The Mars Express spacecraft got a better (IMHO) shot a few years back: http://mars.jpl.nasa.gov/express/newsroom/pressreleases/20030717a_image01.html

Porting may be legal, but of course reselling your port without authorization, is not legal. Otherwise you could just resell standard Windows application, claiming that they are your port to Linux/WINE.

Saab Automobile and the rest of Saab (the parts that make military aircraft, radar systems, sattellite equipment, etc) split into two separate companies with a common trademark a long time ago. GM was only involved with Saab Automobile. That means no bargains on Gripens this time. On the other hand, if you decide to buy one, the support will continue.

Where do you see this trend? From what I've seen, most of what we call religion has been around for thousands of years. Sure, there are some short lived cults as well, but the followers of long term religions outnumber them by far.

400W focused in one small point - that's about the power you'd get from focusing direct sunlight using a magnifying glass with a diameter of 0.7m (2 ft). Not even scorch the paint? I'd like to see that.

Well, then Google is certainly safe. But, no, I'm making false legal assumptions. You're forgetting that TPB is not just a listing agent of torrent files, TPB is also a bittorrent tracker. Thereby, it has a very active and central role in the transmissions, even though the actual data does not pass through TPB. If you didn't like my previous example, let's say that I start a classifieds site (and let's call it "stolengoods.com" for the fun of it). If it turns out after a while that the majority of deals made through my site is for stolen goods, then can you really say that I have no responsibility to take actions against this? The argument that TBP is a search engine for any kind of data is ridiculous. Just look at the their own top 100 list and check what traffic they are enabling. Not to mention their choice of name, but that's of course not enough to convict them...

Google is not next. What everybody seems to be missing here is that the torrents with copyrighted material were not a small minority easily lost in a large amount of torrents. Just look at the top 100 list at TPB - seriouly, how many non-copyrighted works have you ever seen on that list? Copyrighted material is what TPB lives off. The owners of TPB should once in a while check out what is being transmitted on their site (perhaps by looking at the top 100 list). If it turns out that the majority of transfers are illegal (which they are in Sweden), then the site owners actually have a responsibility to do something about it. It's like I'm renting stalls in a marketplace: if one or two sellers have drugs behind the counter, nobody can blame me. However, if the majority of the sellers openly sell drugs, then it is my responsibility as owner to do something about it. And in the case of google, the large majority of material is completely legal. That's why they don't have to worry about this issue.