainment.

There's nothing wrong with that, so long as they don't propose to use force to retrieve the data.

I still have paperbacks with prices printed on the covers of a dollar or less... but I'm getting pretty old. Books back then were more the size of Nobots than today's books. Of course, back then a gallon of gasoline was under fifty cents and a six pack of beer was about a dollar.

These days, judging by what I've seen, new paperbacks range from $6 to $10, so $7 doesn't seem too out of line.

The library here has a book sale every year, and I picked up a huge writer's guide for two bucks. Its copyright date was 1978 and it was completely obsolete. Along with talking about typewriters and carbon paper and estimating the number of words, it stated that publishers would rather publish two 40,000 word books than one 80,000 word book. When Twain was asked how many words should be in a book he said "as many as it takes to tell the story, and no more."

How times have changed!

Balderdash. There is not a press. What is this, communism, comrade? We have many presses. The problem is that the public follows the sensational ones instead of the informative. We The People have the government, and thus the press, which we deserve.

But it in fact is; it's not all obvious. Being forced to work is slavery even if you get paid, because you're not choosing the terms of your employment. It's like being raped and then having your rapist throw you a few currency units.

> You have fined European banks billions and let your own banks off the hook for pennies.

Correction: our government has fined European banks and handed many domestic banks billions. o.O

For every extra letter in your acronym, it becomes, if not easier to decipher, at least easier to look up.

For the obligatory car analogy. Are you or are you anonymous in a vehicle. They most certainly have the name of the registered owner and access to that is restricted to the police and applicable government authorities. However the name and via search extension address and telephone number of the driver and passengers is not readily accessible.

How many jock strap douche bags offended by a post would visit the home of the commenter and attempt to beat the crap out of any one there. How many drunks would over react with access to name, address and contact details. How many child would came under threat with the name and address published. How many employers would over react at employees posting especially if employees were telling the truth about employers products.

The relationship of employers and employees isn't that always in reality the reason will right wing control freaks seek to end anonymity online, the ability of employers to control the postings of employees and their families online, not only censoring them but forcing them to make positive comments about the employers products.

It's also a pretty tough negotiating strategy. If the governor A doesn't match the bid of governor B, Musk actually fires a lot of governor A's constituents, and the whole thing is egg on his face. Since governor A doesn't want that, he might decide to offer Musk some terms that are actually bad for the state, but will cause less personal blowback for the governor than the mass firing would have. But then there's governor B has the same incentives, and also doesn't want headlines about mass firings in his own state. He might actually decide to accept an even worse deal for the state, so as to avoid the bad headlines and instead look like a hero. So this sets up a race to the bottom which could easily save Musk more money than he spent on the cancelled construction project.