You're spouting nonsense. There is nothing about "minorities" in the Federal law, which takes precedence.

http://www.eeoc.gov/laws/pract...
http://www.eeoc.gov/laws/statu...

"What these people don't understand is that they are lowering said life style."

What do you expect them to think? "Oh, sorry, I don't want to affect your much higher standard of living. I'll just stick to my subsistence living with my postgrad education then."

Would you care that you were "lowering said lifestyle," if half the standard of living where you're going is multiple times better than the standard of living where you are now? Probably not. I certainly wouldn't.

The blame doesn't fall on people wanting to work for a better life. I don't blame them at all, and most of them are good people, just like anyone else. I do blame a system that is stacked toward hiring foreign nationals before citizens. That's a policy problem and a regulation problem, and to a lesser extent, a problem with the businesses that take advantage of these policies -- although they're making good business decisions.

Most of the blame, though, lies squarely on the shoulders of elected officials, and the people who elected them or failed to participate. We can't just not pay attention and then expect things to work themselves out. Nobody is going to give more of a shit about your interests than you do, so make your voice heard, and tell others to do the same.

The tyranny of a prince in an oligarchy is not so dangerous to the public welfare as the apathy of a citizen in a democracy. -- Montesquieu

If there's no air gap between the passengers and the engines on your flights, then I'll take another flight please.

Look, rape happens all the time. It happens more often in economically disadvantaged communities, and by family members, but we don't talk about that. We talk about frat guys, or jockeys, or the people we "least expect," because that makes headlines. Rape is not an epidemic on college campuses, although there is an epidemic of paranoia. Most guys are scared shitless of possibly doing something uncool, let alone "creepy," let alone being accused of rape. If we want to deal with the real epidemic of rape and sexual assault, then we should create programs in grade school for students to tell an adult about what happens at home. If we teach children and young teenagers that they won't be ignored, and that someone cares about them, then they won't be afraid to report things when they're adults on college campuses. Most rapes and sexual assaults are committed by people who themselves were abused or assaulted, who never found resolution. If we get to those people before they get the chance to victimize others, then we've made everyone safer. I'm not one to beat the "think of the children" drum, but this is a problem that's rooted in childhood, so that's where our focus should be.

You start with a true statement, and then go on to make a baseless and unsubstantiated attack. First, you really can't claim to know what an entire segment of the population thinks. (If you do, Randi would be happy to hear from you.) Second, I think Socialists would argue that the distinction is very important -- central to their beliefs, in fact.

fuel needed for the landing is inefficient compared to a splashdown parachute recovery

The barge/ocean is just a temporary measure. The vision is twenty rockets launching a day and returning to the launch site to prep for the next launch.

There were about 120 rocket launches last year. SpaceX's mission statement is to reduce the cost of launches by 100x, and utilization rates go up as costs fall, so it's not just 100x more launches - twenty a day is probably very conservative if they hit their price targets.

Queue the folks who can't imagine what anybody would do with more than 640 launches a year.

But it appeared they could come down slowly. Pretty close to hover.

Yeah, I think that's the inevitable end-game - there is plenty of time to make small adjustments right up until the point of contact with the solid parts of the planet. AIUI, they're so close to empty on the fuel tank after the burnback that they're trying to get it down on the pad ASAP. They can only attempt these landings for now on launches that don't require as much fuel as others - supposedly the next iteration can hold more fuel.

If only there were a two-wheeled vehicle where your legs moved. They could even be used to *power* the device.

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.