I was fined 2 years ago for taking photographs of a city street near where I live, because they were filming "Warm Bodies" there (in Montreal). The street was blocked off, but I was standing on the public side, I took a few pics and was told it was illegal, and was fined $171. I was acquitted in court, however the prosecutor insisted what I did was illegal and said she only dropped the case because there wasn't enough evidence....

(more details here: http://www.reddit.com/r/montreal/comments/1cyxfm/update_i_was_acquitted_photography_in_public/ )

Take these litigation tools away and businesses will go back to needing real innovation rather than punting all competitors with some lame "Button displayed in center of screen" or "Electronics in a plastic enclosure" patent.

Are you implying that Apple has not been innovating?

Of all the cellphone makers out there, you're seriously implying that Apple is the one *not* innovating?

That's funny.

Microsoft awful practices have earned it a reputation that has led to its current decline.

No it didn't... Microsoft's OS decline is because it had several high profile failures. Vista took an eterninty to release and was in no way revolutionary...

Microsoft is still a very profitable company, and still a heavy-weight player. They aren't growing, mostly because they aren't entering new markets, or releasing new products that get people excited... this of course has nothing to do with their PR (short of the perception that MS products are buggy).

We believed that Apple was on our side.

You're a fool then. Google, Microsoft, Apple, Oracle... all publicly traded companies interested in one thing: How can we make the most money possible.

They all take different approaches, but in the end, they want money. Google is playing the "good guy" routine right now, but that will fade.

What about rules preventing him from buying those guns in the first place.

You're not sure if making Assault Rifle's illegal would have stopped him from shooting almost 100 people in a very short period of time?

This guy did more damage with his gun than a grenade would have...

Did anyone bother looking at this thing in detail?

JRIC? BJA? Wtf are these supposed government agencies?

I'd like to see a link on an actual government website that is distributing this document.....

This doesn't stop them from passing laws that would make their own actions illegal...

I have no idea, and anyone "on the grid" who claims to know is fooling themselves.

I live in Montreal, and I can guaranty you that my electricity comes from hydro power..

Very few people understand the technical ramifications of 'deletion' on large infrastructure. It's very likely that facebook can't actually 'delete' much the same way InnoDB can't recover disk space after a delete (which means the data still exists on the hard drive).

>No. Tax increases are only a temporary solution at best.. At some point somebody has to put their foot down and stop spending so much money.

A temporary solution? The US has a massive pile of debt that it needs to pay down, this is what you call a temporary (relatively) problem; once the debt is paid down, you can lower taxes again.

Spending cuts alone wont do it.

>The problem is that no amount of "oversight" will ever be enough because you are essentially asking the government to police itself.

The public is supposed to be policing the government, but instead its too busy watching tv...

Oracle borrowed the best ideas from these groups and built something that will deliver good performance to the sweet spot of the enterprise market.

Whew, thankfully there's no such thing as software patents, which means we can have actual innovation and improvements... oh.. wait, software patents exist in this timeline.. damnit!

I must trust Apple now that they are not gonna mine this data and send it backdoor to advertisers and other interests.

Google, is doing exactly that with every search you do, FYI. Google also tracks every website you visit, for how long, what you looked at, what you clicked on, what you typed, how long it took you to type.

Google knows everything about you, and they actively sell that to marketers for their ad engine.

Apple makes money selling you hardware products, less than 1% of apple's revenue comes from ads. I trust Apple a lot more on this front simply because they have a lot less interest in selling my info to 3rd parties.

This will have a very interesting effect on global economies, since much of our economies are based on growth caused by populations increasing...

According to wikipedia, this bomb causes a fireball 5km wide with a lethal heat-blast of 29km wide...

The number of people killed depends entirely on where you drop it...