I like this guy but he seems to come along with the occasional show stopper

Typical attitude of those, who only want freedom for themselves, while ready to trample that of others.

Hint: in a free country, businesses exist not because the Collective needs their services, but because their owners choose to pursue happiness that way.

Libertarians remember that and fight any attempts to coerce citizens into some kind of Greater Good[TM].

I've read it.

So cite the parts you find offensive...

The Conservatives are happy to kill innocents

Bravo! This sentence alone explains everything about you. Very well put, except for one minor nit: In such context, the word is spelled KKKonservatives. Otherwise perfect.

Or you don't know how studies are done.

I do. And one of the requirements for a scientific finding, is that it be reproducible .

The wording would make new analysis of 3rd party data illegal.

Citations?

It would shut down lots of legitimate science that's done on license.

Before we continue — citations?

there is room for debate

Imagine, for a second, the evil RethugliKKKans trying to mandate use of open source software by a government agency — and Slashdot opposing it...

If they're going to create such a rule for EPA, then it should also apply to NIH, FDA, DOE

You have to start somewhere.

If they don't make it universal, then they're showing an obvious bias

Even if there is such a bias, what of it? It is not like imposing this rule on the EPA today would prevent imposing it on other departments/agencies later.

Besides, the opponents of the idea do not oppose it on the grounds, that it is not going far enough. Obama is not saying:"I will veto this bill unless the rule covers the entire federal government! No way, no how!!"

It turns out that facts are, in fact, factual.

That's true about all facts, whether identified by denialists or alarmists.

If you'd like to talk about particular ones, however, please, see my challenge in the post higher up.

What exactly is your point?

The point is that the pontiff's — or, for that matter, any other non-scientist celebrity — agreement with a supposedly scientific argument, adds no more weight to it, than a disagreement by the same celebrity would have removed.

OMG POPE!

That's exactly the attitude I was ridiculing.

Oh, please. If he instead expressed skepticism, you would've dismissed him as a religious bigot, who believes the Earth was created 5 thousand years ago by a Deity and given to Man to control, and is not a scientist.

Now you are willing to praise him because he agrees with you. Bah...

Skeptics certainly have a clue — it an environment as hostile to skepticism as the climate debate is, any contrarian is always far more educated on the subject, than the following-the-flow crowd. They may still be wrong, but clues they have aplenty.

Why don't we play a game: can you cite two predictions made by global warming "alarmists", that actually came true within 80%? Each citation would have to include a link to the prediction and a link to the confirmation — with the two being 5 years apart or more... The first such predictions have been made decades ago — some are bound to have materialized by now... How about it?

You later get divorced, presently childless. She decides to try again and the implantation is successful. Can she come back for child support?

Yes, she can and she will. At least, you produced the sperm while still her husband and would-be father of her children.

If a sperm-donor can be hit for child-support, you would have not a chance. And not just in Kansas, Illinois too only makes exceptions for sperm donated "through medical channels involving a doctor".

It may work the other way too — a donor may get parental rights after an artificial insemination.

Presumably, with the rights comes a child support obligation as well — the two better be inseparable.

The provisions seemed rather common sense to me when reading through them: Maintaining a list of drivers, criminal background checks, sufficient insurance for commercial purposes, visible external marker on the car, yearly safety inspections, minimum age of 21, and a license fee for the privilege of this oversight, of course.

These might make sense for taxis, which are/were government-enforced monopolies. But for the viciously competing companies the regulations aren't needed.

And, like all regulations, they inevitably increase costs. That the Statists of Massachusetts will seek to impose such things is not surprising. That Slashdot would applaud them — that's more of a disgrace...

I find it rather ironic, that the same site, which shouts down any attempts to reason that an idea can be owned — and that using it without the owner's permission is illegal and immoral — would be so respectful towards other kinds of information.

If, as the opinion prevailing here holds, "information can not be stolen" because you still have your original copy, what grounds are there to prohibit somebody else to share, what they know about you, with others? On that matter, will you also outlaw gossip?

The problem seems to be that if you *can* give permission then you will be coerced into giving permission.

Except the term coercion implies use of force. As long as you aren't forced to use a web-site despite your disagreement with their EULA, you can not complain of being "coerced".

Well, movies are supposed to manipulate your emotions.

Movies are. But not the news-reports. And yet, Abu Ghraib scandal — in addition to legal prosecution of the culprits — brought down moral condemnation of not only them, but the entire chain of command all the way up to the then-President.

That nobody said a word to likewise condemn the fictitious Marine Captain Steven Hiller — the dashing hero of the "Independence Day" — suggests, our emotions against the real miscreants were deliberately whipped-up.

Given the harm the manipulation did to the American cause, one can be forgiven for suspecting, it was orchestrated — at least in part — by a hostile party... Would not have been the first time...

Li-ion is just too expensive and maintenance-intensive to use grid scale.

"Grid scale" simply can not be more expensive than single-house scale.

It is called "Economy of scale" and although some of such may have limits, beyond which cost of additional units begins to increase, none of the conditions for that would apply in this case.

we know who the bad guys are

Well, we know, the victim really was a drug-dealer too now.

because we know who the bad guys are

We — the readers and viewers — know (sort of). The policeman doing the illegal deed in fiction knows just as much as the real cops in TFA knew.

There should be no difference in our condemnation (or lack of it) of their actions. And yet, the difference is vast, proving most of the society as either hypocrites or tools of the manipulators ready to whip-up public outrage for their own purposes.