1) Sadly, too many people don't understand that these what the government was doing was legal, so you can't sue over them. Change the law if you must, but suing is stupid. 2) 'Widely' hailed as a hero?!? Why not also put that he's also 'widely' denounced as a traitor. 3) Keeping secrets from civilians is inherently non-democratic, but we accept it so that other countries do not have access to secrets we want to keep. It isn't for Mr. Snowden to decide if it is, as he says, an 'existential threat to democracy'. 4) The man knew what he was doing was illegal and fled the country before revealing himself. A true 'patriot' would've stayed and faced the courts. I'll give Bradley Manning that much credit.

There was no way the NRC was going to authorize a startup at reduced power. New generators were going to cost millions and more time (meaning more money lost). The government seems to have a smoking gun that SCE management knew the generators were not 'like-for-like' therefore they may have misled the NRC, giving the regulators even more reason to not authorize a restart. Yes, negotiating with a supplier is one part of it. But I'm thinking that last part is what made them give up the fight so quick. Crystal River tried for a lot longer to get insurance funds and sue the contractor that helped break their shield building.

I agree. The OP stated that the company owned the code to the app, which must have been part of the work contract. So the copyright should be listed as belonging to them. And he can always ask that the code be modified to add his name back in as the author of the code.

No it is not. Nixon essentially authorized robbery, something that is completely against the law. Then he refused to turn over recordings from his office that he was told to by the Court system. Then he threatened to fire the Special Prosecuter investigating Watergate unless he stopped the investigation. So, you have conspiracy to commit a crime, failure to obey a court order, and retribution. What does Obama have? Nothing. There isn't evidence the White House is involved (no matter how you feel about the matter) and it is still debatable if what ONE IRS office did is even illegal.

30 years in the grand scheme of innovation is nothing. I think we've gotten used to the pace of advancement born out of the industrial revolution and should not believe it will continue. While it could be nice for robots to take over more of the basic, repetitive tasks we humans still do, I still don't see them making the great leap they need to make up for those human traits we've not been able to program. If, however, I am wrong, I do believe that humanity will turn its attention back to the goal of improving humanity.

You forget the opposite. If Google takes its business away from Germany, Germany loses any taxes it gets from Google. I think I need to go read the article again. It seemed that the court was trying to force something on Google as a whole, which they cannot do because Google is a US company. If it is only directed at software/hardware only available in Germany, then they can. It's like what happened with Microsoft. EU judgement didn't affect what they did with software elsewhere as it applied to localized versions..

1) German court cannot 'force' Google to do anything of the sort. Such matters are covered by international treaty, and the proper US response to such a request would be to state that this is a case of protected speech. 2) Boo-hoo. It's auto-complete.

helping get IPv6 implemented rather than crying about it not being implemented?

Such an act as described by Mr. Schmidt is against the law. Obtaining a drone doesn't mean one can perform illegal surveilances on you. And why in the hell would my neighbor spend tens of thousands of dollars on a drone just to do so? To embarass me? Yes, drone use needs to be regulated, but let's not jump to using very poor examples.

My father and I were huge fans of B5 and loved its concept of finite serialization. Since that time, I've found that many new TV shows attempt to at least follow the same philosophy (BSG, for example) and have proven that the quality of writing stays higher for a much longer period of time when there is a concrete end to reach. How do you feel about your role in the acceptance by networks and fans of such shows?

Having earned my degree in CompSci, I can say I was severely disappointed in my C++ texts. While the Deitel text is very comprehensive, it is so much so that it loses any effect. What is really needed is a multi-function text. One part deals solely with teaching the language constructs along with basic examples. The second part needs to focus on "real-world" style code. Current texts focus so much on the constructs, do a moderate job at best at tackling them, then leave any real examples as exercises buried 30 exercises in behind a bunch of boring "write a loop that adds 5 to each member of an array" type questions.

Freedom to assemble and protest only extends so far. Once you begin to disrupt the normal course of business or government, you are breaking the law. If you wish to compare it to a regular protest, then it would be like the protesters physically preventing an employee from entering the business. You can stand outside and shout all you want, but you still have to allow the business to operate.

I'm sure any attempt by Sony to prevent second-hand sales will be highly contested in court on the first sale principle. So if they persue this an injunction will be pushed through while it sits in the court.

Automation will not replace human beings. Even if automation can begin doing some of our jobs, there will need to be people to make sure the automation works. They've been using automation in the auto industry for decades, it hasn't cause the extinction of the auto worker. Driverless cars replacing truck drivers? Haha, more like truck drivers sitting behind the wheel of a truck driving on its own making sure things go right. Things break, and without people there to fix them they'll never last.

Yeah, some people seem to think freedom of speech is a very loose thing when it isn't. But it can be a case where the court does end up accidentally restricting free speech. If the decision is worded in such a way that it opens the door for companies to massively sue anyone who has given them a poor review, then people will be afraid to write anything critical on the internet, and that intrudes on free speech. The judge in this case will have that in the back of his head, as judges do in all libel cases.