Mayonnaise is also one of earth's nastiest substances

This is only true about factory-made mayonnaise. The original recipe is drastically different — but can not be stored for more than a few days. If you are willing to deal with such quickly-expiring product, you can make your own at home. Recipes abound.

The Demon would guard a door letting fast-moving molecules of some gas (or liquid) through, but blocking the slow-moving ones. Thermodynamics will never be the same!

Fortunately for you Slashdot isn't a book, play, or film. (Although I'm probably skirting the edges with Google's Operafier plugin.)

Really? You mean there were no slaves and women could vote?

This is a red herring. Whoever can vote, whether or not slavery is legal, is irrelevant. By 1913, for example, slavery has been (highly) illegal for decades — but there was no Federal Income Tax (the major step towards today's slavery).

By 1920 women got their right to vote (19th Amendment), but Roosevelt's confiscation of gold — to finance his government-expansion — remained years away.

Bit by bit the people in government — sincerely convinced, they can do better for us, than we can ourselves — insist on "taking care" of us. And life changes for the worse every time the ratchet turns towards greater governmental control over the subjects. Undoing it even a little bit would be a great relief.

Cities can allow for-profit companies in on the transportation game and regulate them to serve the public fairly.

Why is it more fair to compel a driver to go to a dangerous neighborhood, than for a passenger, who wants to go there, to pay extra? Because an Uber driver may choose to accept the higher risk in exchange for higher pay — whereas for an ordinary cabbie that's not a legal option.

The other option, would be if the city took over all paid transport as part of the public infrastructure. No private taxis, no uber

Not in a country, that still has any pretense of being free.

Uber drivers don't have to, and will almost certainly not take fares to sketchy neighborhoods.

Why not? If they know, they are picking up a known Uber-user and also know, where he wants to go — and may even be paid extra for going into such a neighborhood.

Which has the end result that some of the poor with the most need to "get around", won't be able to.

Why do you deem it more fair, to compell the cabbies (themselves hardly "rich" by any standard) to go, where they'd rather not go, than to charge people wanting to go to a sketchy place extra?

some cabbies won't pick up a black fare just on the off chance that they'll have to go to a rough neighborhood.

Oh, so you are afraid, Uber will introduce a problem, that already exists with the official taxis?..

Space delimited

You must be talking about Python...

It used to be that if you wanted a higher quality, you had to find a quality brand you could trust, and if the market doesn't favor lots of competition for whatever reason, a quality brand just wouldn't exist without government intervention. After all, why would a rational profit-seeking corporation do anything right if it put them at a cost disadvantage

The only reason you might not be able to find something of higher-quality is because not enough others want it. Internet or not, if demand exists, it will be fulfilled — glory be to our Free Market (whatever is left of it).

Internet may be making the market more efficient by facilitating information exchange, but it is not required. Nissan created Infinity and Toyota — Lexus before there was Internet. Cognacs are available in different (standardized) quality-levels — and have been since 1800-eds, when even telephone did not exist.

The taxi market is traditionally so monopolistic that the only way to make good quality available is to legally require it from everyone

It is monopolistic, because there are virtually no repeat customers — even if you really liked the guy, who last drove you, you will not be waiting for him, when you need a cab again. You'll just hail whoever drives by. The tips are supposed to compensate for this absence of incentive, but aren't doing it, because many people tip — out of politeness — regardless of the service-quality.

But you are right that the feedback forums — which can make or kill a particular maker/seller/service-provider — are changing everything. For the better.

TCL is both awesome and mature. It is also evolving, but the maintainers are very careful to maintain backwards-compatibility (unlike the Ruby-crowd). Two different Apache-modules exist.

Unlike with PHP, you can also write long-living TCL-programs — though PHP core is Ok, various extensions leak memory because nobody really uses the language for anything other than short-lived web-pages. Adding a GUI to your non-web program is also easy (with Tk), as is handling the cases, where GUI is not available — you can degrade gracefully to a non-GUI mode, rather than see the program refuse to even start.

The only real competitor to Tcl is Python, which is what Google are using, but extending Tcl with your C/C++ code is much easier, than extending Python (or any other candidate — Tcl's API is the best thought-out and stable).

Explain to me why spying on, say, Angela Merkel or the entire Copenhagen or G20 summits is related to US national security and maybe I'll see your point.

Because when your only aim is "winning", whatever the fuck that means, there are no friends; everyone is a potential enemy. When you have decided to maintain global dominance, everyone is an enemy, including you own citizens.

This being the case, I find entire line of reasoning invalid.

I too found the page to be rather hard to process. The reason I linked to it was to illustrate, that the issue discussed is, indeed, directly connected to the First Amendment and that those unhappy with it would have to modify the Amendment itself.

We’re kickstarting a Super PAC big enough to make it possible to win a Congress committed to fundamental reform by 2016.

Haven't these same people already elected a President committed to fundamental transformation of America? Has it not proven to be a disaster both inside and outside the country?

Now they ask for your money to put more of the same people into Congress — because "this time it will be different"?

And how will that help their lesser goal — that of altering the First Amendment?

I'm sure that will be a great comfort to those who are the reason for those bad ratings. You know, the people who get ripped off, kidnapped and held for ransom (I need another $500 or I'll just dump you here), or worse.

Well, those felons, whom taxi-licensing (unlike Uber's lax policies) would've prevented from ever becoming a taxi-driver in the first place, have killed/kidnapped/or held for ransom somebody else before — while doing something, that did not require a license, such as walking on a sidewalk.

Should we allow anybody to do anything without one? Why should walking down a street be allowed without a license, but not driving a cab?

Reviews depend on after the fact; which is pointless if you are dead.

One of the dangers, that the GP is afraid of, is being driven by a sex-offender. I — an ugly middle-aged man with portbelly — have no fear of being raped and no prejudice against known sex-offenders trying to work for a living. Why would I be any more "dead" driven by such a person, then by somebody else? And why shouldn't I be allowed to be driven by such a person, if that's 1 cent cheaper per mile or if he can get to me 3 minutes earlier? What safety — permanent or even temporary — is gained by depriving him and me of this essential liberty to engage in a mutually-agreed upon business transaction?

This isn't an liberal / conservative issue.

Requiring a license for more and more activities reduces our freedom to engage in them — sometimes in direct and obvious violation of the Constitution even. This makes such requirements illiberal and people, who advocate them — whatever they call themselves — illiberals.

Why shouldn't one need to demonstrate a higher level of skills in order to be allowed to get paid to drive other people around.

Why must one be allowed to get paid in the first place? And why must "higher level of skills" be a requirement — even for the customers, who are perfectly satisfied with average level of skills?

Uber's background check that somehow missed one of their drivers was a sex offender.

So what? Plenty of locales allow (ex-)felons — including sex-offenders — to drive taxis today.

If you want to be driven by above-average drivers only, you can request a higher-rated driver from Uber (and pay more per mile) or — if Uber's vetting process seems insufficiently rigorous to you — go for a different company altogether. But don't try to impose it on the rest of us.