While there were extreme options available to Google, such as law suits and massive lobbying, Google took a rather mild approach

Well, they could have taken an even milder approach... kept Google News in Spain, but only shown news from sites published outside of Spain. Sure, no more local news, much less news about Spain, and most of what was available would be slanted in ways the government and/or people might not like, but c'est la vie...

Just because someone lives in any particular area doesn't mean that stories about other areas aren't of interest. The bigger the news event, the broader the distribution.

Not to mention that the insights on foreign news sources on local events can be quite... interesting. Everyone has their own spin, and usually the real story is in the intersection of as many spins as possible.

What tends to aggravate me more about Google News is how reporting on major international events gets diluted with "$event Victim Has Ties To $city" types of headlines. I assume Google News has some sort of "uniqueness" score to filter out all the wire service duplication which causes these one-off local interest types of stories to bubble up the rankings, but I never find them remotely relevant.

Yeah, that's kind of my sense. These lines are a *human* artifact, carved into the earth and left there for a thousand years. That's pretty much the definition of man despoiling the earth and it's not something I can see the hardcore environmental activist types having any qualms about trashing. They might not go out of their way to destroy it, but I can't imagine them feeling much remorse over it.

I think you may be confusing buggy whips with buddy whips.

In any case, as a software developer I can't see the appeal for a buggy anything. You'd think they'd have worked out the problems and released Whip 2.0 rather than creating a whole industry around a poor product. No wonder they went out of business...

But our body is our own. Period. We cannot cross this line. If someone conscientiously objects to a treatment, it is their natural right to decline it.

Fair enough.

So, how would you like to phrase the new law... ? "No medical procedures on any individual that has not reached the age of majority or is not otherwise able to give legal consent"?

That's the reductio ad absurdum way of saying that the line has already been crossed. Society inflicts medical treatments on people (mostly children) whether they like it or not, and it's done in the name of "their best interests". Now, whether it's the parents/guardians or the government making the decisions and whether those decisions are "best" for any given person is a whole other issue, but to suggest that it's instead an issue of control over an individuals own body is, in the context of childhood vaccines, pure nonsense.

Google is leaving russia due to data security and intrusive legislation that harms the internet, but sees no problem maintaining an office in the United States

Well, there's a substantial practical difference between closing a branch office of 50 employees and shutting down your corporate HQ and main data center.

But, more importantly, the consequences of calling out the US government for bad behaviour is tame compared to how Putin handles corporate dissent.

If you buy the machine specifically for running Linux, there are plenty of options that will run without problems. However if you pick a random machine at the store, odds are there will be some part of the hardware that has less than optimal drivers.

Over the last decade or so I've had more compatibility problems with the specifically-built-to-run-Linux desktop systems I've assembled than the lowest-bidder off-the-shelf corporate laptops that I've been handed at work.

I'm not sure that says more about my luck than my particularly poor skill at building Linux-compatible desktop systems...

Also, buses are awful unless you have quite high population density -- lots of areas don't have enough prospective trip endpoints to justify mass transit.

I have a suspicion that if you remove the driver labour costs, running small (10-12 seats?) passenger buses in areas of lower population densities becomes quite feasible, particularly if you can combine it with a certain amount of smart route/demand planning.

They voted to "separate search engines from other commercial services".

They just voted to break up Google, Microsoft, maybe Yahoo, Baidu, and as a consequence have ensured that no large corporation would bother getting into the search engine market.

At least, that would be the case if it actually had any teeth. I can't imagine it sticking...

You don't want 2/3 of the people who have the best understanding of the facility to be taken out in the first few minutes of an accident.

Understand who I'm talking about here; the bean counters who play around with the numbers and externalize risks in order to maximize profits at the expense of the safety of thousands of people, the economy and the environment, and who usually escape massive disasters caused by their poor planning with barely a slap on the wrist.

If they fuck it up badly enough that the plant even has the possibility of that kind of catastrophic failure, then yes, I do want them taken out, and I don't anticipate it making the slightest difference to managing the accident response.

5. Parts should be manufactured in factories using standard methods and specifications. Parts should be interchangeable from site to site. Minimize customizations as much as possible.

6. Anyone with responsibility for the safety, maintenance and/or operating budgets of a nuclear plant must reside, with their spouse and dependants, on or near the grounds of said nuclear plant for at least 9 months of the year.

This is nothing but yet another one of his charades and PR stunts. He is not fighting for you or your right to keep a "backup copy". Trying to get everyone on the net riled up is just yet another PR stunt. Kim always has been and always will be caring for only one person: himself. And he will not hesitate to lie and step on former friends and partners alike. Never just trusting anything he says should be the default.

... and yet, somehow, he still comes across as less sleazy than the people going after him.

but to any thinking person it's quite clear that the total dominance of a few global superplayers is not beneficial to the market or the people.

I don't entirely disagree, but before they have a go at kicking around Google, there's a whole host of larger corporations with a much longer and broader history of abuse that need a kicking first. That they don't seem to be interested in taking them on suggests that the "benefit of the market or the people" isn't the primary goal behind this little initiative.

That said, if NoScript starts working on Chrome, I'd likely switch eventually -- and no, NoScripts isn't a real replacement.

ScriptSafe seems to work okay. Then again, I was never much of a NoScript power user, so I can't say it'd work for you.