Well they kinda do. Forces are mediated by gauge bosons, which can be considered as particles or coherent excitations of the background gauge field. They travel at the speed of light and the 'force' only acts upon the target object once the bosons reach it. So it's action at a distance in the same way that snooker is.

Maybe more than you think :)

Another good reason to bring back extinct creatures who died off due to humans is to attempt to reverse the drastic drop in species diversity. A healthy ecosystem needs a diverse range of species with different characteristics to make it more resilient to change. Considering that we seem to be very good at introducing sudden and massive changes to ecosystems across the globe, it seems like it might be in our best interests to do something before they collapse.

This could be Rotterdam, or anywhere; Liverpool or Rome.... but nowhere in the States :)

Maybe, but there are so many patents out there, and many are so broadly written, that it is almost impossible to know whether you actually have a valid patent or not. I read recently that there are more patents being released in a year in the mobile market alone (IIRC) that it would take more patent lawyers than exist in the entire US just to give all of them more than a cursory glance. Anyone fighting to uphold their patent is stepping into a very dangerous minefield - if you are a small company anyway. Larger companies will just reach a licensing settlement, but small companies will just be trodden on and destroyed.

I've been using Private Internet Access for a few months and have been very impressed - they are cheap at $7, have plenty of locations around Europe and North America, and they don't keep logs. The TorrentFreak article I linked also lists several other decent sounding VPN providers which might be worth a look.

I'm a Brit living in the US for the past few years. I have an AT&T pay-as-you-go phone and it is actually very cheap. 10c per minute calls and 25c texts, although for $5 you can pick up a 200 message package. As I probably make less than 30m calls per month and rarely even approach the 200 texts limit from the package, my typical monthly expenditure is less than $10. The handset is very basic of course but I don't really care - I've long since past the days when I felt the desire to own the latest trendy gadgets.

...two steps back. Seems like so many people can't wait for the next fucking Dark Age.

True, but as soon as Russia or China show any hint of attempting to do this kind of thing themselves (which seems far more likely) the U.S will have to do it first for the sake of their egos; in this case it is good to already have plans in place.

That's only because console manufacturers typically sell their consoles at a loss with the intention of making their money back from games and accessories. The Playstation 2 and 3, as well as the XBox and XBox 360, and now the Wii-U all were/will be sold below cost price.

This argument is absurd because there are simply so many patents - no small company could possibly be able to search through them to make sure they aren't infringing. I don't know if you have seen this article in which they quote an estimate, made by the American Intellectual Property Law Association, of the total cost if each software company employed enough patent lawyers to check through even a year's worth of software patents, spending only 10 minutes on each: $1.5 trillion, nearly 10% of the US GDP. It would also require 50 times more patent lawyers than the total number currently practising in the US. Although there are presumably less patents on 3D printer technology, the point is still clear: the system is broken because it is generally impractical to be fully aware of every possible patent that you might accidentally violate while developing your product.

In fact the real absurdity of the system is that is allows people to claim ownership over an idea, which they can then use to extort honest people developing their own technology entirely independently. I agree that some sort of protection over copying someone's design can make sense, but there should be no protection against people independently developing something that just so happens to resemble your design.

My point was only that Apple have a monopoly in the tablet market and in my opinion (for what that matters) are abusing their dominance to unfairly deny their customers the ability to choose a competing mapping application. This appears to me to be anticompetitive, much more so even than Microsoft, who, while bundling their browser with Windows, never went as far as actively preventing the installation of a competing browser.

According to this website the Ipad claims 76.4% of the 2012 US tablet market, which is typically large enough to be considered a monopoly in the US (justice.gov). I find myself surprised that Apple do not have a monopoly in the smartphone market considering how many people I see using Iphones in New York.

Well you can feel sorry for me too, as I also cannot see how Microsoft getting fined for pre-loading their web browser in their products while Apple is getting away with not only pre-loading their products with their mapping software but actively preventing you from being able to choose an alternative. If this behaviour is not anti-competitive I don't know what is. Are you arguing that because they produce the hardware they somehow have the right to maintain an unprecedented stranglehold over what the customers can do with said devices?

of why having someone else control what software you can and cannot use on your computer is a bad idea.