The right wing should be opposed on free-market principles. The left wing should be opposed on environmental grounds. So which politicians should be in favour of this regulation again?

The apolitical ones, untainted by all that divisive right/left idealism. You know, the ones everyone votes for: Democrats and Republicans.

If you think that's not Interstate Commerce, I have some marijuana to sell you.

I don't get why I would want my ISP to have a say in whether or not (or how!) I disable my personal computer. But I also don't get why I'd want my government to have a role in that discussion either.

....find another client.

It's "self-sustaining" until you run out of whales. They say that by the year 3000, there won't be any of them left up there. This isn't some virtually limitless resource like sardines, which are capable of supplying all the oil we'll ever need.

If I were to justify my misspelling as an attempt to invent a new word that includes the meanings of both "vicious" and "viscous" would you call my bluff? Oh shit, I mean: what if I asked you that, but didn't say anything about it being a bluff?

I think "mining" is a pretty damn euphemistic way to talk about viscious slaughter of all the moon's whales.

Maybe I lack patience, but really, why are we still writing text based code?

Why did you submit your question as written sentences? Surely you could have expressed whatever you're asking, by carving a few notches on a stick, taking a picture and posting to imgur.

I lack the patience to try to figure out what you're trying to say, as text. Ask again, in stick, where we can communicate more efficiently.

Speech issues aside...

I think it's not a terribly uncommon opinion (I might even be in the majority on this, but maybe not) to feel that speed limits are generally bullshit. Especially on the wide-open highway, which is the most common place to see speedtrap-warning light-flashing, anyway. Bullshit laws should be violated, and it is in everyone's interest for everyone else to ignore them, disrespect them, resist them, mock them, undermine them, and shit upon those who enact them and enforce them. "Fuck you pigs" and so on. I want people to be able to drive 90 MPH in arbitrarily-marked 75 MPH zones, and I want them to get away with breaking the law, just as I hope to get away with breaking the law, too.

Usually. There's a catch, and this is where it gets really fun.

I've been caught speeding several times over the last few decades, and yet despite what I wrote above, about it being good for people to get away with it, I also think that every time I got caught, I deserved it and it was also probably in society's interest that I didn't get away with it. WTF?! Contradiction?

No. I deserved it, not because I was speeding, but because I was inattentive enough to get caught. I really was driving unsafely, but speed wasn't the main safety problem.

Speedtraps are an "are you paying attention?" TEST! And while I want people to generally get away with speeding and for speeding laws to not be successfully enforced, and for the cops who try to enforce them to have horrible days of frustration and failure with nothing to show for it, I don't want people to get away with failing "are you paying attention?" pop quizzes. I'd like everyone to pass those pop quizzes, but of course, we all know not everyone will. And if people fail their pop quizzes too often, I want 'em to flunk out of driving on public roads. So maybe not-so-fast on the "fuck you pigs" that I said above. I usually mean it, but this time, there's a lot less conviction behind the angry words. Sorry, pigs! I suppose I owe one of you a beer for all the "fuck you"s.

Flashers: you're helping daydreamers, space cases, vision-impaired, mirror-makeup queens, drunks, dumbfucks, etc cheat on their pop quizzes. Do you sincerely think that is a good idea? I am totally with you in disrespecting the law and thinking the government is, on average (with some admitted exceptions) is generally evil and that usually good for everyone, that it be opposed, restricted, resisted, mocked, shat-upon, disregarded, etc. But "are you paying attention?" tests really are a good idea and in the interests of public safety, no?

You're not worried about people speeding, but I don't think I have ever sat next to any other driver for very long, who didn't eventually rant about one of those people out there, who is driving like a dumbfuck. The cellphone jabberer is almost cliche, where just driving behind them watching how their car moves, you can tell what they're doing without even needing to see them holding the phone. Testing is how you're going to weed those fuckers out.

All we need, is just for it to be a fair test. It can be sudden and demand some quick reactions, but if it's further away than what a car should reasonably be expected to ever have to deal with, then whoa there. The cop shouldn't have concealment or look like something other than a cop (an "innocent" van, for example). But if you want to implement the test as an "innocent" van that suddenly looks like a cop and then starts measuring your speed so people have one second after that to get under the limit, ok. That sounds like a good test.

While it may be counterintuitive, my experience has been that using engine braking is generally more forgiving than the traditional brakes. For me, it's a lot easier to manage the friction coefficient with the engine than the brakes because braking force tends to be much more binary in nature. When slippery conditions exist, you're either on the brake pedal or you're not (although ABS helps here).

In fact, one reason that I really like a manual transmission is that manipulating the clutch and engine RPMs in combination with the transmission goes a long way toward getting just the right balance to slow down without losing traction. Newer computerized automatic trannies and engines do the same thing. So far, though, I haven't found a combination in a mass produced vehicle that does a very good job of it. Maybe we'll see some additional improvement in this space in the future.

I won't argue that most people in the Twin Cities with 4WD and AWD vehicles don't have a clue how to drive them. I've passed enough of them sitting forlornly in the ditch on Hwy 10 over the years! :-D

That said, though, we're not talking about the loose nuts behind the wheel but the inherent capabilities of the vehicles themselves. When I was living northeast of Elk River up near the Isanti-Anoka county line and commuting to the south side of St. Paul, I traded in the 2WD pickup for the 4WD and was glad that I did. The 4WD was MUCH better at handling deep snow, which in turn made using back roads as an alternative to jammed up freeways at least plausible. Engine braking with 4WD also made avoiding the idiots who were overdriving a lot easier. ;-)

We lived far enough out back then that about 1/3 of the drive home was well off the freeway, too. More than once I had to tackle the last 10 miles or so on unplowed county roads with up to a foot of snow on the road. I hated that stretch in my 2WD pickup. In those conditions the truck had a tendency to break traction even with 150 lbs of sand behind the rear wheels. BTW, I tried my wife's Saturn a couple of times but it wasn't much better as it was too low to the ground for the deep stuff.

Now that I'm living in Woodbury and commuting to Richfield, I no longer regard 4WD as a necessity. I never see more than the 4-6 inches of the white stuff that you mentioned. I sold off the 4WD pickup a couple of years ago and I'm driving a front wheel drive sedan. I still miss the extra traction of that old 4WD pickup, though.

My next vehicle is probably going to be a smaller SUV with a towing package. Something that I can get up to the lakes with, out in the woods hunting, and reasonable gas mileage. Now, if Tesla would simply build a 4WD vehicle with a decent range... Hey, a fella can dream, can't he? ;-)

Don't even get me started on how unnecessary 4 wheel drive is, you can do 6+ inches of snow in 2 wheel drive just fine

With you so far...

and 4 wheel drive does nothing to help you stop any faster

Aaand this old fallacy shows up.

Look, I grew up in northern Minnesota and I have commuted to work in the Twin Cities for nearly 30 years. My commute these days is about 25 miles one way and used to be about 50. Trust me, I know driving in bad conditions. :-)

I've driven rear wheel drive mini-pickups, front wheel drive sedans, all wheel drive mini-SUVs, and a couple of 1/2 ton pickups (one two wheel drive, one 4 wheel). The little all wheel drive SUVs and the 4x4 were by FAR the best vehicles in snow for both acceleration and stopping.

You don't rely on just the brakes, use the engine. Downshift!. The extra braking force applied through the second axle can make all the difference.*

Granted, it's easier to manage with a manual transmission and clutch than an automatic. However, even the cheapest automatic tranny has at least one low gear below Drive. Use it!

*Note: Most vehicles are sold with open differentials so a two wheel drive is really a one wheel drive in bad conditions while a 4WD is really a 2WD. However, the extra axle not only means twice the force applied, but the force is applied on two different parts of the road surface. This can make all the difference in some circumstances.

Sigh. I'm on your side and you just don't know it. :-)

I suggest that you go back and re-read what you wrote initially, the 6th amendment, then go read Federalist Paper #84. The 9th and 10th amendments were added precisely to prevent the sort of misinterpretation that you were railing against in the first place. The courts had to rule the way that they did specifically because the 9th and 10 amendments were added. (Not that they haven't been trampled with every increasing frequency by judges who should know better.)

No, not the code. It's about giving freedom to the user. With GPLed code, nothing prevents a user from being able to maintain their system, except their own limitations (budget, tech knowledge, time, etc). With BSD-licensed code, the user may be able to maintain the system (if the developer opted to also BSD-license it to them) or they might have no (legal) options at all, other than to go begging on their hands and knees to the developer and agreeing to whatever terms are demanded. (It's almost as though, in the user-developer relationship, there are [at least] two perspectives. Imagine that!)

Some people, if they have ever stood in the shoes of a user rather than a developer (or been in a complicated love triangle, where there's a library/compiler/whatever hacker, an application hacker (who lives in both worlds at once), and a user), have a problem with that whole "go begging on your hands and knees" part, thinking it to have some faint whiff of not-freedom in it. I think this only happens to those people who don't create their entire systems from scratch, like when that guy who wrote that text editor, suddenly found himself needing to use someone else's printer driver. Because he was too much of a wimp to build his own printer, I guess. You know, a zealot.

The real value here is it enables much more granular logging.

I object to this article, however, on grounds that this is not news. It's a press release, and crap like this is why I only visit slashdot every few months any more.