what has become of Conrad Black?

I'm happy to report that the recalcitrant crook has been sent back to prison . I confess I particularly enjoyed the reports of the fragrant Barbara fainting in the court room. That Connie submitted his letters of reference written by fellow inmates was also a delightfully humbling detail.

...with their heads

So now with a bit of infrastructure investment, MacDonalds can hook their kitchens up to their bathrooms and voila : a perpetual motion machine.

It's the same thing that happened to that other guy who made the discovery of 'Watson's Double Helix of DNA'

I dunno, the pair of names "Watson and Crick" are often associated with the double helix; the real scandal is the lack of credit given to Rosalind Franklin.

Lawyers don't rain down from the sky, they seep up through the cracks.

Just be thankful the author didn't leverage DNSSEC

Using bears to patrol your illicit operation is no joke

According to this CPI inflation calculator, the equivalent cost in 2010 dollars is $2562, which makes the return something more like 8000%

It is your analogy that is ludicrous and you continue to cling to it as though it has some relevance. It has none. It is up to Google to follow the law. The law governs the collection, use, retention and disclosure of personal information - just because the data can be readily captured doesn't then make it "fair game" for whatever a third party wants to do with it. I readily concede that "fair game" is precisely the situation in the US - personal infomation is an asset that can be bought and sold like any other - but you should recognise that the rest of the civilised world does not share this lackadaisical approach. It always puzzled me that in the land of the free, there is barely any protection for individuals' privacy.

Nice little discussion you're having, but all your analogies miss the point completely. I don't know how you got on this "plain view" furrow, but it has no relevance. The simple fact is that personal information - recorded information that uniquely identifies an individual - has special status. It's special. The law says so. The legislation governs, among other things, how such data is collected and how it is used. Whether or not it is in "plain view" is neither here nor there. Google completely ignored the law regarding collection of data.

I understand how all this legislated information privacy is terra incognita for you, but these are not my opinions, they are those of the Canadian Privacy commissioner. You should check out her website.

You have your view of the law and the Canadian Privacy Commissioner has hers - I know which one I believe is the more sound. The mere fact that you write of "suing" in your inappropriate analogy shows how little you understand of how the legislation works.

Neither Canada nor the EU are responsible for the ridiculous situation where the US alone among industrialised nations lacks proper privacy legislation. Being ignorant of these matters is no excuse, for either you or google.

Actually, where I live, the collection of personal information is regulated by law, and Google is/was in flagrant violation of that law. It doesn't matter that the data was available in the clear, over the air : personal data is protected by law, and hand-waving excuses about technical errors or artifacts of collection process are irrelevant. I realise that the US has no proper privacy laws, but many other places (and all other industrialised nations) do have such legislation. Google simply ignored those laws, which is why they were called to task by the Canadian Privacy Commissioner and EU data regulators.

I wonder whether Microsoft's 'kin phones will be any better than their 'kin operating systems or 'kin applications. Un 'kin likely.