...do you think someone can commit mass murder on this scale with knives and baseball bats?

It does not matter what I think, I happen to know it has happened. While typically these events are "less fatal" I don't think a 0-deaths attack should be considered better if victim counts remain high. Personally, I wonder why you prioritize guns, when nearly every previous mass shooting perpetrator has shown poor mental health? (It's still a little early in the reporting cycle for a solid analysis in this latest attack.) Since this is such a universal factor, even past the availability of firearms, I would say improving our treatment of mental health issues should take a higher priority in responding to mass attacks.

Technically, every modern computer is made from crystals. The silicon they are based on is a tiny piece of a larger crystal.

I have a laptop running Gentoo as its' sole OS. The fact there is a cron service installed at all is because I wanted one. Whether the system boot manager is OpenRC or systemd was my choice, not somebody in charge of the distribution. For any compilation option that can be turned on or off, there is a good chance that it is exposed to the package manager and thus I chose its' state when installing. (If not, portage is the simplest manager I've seen when altering installation scripts, so overriding that choice is very easy.) Most packages don't automatically include their software into a runlevel: you also choose if (and when) they would run.

That control was why I chose Gentoo: not for privacy or a protest against "stealth software" (the Steam client is installed), but because by having to touch each and every part of the system I get a clearer idea of how these parts mesh. I would highly recommend setting up a machine in this fashion: it's a very educational experience.

If Hillary survives to the general election without this snowballing into a legal issue, I really want some brave and fearless soul to stand up in the first televised debate and ask her one question:

"Based on your legal expertise as a former member of the House Judiciary's Impeachment Inquiry staff, and the arguments which led to legal action being proposed against President Nixon, how many email messages would it take to equal 17 minutes of audio tape?"

I think your satire meter needs some new batteries. >.>

As visible in your official company FAQ, you had run a ISP as well as other online services (I seem to recall there having been some manner of MOO/MUSH service for running online games), well in advance of most other RPG publishers. Furthermore, you run your own digital store (e23) rather than using through the DriveThruStuff platform used by the rest of the tabletop industry, and made PDF copies of your books available for purchase before the other "major" industry players (Fantasy Flight, Pinnacle, WhiteWolf, and WotC).

How much of this decision was strategic—based on a firm belief this was "The Way of the Future"—and how much was it exploratory / risk-taking? In hindsight, what decisions for your online presence would you have made differently?

I caution attempts at social engineering result in greater injustices than those they seek to fight against.

I would say that the first thing those attempting social engineering should seek is to utilize the solutions they propose. For instance, it's amazing how many of the politicians in the US who seek to raise the minimum wage also make broad use of unpaid interns. If even the crusaders can't manage to pay everybody minimum wage (not the new level of $10, $15, or whatever is being proposed today, but just the current amount), what makes you so certain it's a great idea?

I suppose we have to "thank" Alanis Morissette for that. (She might not have started the process of killing self-reflection before speaking, but she drove home one of the final nails in its' coffin.)

I'm not entirely sure you're not trolling, but I'll bite anyway.

The US Constitution states that the purpose of copyright is "to promote the progress of science and useful arts", artists and inventors may be granted a (temporary, limited) exclusive right to their work. Anytime copyright comes up among my group of friends (who include a large number of writers, musicians, and graphical artists, in addition to programmers) copyright is a fairly contentious issue. I tend to like to argue the position that any "common", mass produced work that is unavailable for public purchase for longer than one year has outlived its' salable value and should lose copyright protection. (This is particularly true in the age of digital distribution, where "shelf space" is a non-issue.) Fine art (where only one copy of the item ever gets created) clearly requires a different definition for copyright term, but for the things which usually are referenced in these debates online -- CDs, mass market books, newsclippings, etc. -- a strictly limited term is far more beneficial to keeping works available to the public.

(at least the ones who think this is a good idea)

Fuck off and die, preferably in a fire.

I don't think I dare look at your link right now, but your question has been answered. To quote from that Wikipedia article: "The lead plaintiff was Frank Ricci, who had been a firefighter at the New Haven station for 11 years. ... Because he has dyslexia, he paid an acquaintance $1,000 to read his textbooks onto audiotapes." (Emphasis mine.)

Make whatever noises you like: just because a person is part of the privileged class in the two most visible categories of discrimination (race & gender) doesn't exclude them from being a member of any other legally protected class.

False. Since you specifically mentioned New York, here's an article about how that technology developed. Specifically, it states that "To encourage growth in this new electricity infrastructure, New York, like all of the other states, protected the utilities’ investment by granting them an exclusive right to serve customers." (Emphasis mine.) Believe what you want about the importance of monopoly busting, but the sad truth is that for every common example people give of "natural" monopolies, the government had a hand in why the service in question is a monopoly market.

I have read that the stock reply is that half the owners only use L1 charging; 120v. What about providing the option to the others who would prefer faster charging? Most pay chargers charge by time used which really makes the cost to charge a Volt not a good deal

STOP BUYING THEIR MUSIC!

Stop downloading their music.

Ignore their entire existence.

I don't care if you /like/ it. If you buy it or download it, you are giving them monetary and mindshare resources to continue to punish their customers and act improperly.

When they are penniless, perhaps they will see the error of their ways. Probably not, but then no one will give a fuck about them any more, and they can do no more harm.

In short, STOP feeding the monster.

INSTEAD, buy/download music from GOOD actors in the market. Support them in spite of the BAD actors. Support the artists directly. Never support any labels unless they eschew being part of organizations like RIAA and ASCAP.

I have done this for over twenty years. I am very happy with the music that is available to me, and also very happy that I don't support the bad actors in any way, shape or form. Indeed, I do all I can to put them out of business.

You can do it, too. ALL of you.

Take a stand. Make a difference.

The analogy I like to use when discussing the Art vs. Engineering paradigm in programming is architecture (the wood & steel building sort, not hardware chip instructions) design. Every architect, whether building a private home or an office complex, needs to know certain fundamental facts about the materials they use (load bearing capacity, for instance) and the choice of what materials are used is (typically) dictated by the intended purpose of a building. Brick and wood framing is pretty universal, but you don't generally see homes being built out of little more than tin siding and steel frames like factory warehouses, or giant glass walls like skyscrapers.

That part -- mating the materials with the intended purpose -- is the "art" in architecture. The "art" in programming (aside from some limited domains like UX or AI) is less immediately describable except by effect (e.g. "How quickly do new team members get up to speed?") but should be no less important to any project manager. I don't really think that programming has been around long enough for us to have our Frank Lloyd Wright moment, but that is no reason to ignore the "intangibles" and immeasurable aspects to quality code.