I didn't mind paying $5 to download Super Mario Bros to my Wii. I do mind having to pay again to download it on the 3DS, and yet again to download it to a Wii U.

And that's not my only complaint about how their Virtual Consoles have been handled.

I bought a Wii and a 3DS practically on the potential of their respective Virtual Consoles alone.

I've learned my lesson.

You seem to be assuming that "establishing order" is limited to actively killing people and breaking things. Try thinking less "Pentagon" and more "Foggy Bottom."

For the Kiwis, it's not "US or China," it's "US or Fiji" or even "US or France." Most of the South Pacific (i.e. New Zealand's neighborhood) isn't a very fun place to live, and the folks in Wellington would like to keep that from happening to their own (surprisingly expansive) corner of it.

The Chinese really don't care who's in power in any particular non-Sinosphere country (if anybody) so long as they have buyers. In contrast, the US (and Australia and France and...) has actual people and territory at stake in the region and have a vested interest in things like local coups, fishing rights, pollution, high-seas piracy, etc.

In that respect, the US government has been relatively consistent (for better or for worse) and has helped to establish order (for better or for worse) in the region. In that respect, the US is at least a known evil, and isn't the one currently trying to "test" nuclear weapons in American Samoa.

And good luck to Google or Facebook trying to withdraw their euro payments from EU banks.

Sure, US companies can scoff EU law, but they won't make any money by doing so.

Except most (if not all) of the relevant laws do not result in that person no longer being allowed to own a gun, thanks in no small part to the gun lobby. Drunken shooter discharges his weapon in a residential area, the police come, the shooter pays a fine, and then the shooter is free to continue drinking and owning a gun. Short of a repeal of the Second Amendment, calling the police may accomplish something this time but will not prevent the situation from happening again in the future. The only solution left is to not be around if and when the shooter decides to go drunk shooting again, which is what this geotagging facilitates.

Their walking around with a round in the chamber and the safety off makes them dangerous.

Their keeping a loaded gun on the kitchen table around children makes them dangerous.

Their shooting their gun into the air during a holiday celebration makes them dangerous.

Their pointing a gun they "know" is unloaded at anybody makes them dangerous.

Saying "mean things" about them doesn't make them dangerous, unless they feel the need to buy more guns to assuage their hurt feelings.

A bullet doesn't care if it was discharged intentionally or accidentally. If a firearm is being handled in an unsafe manner, someone can be maimed or killed.

And note that open carrying is perfectly legal in many states, so calling the police wouldn't accomplish anything there regardless.

So empowering people to avoid showing up on this list isn't a "meaningful purpose?"

All the more reason to have a publicly-available list of dangerous gun-owners rather than rely on police enforcement of (lax) gun regulations, is it not? It would seem better to rely on avoidance and shunning of such dangerous people and situations than rely on calling police after the fact.

And yet the "you can just call the police" argument somehow becomes unacceptable when used to justify banning firearms outright.

So you believe that only 24,000 out of 15,000,000 used "easy to guess passwords?"

24,000 out of 15 million? If it really is brute force, why so few?

And Senator Obama voted to retroactively approve of such behavior. When placed in a position to put a stop to this or at least voice his opinion against it, he instead actively supported it.

There were no standardized abbreviations before the US Postal Service created them. At best you had something like the Associated Press style manual for datelines. Canada Post collaborated (note that "MB" is the only possible abbreviation for Manitoba that doesn't overlap with a US state).

It's up there with there/their/they're and to/too/two: "WA" has a clear and unambiguous meaning and its incorrect use is jarring, interrupting the smooth flow of reading while we have to consciously decipher the writer's intent.

The newspaper's name is Washington Post, and the typical jargon shorthand is "WaPo." Anagama wanted to use jargon to sound "in the know" and instead made the source sound like a no-name local competitor to the Seattle Times.

Prior art

I love it when people try to show themselves as clever and end up showing the complete opposite.