You wrote a well thought-out post that urges people not to dismiss different points of view as the writing of a troll, so I'm not going to harp too much on that one sentence, other than to say that, in my point of view, your logic is misguided. What you're saying is that since you wouldn't be one of the people who exercise the right to resell the games, it's alright if that right is taken from those who would.

It's perfectly fine for you to choose not to resell games, and I understand how you don't feel like you're losing anything by being a Steam customer, but I still believe that Steam should be opposed on philosophical grounds. I will grant that it provides better DRM than most, but it's still DRM, and it's still infringing on my rights. As such, I am not a customer, and I am not glad to see it show up in Linux.

According to the article, the fish embryos continued to grow for 4 days, developing autopods, a precursor to hands. Then they died.

Hilariously enough, this article which is headlined "Scientists Make Fish Grow 'Hands'", contains a quote from one of the scientists involved, "Of course, we haven't been able to grow hands." Basically, this isn't intelligent design, it's exactly how evolution is described to work: You have existing code for fins, a slight modification of which appears to cause differentiation into autopods. This particular change is only one piece of the puzzle, so it wasn't a viable modification.

Right. People need to learn about the consequences of fucking up so they can get it right the next time.

Yes, they are. But they're not paying for babysitters. This is what I mean by my willingness to help out if they put in the effort, whether they've been showing to class or not.

I think there's a pretty big difference between people who are not capable of taking care of themselves and people who choose to do things that I may perceive as unwise. When you become an adult you get the freedom to start making those decisions for yourself. The university, your employer, or whoever else has no right to try to run your life and make those decisions in your stead.

In civilized countries, once you decide to open a store to anyone, you must open it to everyone, and you're not allowed to refuse service to an individual.

That's a natural reaction to being thrown on the floor, held there, and tazered.

When you get thrown on the floor, your first instinct is to move in order to ensure your hands hit the floor first. If your arms are being held while you're being thrown to the floor, you're going to try to get them free.

After you're on the floor, if people are holding you in such a way that it hurts, your natural reaction is going to be to try to get into a position where it hurts less.

Once you're tazered, you're going to thrash about as a result of suffering an electrical shock.

There's something wrong with a procedure where not being perfectly still is an excuse to tazer you again. It's going to take a while for your brain to catch up to your natural instincts and override them in order to remain still when you are being forcefully restrained. The more they tazer you, the longer this is going to take.

I speak English perfectly well, and I don't get that point. In my experience cops get loud when they want to establish their authority, which has nothing to do with whether what I'm doing is wrong or not.

I expect humans to be a bit less subservient to blind authority than dogs.

Eh. You paint a bleak picture when you claim, "of course, that didn't work."

People are healthier today than they used to be, on average (if you discount the obesity problem that is, which has nothing to do with not understanding food: It has to do with eating too much of it and not getting enough exercise).

Let me put it this way. Athletes keep breaking records year after year. You'd figure we'd have plateaued by now. There are several reasons why we haven't, and a big part of it is that we understand nutrition well enough to control their nutrition to maximize the benefits they get from training. And yes, there's the doping, but honestly, clean athletes are still out there breaking records.

I wasn't about to freak out about the US Government's rules, but I was about to freak out over your complaint on the summary.

Those rules apply to those of you who have agreed to them as a condition to the work you do. It does not apply to the rest of the population. Considering I would imagine the majority of people frequenting slashdot do not share those restrictions, it makes no sense to sensor the site as you propose.

There's absolutely nothing wrong with the government requiring that people working in certain sensitive areas do not seek out information they don't have the clearance to read. However, if you have agreed to such a restriction, it is your responsibility to double-check the links you follow. It is not the responsibility of the rest of the world to make this easy for you.

Have you actually followed the MATE thread in Debian? The objections were of a technical nature, concerning dependencies on obsoleted packages and unnecessary forks, it wasn't a philosophical one.

The MATE developer in the forum agreed with the suggestions from the Debian guys and implied they intended to move in that direction. In the end, you're going to get better code. In the meantime, you can download the .deb packages from unofficial repositories. What's the problem?

Eh. I have a serious moral problems with mint, starting with their stance that search engines should "share the revenue Linux Mint users generate for them" with Mint, and stunts like editing code to make them amazon affiliates in banshee's music store instead of the original developers or the ubuntu packagers, ie, the people who actually did all the hard work.

Granted, this shopping lens bullshit from Ubuntu is making me having severe moral problems with them as well, but that's definitely a reason to switch back to Debian, not Mint.

Sometimes I fear that I'll be telling my grand kids about how I remember when the internet was free. Actually, my biggest fear is that they'll be so indoctrinated they'll compare it to the wild west, and tout how all the regulation of the mature internet made it a safer place. I fear they'll just file my complaints about lack of freedom under "old man rambling" category.

Actually, the abominations that are Windows 8, Lion and Mountain Lion, Unity, and Gnome 3 are the result of people buying into your line.

So called UI experts suck, and it's far preferable to let a programmer design the UI. At least it will be practical, even if it's not pretty.

Caving to social pressure is FUN. Obviously, don't do anything that you know you will truly regret. If you're being socially pressured into Russian Roulette, leave. Those people are not your friends. That said, if you've never ended up doing something that you would never have done had your friends not pressured you into doing it...you're missing out on life. Some of my best memories are a result of friends getting me to do something I initially didn't want to. There's a reason peer pressure is so effective: there are evolutionary advantages to it. Your friends can get you to grow as a person by doing things you'd be afraid or uncomfortable to do on your own.

The trick, as with everything, is moderation. Like with drinking alcohol, period. Don't drink so much you get cirrhosis of the liver, or let it dominate your life affecting your job and family. Also, don't decide that drinking is immoral and turn into a puritan moron. Similarly, don't be one of those guys that can be pushed into doing anything and everything. Also, don't be one of those guys that never "cave under social pressure, even though it was actually nonsensical meaningless drivel from a bunch of drunk dumbasses that no sane person would ever listen to." Doing nonsensical, meaningless shit can be fun, don't miss out on it.

Eh. Actually most guides for TV size overstate the distance to the TV based on TV size.

Start watching TV in the center seat. If you can see anything outside the TV without turning your head, your TV is too small for the room. There is such a thing as too big for a room, but that's only if you have to turn your head in order to follow what's going on at the edges of the screen.

Except that living within my means without kids to take care of is a whole lot sweeter.

Especially when you consider all the extra time I have on my hands, and all the worries I don't have.

I mean, I don't see anything wrong with people having kids, but I don't really see how any household that earns less than $150k / year would even consider it. You can make it with a lot less, my parents certainly did. I see what the stress did to them, though.