Here is the part that gets me:

Samsung is expected to

"expected to" != "has done". Call me when they have succeeded.

Sure. Let's joke about posting personal pictures of a non-consenting party.

No, I take issue with this waste of money:

The hackers arrest in October 2011 stemmed from an 11-month investigation into the hacking of over 50 entertainment industry names, many of them young female stars. Hacked pictures of Johansson showed her in a state of undress in a domestic setting.

If they didn't want these pictures out there then they shouldn't have had them taken. They shouldn't have kept them in an electronic form or on any item connected to the internet. It is their own fault.

But the bigger picture is the waste of taxpayer money as the FBI spends 11 months working at the behest of Hollywood. No wonder the people want to disband the federal government with actions like this.

Replying to my own above:

This is an even better response to these idiots:

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2012/07/22/westboro-baptist-church-aurora-shooting-vigil_n_1693375.html

This wall of humans should follow these clowns wherever they go.

No one needs to protect speech that does not offend the majority.

And no one needs to protect them when they spew their hate. Let them take the consequences of their speech. After all, speech does have consequences.

I think the best thing that could happen would be for all of the victims families to sue for slander sequentially one after the other. Cost them an arm and a leg defending that. Being tied up in court should keep them off the streets at night.

I can see the OPs point. If you know the subject being lectured then you should be able to clep out of it. Take the exam and if you can pass it then you have the credit and can move on. Having to sit through a lecture that you could probably give is boring as all hell. Attendance policies ensures that people who don't belong there are disrupting the lesson for those that do all because some asshat set a policy of failure if you aren't there.

And exactly how do they do that without reading what you have on their services? That is the definition of spying. How they use the knowledge they gain is irrelevant and also your suggestion that they aren't selling it elsewhere doesn't mean they won't in the future. That is hardly hyperbole and if it isn't considered when deciding whether to use their services then that isn't helpful.

Which is all the more reason not to use those services... How long do you think they will survive when the user base they are claiming to get money for disappears?

Because it was the CEO of Google who made the dumb assed comments. Reading, it is not just a skill, it is a full time job...

It isn't the iPhone that got her into trouble (bad summary as usual) but the fact that she refused to leave private property when asked several times I'm sure with each time becoming more belligerent on her part. You know, "you can't tell me where to go..." type stuff. That still only makes her guilty of trespass which I'm sure is not an excuse for tasering her unless she also resisted the attempt to arrest her for the said trespass.

Because corporations including Google had a big hand in lobbying to have the laws made so they can avoid paying as much taxes as possible while still demanding the government services those taxes go to pay for. Nothing like tilting the table then blaming the table when things fall off it.

Is the amount we put into corporate welfare good in keeping them off the streets and giving them a helping hand to get past some hard times in their corporate life, or is it a disincentive for them to change life, because they are getting everything they need without having to work for it? Why isn't there more balanced study and working to try to get the correct balanced where every dollar in taxes that go to corporate welfare will go to more good and less leaching.

FTFY...

Don't be angry with Google for following laws that allow them to pay less in taxes than you think they should, be angry at the lawmakers that craft the laws that allow them to do so.

There is plenty of anger for them both and then some. Your argument is specious because those same corporations are buying those same politicians specifically to favor them with laws written by the corporation lobbyists. Of course the tax system favors them since they wrote the tax loopholes this dumb ass CEO is espousing as virtuous.

Turn right now!

Calibrating.....

So not to put causality aside, if event A was already set in motion before event B even happened... it's hard to blame A on B.

And to finish that for you...

But B may contribute to A making it worse....

First,you post an inflammatory statement that is absurd on its face regarding West Viriginia's water. Second, even if you do believe that the water there is substandard, you might want to look at something called 'Coal Mining' as a much more likely source for groundwater contamination. Does that mean that there aren't areas where the water can be screwed up? Of course not, but you can't just declare the latest cause du jour to be the culprit just because it is the latest potential polluter.

Living in West Virginia, I can answer this... In the southern coalfields where they are doing mountaintop removal (surface mining to use the exact phrasing) there are way higher levels of selenium and other cancer causing agents in the local water:

http://blogs.wvgazette.com/coaltattoo/category/selenium/

http://blogs.wvgazette.com/coaltattoo/category/water-pollution/