I was not saying that google was a paragon of virtue, but duplicating the information and/or giving the only copies over to the government will certainly not enhance privacy.

Yes, the government is certainly a safe place to store sensitive data, what is google thinking?

You cannot shout "Fire" at a theatre because it is dangerous and can cause injury to other people. yelling obscenities at a funeral is not similar in any meaningful way. I would not shed any tears if the entire WBC clan got hit by a wayward airplane, but until then, I support their right to be assholes.

Anyone who claims that ethnic cleansing is taking place in Palestine has no idea of what true ethnic cleansing is all about, or what it looks like.

70 seconds seems like a substantial delay between an action and a provoked response

Frankly, I believe that computers make fewer mistakes than humans, so I would in fact prefer a plane with a single (or no) human pilots.

Before I get hit with a straw man, I am in no way saying that computers are infallible. Of course they are programmed by humans, and mistakes will be made. I am just saying that the error rate for computers is probably less than that for humans. We kinda suck at not making mistakes.

While I may want the government to respect my choices when it comes to games I play or movies that I watch (or the type of sexual activity that I have), I am not willing to kill another human to achieve that goal.

I'm writing to my local politician. I want them to legislate the right to a flying car at a reasonable price.

Perhaps the great fall is a way to cull the weak giraffes. Those that do not survive the 5 foot drop would never have been successful in the wild. Ditto for the slow-evolving shark siblings. If your brother eats you in the womb and you do not adequately defend yourself, then you simply did not deserve to live.

Seriously though, evolution does not provide traits that are advantageous, it simply removes those that are disadvantageous, relative to other traits. That is a subtle but important difference. Eating your brothers and sisters in-utero sounds pretty gross, but unless it hurts the reproductive rate of those who carry that gene, there is no reason to weed it out.

In Canada (Ontario) the situation is actually even more ridiculous than you would realize. People putting energy back into the grid get paid almost ten times the going rate for the energy that they take out of the grid. This is by law. Some people even have the nerve to claim that they are not using any electricity when they contribute about 10% of their overall electricity consumption, since their billing comes out to zero (excluding distribution charges).

Now, here's the real kicker. Despite the grossly artificially distorted economy, solar panels still have an overall negative expected value over their lifetime, and some people are calling for even greater rebates for the solar panels

I get that, I really do. I had the opportunity to participate in a job where my duty was to make life miserable for some people who did not like it. I had a choice, I changed jobs.

Telemarketers have a choice, they can choose to not take the job. Also, every second that I waste of their time is one less second that they spend harassing other people. Also, I (minutely) drive up the costs for the company, reducing their profitability. Yes, the telemarketer might lose their job, but I will not lose a seconds sleep over it.

Of course not, but then again my current job involves helping people, not screwing around with them. If your job involves harassment, then you should be able to handle getting harassed.

I specifically fool around with telemarketers because I am hoping to waste their time. They were willing to waste mine, so turnaround is fair play.

As a sidenote, most people here are amateurs, I have easily kept telemarketers on the phone for 30-60 minutes, with starcraft blasting in the background the entire time as I mime interest in their product and/or service. I do try to get beyond the front line telemarketer though, so that I wasting the time of somebody a little higher up on the scumbag foodchain.

The parent video is shocking and painful to watch. On one hand, I like to think that the video shown takes place in England and that such a wanton abuse of power could never happen on this side of the pond, but in my heart I know that this wishful thinking is simply not true. Every time we hand some powers over to the police, they will find a way to abuse it. It is not that the police are especially terrible people, it is just the nature of our species.