Torvalds has done more for peace than President Obama, who was nominated for the prize just a few weeks after taking office (he couldn't have done anything, still hasn't, and won't). In fact, Obama had a chance to do something for world peace -- get US troops out of the 150 different countries they're in. He didn't. He's actually expanding US-imperialism. Thus, he's done plenty for world discord, not peace.

I use Linux for everything, including scanning and manipulating 4x5 large-format shots. I haven't found GIMP to be insufficient. In some areas (like effects-layers), Photoshop might be more convenient. But I haven't been unable to do anything I want to do in GIMP.

I really don't care about the legal technicalities. Mazerov is an evil jerk for arguing against Amazon, and the entire tax-structure is just thinly veiled robbery. It is all evil -- sales taxes, property taxes, income taxes, capital gains taxes, etc. It is allegedly justified by the non-sense of the "social contract", a very weak justification which has been thoroughly rebuked by Lysander Spooner and others. What it really is is just an argument of "might makes right". The bums in the government have done nothing to earn my money; if they did something worthwhile, they should ask for voluntary contributions, or sell services to the market, like hard-working people in other fields. All that they do is legislate the use of force, and have brutes enforce their will. Very similar to mafia bosses, except that mafia bosses and common robbers don't pretend that they are righteous.

Right, because murderers deserve to be walking around with the rest of us, as if they aren't dangerous. That isn't the entire motivation behind my post though; the points I made apply for any crime, and actually any non-crime as well. For any information you make available about yourself through your public actions, you can have no legitimate legal objection (via what should be law, or natural law) to others recording that information and judging you by it.

The _murderer's_ rights aren't violated by people knowing what they did. They should have been executed anyways. But irrelevant of that, non-aggressive people also have the right of freedom of association. I for one choose not to associate with people I consider dangerous.

In a free society, criminals would owe restitution to their victims, and victims would be also entitled to request retribution against the criminal. Then people at large could make their own associative or dis-associative decisions regarding the criminal.

One thing is clear, however. It doesn't violate anyone's rights for other people to know information about them that they've made publicly available through their actions.

Note that I'm not saying I have, per se, the right to know information about other people. That would imply positive obligations on the part of other people. However, no-one has the right to stop the various people at Wikipedia from recording and maintaining an account of history. That is their private property right.

The _murderer's_ rights aren't violated by people knowing what they did. They should have been executed anyways. But irrelevant of that, non-aggressive people also have the right of freedom of association. I for one choose not to associate with people I consider dangerous.

In a free society, criminals would owe restitution to their victims, and victims would be also entitled to request retribution against the criminal. Then people at large could make their own associative or dis-associative decisions regarding the criminal.

One thing is clear, however. It doesn't violate anyone's rights for other people to know information about them that they've made publicly available through their actions.

Northgate Omnikey Evolution. To my knowledge, one of only a very few ergonomic clicky keyboards (at least among the original generation); there was also a Model M15 ergonomic keyboard, I think.

I use a Northgate Omnikey Evolution. Excellent solid clicky keys, ergonomic design. Great kb.

Except they didn't figure out it wouldn't, and didn't prove it wouldn't. Two calculations, one showing unlikely, one showing impossible, don't seem to be good enough for me to risk global destruction.

Nice to know that the insignificant "unlikely" possibility of _igniting_ the atmosphere didn't seem to give anyone pause about using the nuclear bomb to kill nearly a hundred thousand people, and hasn't stopped others around the world from dropping them periodically in tests.