The first thing I will do then is buy a number of spammy links to be sent to my competitor's otherwise entirely white-hat site that currently ranks in 1st, thus making sure his excellent site never troubles me again. Meanwhile, he's too honest to do the same to my site, so I benefit. This is called negative SEO and is not new. It's the reason Google haven't done what you suggest.

Sure you can: It's like a wheel.

It's the same as in every country: comfort is everything. As long as Americans have their Big Macs and cheap Ford F 150s, no one is going to complain in any way that makes a difference. Take those away and you'd have a mass uprising. But not before. Do you think The Powers That Be know that?

...doesn't an invention have to be non-obvious to be patentable? Placing ads on a map on the web seems pretty obvious to me...

Heh. No one ever says Italy.

Yes, that "Revenge of the Sith" was pretty abysmal.

I just follow someone who seem to know where they're going. I rarely end up where I want to, but I always get somewhere I need to be.

I'm all for it. Because if Wing Commander gets remade, and then sells well, possibly LucasArts will be inspired to do the same with the X-Wing/TIE Fighter series.

And of those criminals, a significant percentage will be precisely the kind of criminals that take an interest in kids. Pedophiles naturally gravitate toward jobs and extracurricular activities where they know that they will have a lot to do with kids. How many of them are now given access to all the info they need to seek out the most vulnerable kids in their neighborhood?