I haven't seen any indication that the character image infringement issues were what "really" prompted the action. If that were so, this would be a non-story now (since they've removed all copyrighted pictures from their website and fliers) The copyright infringement may be where the pub was most definitively in the wrong, but it is far from the core of the issue.

If this was just a dispute over promotional material, the pub wouldn't need any licensing fees at all -- it would just have to stop using the screencaps. The studio demanded the pub stop all references to all "trademarked" characters (which would require them to change drink names and the pub name), despite the fact that it's clearly had rights for less than the pub's been operation (20 years). That's not a debate over copyright imagery, and indeed the article calls it a "trademark dispute." That's just absurd. I only regret that Fry and McKellen are actually paying these trademark trolls.

If you don't like popups, don't use the "trial" version. Use the free version, which only sends a popup for update notifications, and can be disabled.

"Helping the guys."

Yup, that's right. Saw a whole gaggle of those Guy Fawkes-masked thugs selling underaged girls to slavers.

Oh. Wait. No, that was just the fucking mob.

Tone down the melodrama, please. Even if you think what they're doing now is "nothing" they aren't exactly aiding and abetting.

With what, magic pixie hacking dust?

If it was as easy as pretending to be a hot girl online, screw Anonymous--the CIA would have already done it and solved this little "problem." Unless you're one of the nuts that thinks they're "in on it."

Unpaid internship may not be as "good" as a real job on a cv or resume, but it's better than the hole in your resume that unemployment represents. You hear that from employment consultants, from managers, from professors and from parents.

And so the mentality becomes: if you're lucky enough to be able to afford to work for free, consider yourself lucky and do it. You're "lucky" because the economy is so bad and everyone's unemployed, but look! You're productive! Everything is solved.

And everyone who can't, tough on them; they can wash trash cans all day for $7 an hour. Serves them right for being poor.

Just bring us into the 21st century, for the love of FSM! Modern healthcare is not a doctor proscribing a treatment anymore... it's a network of specialists making recommendations and sharing data with each other. However, this "sharing" more often than not goes at pre-Internet speeds. Delays of days or even weeks are common as multiple opinions are sought, insurance companies are contacted, enormous paper portfolio are passed around, one for each facility... it's a real mess. It's not "doctoring" that keeps them busy; it's bureaucracy. It's reading test results off of carbon paper forms and waiting to see if their patient can even afford the "gold standard" treatment they want to give them (even if they're insured!)

Watson can't deal with any of that, really. And that ignores the danger bureaucratic errors can pose to an AI, such as test results that are inexplicably attributed to the wrong patient... what happens when Watson makes a crap diagnosis because of bad data? Can he eliminate bad data or even "show his work?"

This isn't going to be a popular opinion, but here goes: just because you work for a company that (ab)uses SEO, doesn't mean you have no work ethic and copy-paste everything. Content that is copied word for word does worse on rankings than content that isn't, so eHow actually does try to screen it out via an automatic plagiarism checker. They also have quality standards, haphazardly enforced as they can be.

That doesn't mean that everyone knows what they're talking about, and that bad content doesn't get through. But assuming that if you're a member of a company that employs thousands of people, you must be making a living off copy-pasting is quite ignorant.

See also: this article; it's admittedly a bit out of date.

To places like Demand Media, buying new domain names is cheap. And Demand is only one of many content farms out there; if you just block domains you'll be playing Whack-a-Mole forever. Only making it so that these places can't turn a profit will have any long-term effect at all.

Demand Media is a content farm; they pay people to write articles based on their interpretations of the Google algorithm. 95% "White-hat SEO", and no different from what places like HuffPost does. If the algorithm changes, they can make adjustments, do better keywords and content policing, and still make a buck.

Link farms, on the other hand, camp domain names and make a website entirely of Google ads, keywords and algorithms, usually by exploiting flaws in the rankings system that would normally discriminate against this kind of thing, aka "Black-hat CEO". They don't tend to have IPOs though, because anyone with half a brain knows they won't last once the loophole is fixed.

That's what corporation regulation and personal income taxes are for. Of course, in the spirit of "compromise" we've thrown those under the bridge. So really, we're living in the worst of all possible worlds. Those rich old white guys get to keep their profits and squeeze the rest of us, with us all the while believing that the Democrats are our "only defense against these horrible monsters."

And now we're the ones invading other countries, and they're the ones with the local crackdowns...

Just goes to show, science doesn't work if the world is out to get you. =P

I reluctantly put on my pedant's mask and wizard hat.

Glenn Beck's ratings are still above the competition, but they are ALSO in freefall: down 30% since the beginning of the year (his competitors are suffering, but not as much). Moreover, they're down with the advertiser's gold mine demographic of 25-50-year-olds, 48% 2010 to 2011 year-over-year. Don't get me wrong; he's still very popular, and people declaring right-wing sensationalism "dead" as a result of this are jumping to conclusions. But in the cable news world, this is a massive shakeup. (not sourced; do a fucking search)

Don't make the mistake he makes all the time: intentionally answering the wrong questions with the right answer to enter the land of crazies.

TFA says they react to explosives to "escape" like they would from a cat... so what about people who own a lot of cats?