Article 1:
If someone's life depends on it, don't connect it to the internet.
Article 2:
Make sure you've applied Article 1.

Uh oh... I post example of work done on my milling machine. The horrible whine sound of the spindle definitely could be interpreted as RIAA copyrighted material, especially given the talent of pop singers lately.

Private property already barely exists on earth... Fat chance of that in space. As a previous poster said, it all boils down to the larger guns and that makes it a government-only game in space and on earth. If your government is nice, it can let you pretend that the property is yours (at a recurring cost of course) so long as it doesn't need it for its own ends.

I was going to post the exact same thing. Great to see it as a first post.

Ron Paul, Tom Woods, Andrew Napolitano are examples of 'real' conservatives as I define them. I'll grant you that, in positions of power and influence at least, they aren't very numerous but they do exist.

I understand that my definition of conservatism is a lot like the definition of 'hacker'. The meaning sort of evolved into something else but I like to take the word back, so to speak.

FYI, one of those are in line with conservative ideas. Real conservatives are about these things: respect of the constitution, limited government powers, increased individual liberties.

The things you are referring to are more in line with what we call neo-conservatives, which, ironically is a movement started by liberals who were not satisfied with the Democrats with regards to foreing intervention and US military supremacy. Conservatives = Jefferson. Neo-Cons are more in line with Hamilton's view of the US though they're a much much younger movement.

Basically, a real conservative would pretty much never want the government to have more powers, be that military, social or financial. Enforcing some sort of ideal on people (being one that you agree with or not) is not a conservative value. A real conservative considers that the government has no business in your wallet, bedroom, mind or church. Most republicans fail that test, despite all their hollow posturing on taxes.

I think copyrights/patents actually work against the concept of free market capitalism. Voluntary exchange means the government or anyone else cannot prevent you from producing anything and selling it at whichever price you desire (including $0), including a copy of whatever else. If you actually optained the original material and those required to produce the copy from voluntary exchange (you paid whatever price was asked for them), you can do what you damn please with them, including destroying them or giving them away.

This isn't about changing the CPU, this is about having a choice of CPUs with the motherboard you like (or a choice of motherboards with the CPU you like). Doesn't matter if you never upgrade it. Will manufacturers really offer all combos of cpu/mobo we get now? I'm taking a bet that if you want the biggest CPU, you'll be buying a heck of a lot of extra crap with the sole motherboard that offers it.

I can confirm that Minecraft runs on Icedtea (it's what I usually run it on), though there's an issue with hardcoded library paths on my system which is easily fixed.

The Internet.

I think his point is that most (all?) models that have been presented and taken into consideration as input for things like regulations, taxes, and other major social and economic changes, have predicted in no uncertain terms things that should have happened by now but haven't.

I'm fine with the fact that it's not an exact science but if you're going to turn the world on its head because of some doomsday predictions, you better not be several orders of magnitudes wrong with your figures. I don't think the problem is lack of computing power, it's the futility of trying to model chaotic systems with this many variables over any kind of relevant timeframe.

I could be wrong but these models are essentially giant divergent equations: past a certain timeframe, they could predict nonsense like 2km of rise in sea levels. You tweak the variables (because for the most part, you can't have actual measurement for all of them) until the figures seem realistic but I doubt there's any way to make it work reliably beyond a total fluke.

Let me guess... She reads Slashdot and you're covering your ass?

And I only started genuinely loving mankind after reading it, go figure...

I read it expecting to feel like seemingly everybody but you in this thread does... I found myself wishing I had read it much earlier by the end. It seriously feels like there's an all out war against this book and I seriously don't see how its harshest critics, seemingly fairly intelligent/educated people, apparently fail to get it. Maybe they were forced to read it and didn't pay attention, or they didn't read it at all and just parrot what they heard of it. That last bit would be a tad ironic when you consider a book that so harshly denounces group-think.

Maybe you need a five-digit UID to fully appreciate it.

Fair enough... But from a moral standpoint, I think I prefer the person who gives his own money to the person who gives someone else's money.