Now, do you have statistics to back up your implication, that in real life police are more often wrong than right?

No, but the consequences of real life police being wrong are pretty fucking serious. And they're wrong a lot more often than people care to admit.

http://www.deathpenaltyinfo.or...

Actually, Genesis would be a good start.

That's for sure. THAT sumbitch told Abraham to kill his kid and then at the last second went, "PSYCH!"

Some of of can tell the difference between fiction and reality.

And one would hope that law enforcement officers are near the top of the list of people who can tell the difference between fantasy and reality.

So, if popular culture approves of and encourages it, can't blame the cops too much for doing it despite it being merely illegal...

Popular culture also approves and encourages Justin Bieber, but don't nobody want to see cops imitating that mess.

in 2013, the selected charity siphoned (heh) off about $10M from a $35M cash flow for "operations", of which 70% went for the salaries of 67 people. That's about $100K per person...not bad for a...er..."nonprofit."

Where did you get the idea that "nonprofit" means, "we don't pay our employees"? Or, "we pay our employees shit"?

It's as dumb as thinking "for-profit" means, "we pay all of our employees well".

Harvard University is a non-profit, and last I checked, they're paying their professors pretty well. Rush Presbyterian hospital is a non-profit, but the head of surgery probably makes more than minimum wage.

Because an arbitrary number can be objective

Can you believe someone wrote that and thought it was a smart comeback?

Abby someone.

God bless you, anonymous coward. You made me laugh.

They've been trying(in part by developing, in part by buying, they ate Softlayer and Cloudant fairly recently); but they've been finding it a bit tricky.

IBM wants to sell you some sort of unique, value-added, hardware and/or software feature that makes going with them worth it over going with the commodity product(presumably, this is why they sold of PCs and low-end servers). Some customers do want this; but it's a very, very, different offering from the more commodified cloud providers(Amazon, Google, and Microsoft all differ a bit in where they are on the spectrum from 'what you do with them is your problem; but our VMs are cheaper than you can believe' to 'we can provide automagic email accounts and SQL server instances abstracted from the host OS'; but all of them are very much on the 'we aren't going to hold your hand; but look at how cheap this stuff is' side, an area where IBM has no obvious advantages.)

The one other element in the cycle you identify is arguably 'management/administration'.

This can work both for and against both local and remote/cloud options: Back when anything that touched the mainframe needed 6 signatures and a blessing; but you could classify an IBM-compatible as an 'office supply' and just have it on your desk and doing stuff, part of the virtue was in cutting through red tape, not in enjoying DOS on a slow machine with virtually no RAM. These days, especially for individuals or small outfits, without technical expertise available, 'the cloud' wins not so much because local computers are expensive(since they aren't, they've never been cheaper, either absolutely or per unit power); but because 'the cloud' is something you can use just by plugging in a URL and following directions. IT geeks are correct to point out that 'the cloud' is neither impregnable nor as well-backed-up as it likes to pretend to be; but for a non-techie user who will lose all their data as soon as their HDD dies or they lose their phone, it's still a step up.

For larger outfits, who have technical expertise available(and whose needs are complex enough that they will need IT and/or developers whether they go 'cloud', local, or some combination of the two), it is much more a straight battle on cost, security, and reliability; but ease of use and ease(or nonexistence) of management is huge for the consumer side.

Who the hell was the donor?

It might not have anything to do with MGS, but it sure as hell better be a publicity stunt, because anyone involved in an actual human head transplant surgery will need to lose their medical licenses and go to prison for a very long time.

Or be hailed as the greatest surgeon who ever lived.

There is no middle ground with this one.

Amazon is a bit tepid when they try anything too novel(their phone went from flagship pricing to free-after-contract how fast?); but they have three basic virtues that make them a terrifying force to be reckoned with:

1. Cultural disinhibition: They started selling books; but never seemed to have fossilized into the 'We are a bookstore. I can see maybe expanding into selling some bookmarks, or paperweights; but hand tools? How absurd!' model. 'Books' was merely a special case of more or less rectangular objects that are legal to send through the mail. They've since expanded into an ever larger collection of more or less rectangular objects that are legal to send through the mail, without much concern about what they are.

2. Adequately competent implementation: Remember 'Microsoft PlaysForSure', the killer ecosystem of hardware, software, and a competitive marketplace of music sellers(almost always cheaper than iTunes)? No? That's not very surprising, they don't really deserve to be remembered. How about 'Ultraviolet', the 'cloud-based digital rights library' that is somehow associated with blu-ray, some media players and streamers, and various retailers; but is so dysfunctional that I can't actually summarize exactly what the hell it is? No? I can't imagine why.

Amazon, though, while they don't lead the pack, knows how to get the job done well enough (their Kindle e-readers and 'FireOS' tablets all have at least adequate industrial design and build quality, and 'FireOS' is arguably nicer than some Google-blessed-but-vendor-skinned versions of Android, despite being a hostile fork; and their media-streamer hardware and software are both more or less painless). You don't necessarily go to them for the premium gear; but they are definitely good enough that they don't actively sabotage the appeal of the low prices.

3. Logistics. I don't know how they do it(if I did, I'd probably be a whole hell of a lot wealthier); but when they decide to sell something, they know how to make it impressively cheap compared to the competition, whether it be books or VM time.

On the very small plus side, perhaps this will make using Ireland as the tax dodge for your tech company slightly less convenient. Otherwise, isn't this the same country that decided that outlawing blasphemy would be a cool idea in 2009? There may be a screw or two loose.

The Stargrove Entertainment records provided Canadian consumers with low-priced alternatives while still ensures that the authors of the songs received the approriate royalties.

There is absolutely no reason an artist should receive royalties from works that are more than 50 years old.

Is there any work that is over 50 years old that still brings in big money?

Come on, you really can't think of any music from the 1950's and '60s that's still bringing in money? Who was that truckdriver from Tennessee with the swivel hips and pouty lips? I think his catalog still makes a bit of money and just about all of his biggest hits were more than 50 years ago. When the Etta James hit "At Last" is used in a Mercedes commercial, or in a popular movie, cash registers are ringing for somebody, but certainly not for anyone who had anything to do with making the music.

The first handful of Beatle albums were more than 50 years ago. Hell, Miles Davis' Kind of Blue still sells pretty steady and that was what, 1959?

The most egregious part of this entire saga is how works that were already in the public domain - movies, music, books - are being removed from public domain. This is why you're seeing so many great old movies removed from Netflix. It's shameful and it's hurting both future generations and the current state of the art.