The 20-to-50-odd daily (non-spam) posts from various parties I get on Google+ tells me it is not dead.

Just because your friend and your mom doesn't use it, and therefore it is useless to you, doesn't mean it is dead.

Moving energy costs energy (transmission costs, lost usually as heat due to electrical resistance).
We need to produce energy locally, with varied sources and capacity to generally meet our needs; the ability to transfer energy around larger regions is definitely also a good thing, but infrastructure like that has a LOT of costs and overhead (maintenance, security, Russia disconnecting lines...) and should not be relied upon.

Diversity is critical in energy production - is part of why certain groups insists on dismissing any green source that is not capable of meeting 100%+ of energy-needs.

Definitely not the one who thinks that farmers dealing with weather means the same farmers are dealing with climate

yeah, the Eastern Ukraine is fighting back against their government using the handheld anti-aircraft weaponry they just happened to have lying around, hidden from their government.

Not sure the previous post was about boycotting, as much as hacktivism ....

Just looked up the prices back home (Denmark):
  0.274 - 0.35 EUR/kWh

Not sure Germans have anything to complain about :)

tinfoiling ....

Perhaps the NSA got tired of everyone using Security Patches, and told Microsoft to stop being so diligent in informing people about the existence of these ? :)

Something broke when they started unifying their platforms?

I know things changed when they did this with YouTube and G+, and there were apparently a ton of video-posts complaining about things changing, but I never personally saw anything that actually broke.

Disclaimer: I'm not a YouTube "content creator", nor a daily user of YouTube. I do use G+, and I do appreciate not having separate accounts for G+, GMail, YouTube, AdWords, Google Analytics etc (though, in reality, some of those are still separate accounts due to how Google hasn't completed the unification-work)

They didn't conclude it CANNOT - they concluded it DID NOT.

It may still be that it can, but they are disinclined to throw further money at it, at this point, given the absence of increased turnout.

Fixed that for you...

Precisely. There's several copies of a prominent law professor's lecture on the subject and spells out PRECISELY why you don't do things like that.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?...

Now, the burning question would be, "how did they get access to his encrypted system files?"- without a warrant, they're just as screwed in light of the recent Supreme Court rulings. You need a warrant for those things- and you need to state you're looking for a specific on them before they can legitimately reach the conclusion the Mass Supreme Court arrived at. Without that, it's just like the Fourth Amendment violation I experienced about 5 years ago. No *VALID* warrant? No case. No seizure allowed.

If so, it's not hard to have them get a warrant that specifies this, not a court order to relinquish the password. They're distinctly differing notions- and the Judges there overstepped their authority. If it's legit, they could've issued a warrant for specific information and as a part thereof, compelled the unlock of the secured device for that specific information. Since they didn't...doesn't meet the sniff test in light of current precedent.

Heh... Actually, that line of bullshit might be at risk with the recent unanimous decision that law enforcement needed a warrant for mucking about on a defendent's phone. Basically, this is the same thing and it's expected to be overturned by the SCOTUS if it gets before them.

And, in recent times (as in within THIS month...) the Supreme Court of the US handed down a UNANIMOUS decision that they had to get a warrant to go digging about on a defendant's phone- this is the same thing.

You have to have a legitimate reason and a warrant to do this. It's expected that this will go to the Supreme Court and be overturned just like the mobile phone story went down.