What? It's the manufacturer creating a flawed product that hurts the brand, but let's blame the victim and pretend it's not. How do niche users hurt the brand? The people hurting the brand are, arguably, people who say "this doesn't play my AAA game," or "I have artifacts when I use this card," not the guys posting their OSS linux problems.

It costs more time and money to make things so opaque. The people who care (AMD, Intel) will reverse engineer that shit anyway. Some guy in his basement writing drivers is not your competition, but he is a potential customer.

Your point is valid, but it's a bit like claiming that I have biked farther and for more time than any other person on the planet who lives in my apartment. It's true, but it's also sort of stupid to make such a narrowly tailored claim.

If you think the average person has a desktop background that differs from stock, let alone a space-themed background, then there's a good chance your sample size is far, far too small.

Far too small.

You had me until you said "internet of things."

But why? It seems counter to business interests. The more people using your hardware, the better, yes? So why try to restrict that in any way whatsoever?

I don't want to defend Thompson at all. I do think that if people are committing criminal acts, like fraud, or intimidation, or harassment, or contempt, then we already have laws to deal with that, and we should use those laws. We don't need an extrajudicial process -- the judicial system should eat its own dog food.

Jefferson wasn't perfect. I'm not saying we should disregard his reasoning, just that we shouldn't automatically accept it on the face either. In recognition of the fact that it was written by imperfect people, our Constitution itself was designed to be changeable. We've sort of forgotten that since we started elevating it to a holy text (apropo of the discussion), but it's supposed to be a living document, not the 10 commandments.

What? There's no license to be a teacher, or a banker, or a police officer. At least not where I live. There are job requirements, but not licenses. If you're going to conflate job requirements with licenses, then everything requires a license.

Look, I'm not saying that I would ever hire a lawyer that wasn't certified in some way, I'm just saying that it seems unnecessary to mandate it. If the bar was effective at keeping bad lawyers out, then we wouldn't have bad lawyers (ha), and if we believe in a free market (which, the last time I checked, lawyers charge money), then the market should be able to sort it out on its own. I am, in fact, in favor of regulation of industries, but the bar seems like a relic of a bygone era when only "gentlemen" were permitted to do certain things. It may be more meritocratic and less political these days, at least as far as getting admitted -- though law firms themselves are nothing if not political -- but it still reeks of elitism. And it's certainly done nothing to prevent incestuous relationships between public defenders and DAs and judges.

Law is a profession where an incompetent or corrupt practitioner can cause customers tremendous (and not readily correctable) harm.

So is teaching. So is banking. So is policing. So is being President.

Having a licensing process that ensures that practitioners are at least marginally competent, and a way to prevent the corrupt from robbing others

How does it do that? And how does it do that in ways that the law does not?

Thanks, friendly ISP customer service representative, but you forgot the part where I looked over and saw half the lanes were closed for no damned reason except to get me to pay for the toll road

I've heard that before, but repeating a lie doesn't make it true.

http://www.sciencefocus.com/qa...
http://www.cracked.com/article...

It'd be a real shame if anything happened to that nest.

Something like this probably:
https://www.google.com/search?...

Yeah, that's what happens in the majority of states that don't mandate bar membership. Attorneys watch videos and then we force people to hire them.

Good comparison otherwise, though.

I think we need to throw out the baby with the bathwater at some point, such as when the baby is dead and stinking up the whole place. Our tax code is a dead baby. There is no part of it worth keeping. There, I've said it.

The obvious solution is to remove tax exempt status for religious institutions altogether. It's not just Scientology taking advantage of this, it's so-called megachurches and televangelists too. If they want to have a charitable division, fine, but a religious organization should pay taxes like any other.

"Well, then," Jesus said, "give to Caesar what belongs to Caesar, and give to God what belongs to God." His reply completely amazed them.