Advances in renewables, particularly PV, are what will lead to electric cars going mainstream eventually. When you get to the point that someone's solar panels can cover their entire house's electrical consumption AND charge their car every night there's no more room for argument.

Presidents can grant pardons at any time, not just as they're leaving office. If only we could somehow elect a president who favored the people over a stronger central government [pause for laughter]. I'm not even sure how the system would need to change to make that possible, but I do think the eventual death of broadcast TV (with the auction system for advertising airtime meaning you can never have enough political advertising budget) will help.

What on earth makes you think that NK has to have the native talent? The didn't figure out how to make nukes on their own either. They didn't home-grow their substantial currency counterfeiting operation, either. They likewise don't design and build their own military equipment. But that doesn't stop them from having nukes, from doing big business in phony currency, and sinking other people's ships.

If the main text of a religion isn't a reliable guidebook to that religion, how can we determine if anything is?

Obviously, we can't.

What made you think we could?

All major (and most minor) religions present huge diversity. Within Christianity, the bible is taken as everything from vague metaphor to the "inerrant word of God." The Koran for Islam, the same. Buddhist practice ranges from meditative to non, from vegetarian to non, from rigidly scientific to the most laughable crystal-gazing nonsense you've ever heard of. New agers.... that's a basket so broad I don't even have a clue as to what it really means, although I have to say, I've rarely come away from someone's description of their new age ideas thinking "wow, that made sense." OK, actually, never. But I figure it could happen. :)

In addition to actual sect differences, there are practitioner differences, and they range all the way from non-believers who are there for the social aspect, to rigid adherents to every jot and tittle in every book (and some, like the Catholics, have quite a few books.)

For my part, I figure, if I want to know what someone thinks, just ask them. Unless I have specific relevant evidence, I don't assume people fit into standardized boxes. I have found that to very rarely be true.

Sure they did. They stole time from millions of people. They deliberately screwed with the expectations and plans of millions of people, all for a little bit of cash and bragging rights among their fellow assholes.

You're right, all those people should have chosen to buy fun, well-developed, richly supported gaming platforms from one of the many providers who offer open source, freedom-minded, anti-IP, systems that have a large selection of really cool massive multiplayer games with giant networks supporting all of that activity. There are so many to choose from that I'm sure it's why you just didn't have time to list them.

It's idiots like you, who think that businesses, networks, people's entertainment time, and the like "aren't real" that give comfort and encouragement to idiots like the guys who pulled this. They did it to be dicks, just like other dicks might throw a rock through your window and nail your TV right before you were going to watch the World Cup match you've been waiting weeks to watch with your friends. Or, in a closer analogy, waiting until moments before the game starts, and then cutting the cable that services your house or apartment building.

Let me guess: that soccer game's not real! They're not at the stadium in person, so denying them the chance to watch it as they planned isn't actually harmful! Destruction of the time someone plans to use in a certain way is a theft more real, in many ways, than stealing physical objects. You'll never be able to replace the time. Which is one of the reasons these guys are dicks. Deliberate, purposeful, not noble in any way, dicks.

No, that was sony.

Actually that is how it works. Concept of a bottleneck refers to aspect of a pipe+pool system where thickness of the pipe is the limiting factor and increasing width of the pipe offers a comparable increase in flow throughput.

When you double pipe's thickness and get 1-2% more flow, it means that your system's bottleneck is elsewhere.

So these types of threats are being taken seriously.

What was that about surrendering essential freedoms to gain temporary security?

You have negative freedom, that is freedom from interference and limits on your behavior

And that's the only freedom there can be...

Then you have positive freedom, the freedom to participate in society and to prosper.

You are confused. The freedoms to participate in society and to prosper are the same as those from interference and limits. One does not have a right to prosperity and/or happiness, but only to a pursuit of them — America's founding fathers noted this right in the Declaration of Independence (before the war was won and the Constitution written).

In Europe that kind of thing would clash with a person's freedom to have a private life, i.e. to privately grieve for their loved on at the funeral.

This makes no sense — you can not have a right to privacy in a public place. Those crazy Democrats "thanking god" for dead American soldiers may be an extreme case, but if you devise a law to shut them up, will it not also apply to weddings and birthdays, which are bound to take place on the same block, where other folks are grieving?

We also see the right to a private life

I fail to see, how you can demand privacy while in public — and that includes your making connections to other people's servers.

US company's desire to profile everyone and use their personal data for commercial gain, which Europeans consider to be a massive loss of freedom but Americans consider to be a corporation exercising its free speech rights.

No, actually, one's right to record and remember whatever he has once observed has nothing to do with free speech. I, once again, fail to see, how you can possibly demand somebody forgets about you without opening yourself up to the same demands from others. Do you want your ex- to be able to force you to undergo a memory-alteration procedure — to make you forget, how she looks naked?