Okay, that's more detail and a correction, duly acknowledged. Teach me to double-check numbers and not quote from memory :P

All the evidence we have suggest those things are epigenetic not genetic.

It's similar to why I refuse, as a matter of principle, to ever buy name-brand clothes.
If Calvin Klein wants to advertise his jeans on MY ass - he'll damn well pay me for the right to use my ass as advertising space, I refuse to pay HIM a premium for the privilege of LETTING him advertise on my ass.

>You know what ACTUAL theft is? Consuming someone's product (ie. visiting an ad-supported web site) and then refusing to pay (ie. allow the ads to be shown). If you want a moral and ethical ad-blocker, implement a plug-in that refuses to let you visit any site whose ads you don't want displayed, or which allows you to pay micro-payments per visit.

This may have been true once when most ads were shown on a pay-per-view basis, but nobody does that anymore because it's to easy to cheat and it costs too much. These days ads are shown on a pay-per-click basis - which is a lot more realistic in terms of value gained by the advertiser, it also means that adblockers in fact represent ZERO lost revenue or theft since those who enable them has an almost 100% overlap with "people who wouldn't have clicked on the ad anyway". If you put "people with adblockers" and "people who don't click on ads" as a red and blue circle on a VENN diagram what you get is a giant purple blob with maybe a tiny red and blue line on either side.
It's very much the same as the reason the do-not-call list hasn't significantly impact the profitability of telemarketing, if anything it made it slightly more profitable as they can avoid wasting time and money phoning people who would never buy something from a telemarketer anyway.

The illusion that you would make more money if people didn't have adblockers is based on a completely false assumption about human behavior. Ads can be very effective at creating want - but not when their mere existence has already created dislike. Those who hate ads, are the ones least likely to buy anything based on that type of advertising - simply because the negative emotions associated with seeing the add overwhelms whatever emotional effect the ad was intended to produce.

>Not very effective coercion, then, since I have NEVER found myself buying something based on an ad. Not once in the last half century....

That's what you think. You are almost definitely wrong. Studies have found that the vast majority of people sincerely believe they make rational purchasing decisions - based on considering price and value, but when you observe their actual behavior they invariably buy the things with the prettiest packaging even if it costs a ton more to offer no additional value.
You aren't AWARE of how manipulated you are by ads, that's exactly why they work.

>If it's applied to copyright infringement (and it is, linguistic purist desires be damned),
It's not linguistic purists - it's legal purists, copyright violation isn't theft because the law specifically says it's not theft. Theft is prosecuted by the government, a prosecution that can happen without the consent of the victim (even if you "drop charges" for a theft - the government can still choose to prosecute) - copyright violation is a civil matter, where the plaintif has to bring a case themselves, in civil court, and you can't go to jail for it.

>Just because someone agrees to a purchase/sale contract doesn't preclude it being theft.
I absolutely agree with you but the /. libertarian crowd just got their hackles raised - because if they admit that, then their whole world collapses. If they recognize even the most remote possibility of that - then their defense of sweatshops for example falls apart. Their denial of the possibility of exploiting workers becomes logically unsupportable.
If they ever acknowledge the (bleeding obvious) conclusion that somebody can be deceived into making a decision against their own best interest - their entire world and economic philosphy is shattered to bits.

>and the advertising is basically true

Which is true of about one in ever 5000 ads in the world. If we actually legislated that as a requirement and enforced that legislation actively - then it would be a different story. Frankly the penalty for a false add should be to go to jail - for fraud, because a false ad is doing business using deceptive practices - the very definition of fraud. No, free speech does not enter into the discussion - no definition of free speech every covered fraud.

>A little over a decade ago the first human genome was sequenced at a cost of 3 billion dollars. Now, you can spit in a tube, FedEx it to a sequencing facility (at room temperature - no ice required), and a few weeks later FedEx will deliver a USB drive with your genome sequence on it - all for just a bit over a $1000 dollars

Bad example - because the human genome didn't need to cost that back then. It was one of science's greatest mistakes, and it's correction was the biggest breakthrough in genetics since the discovery of DNA. Long before we sequenced the human genome we had sequenced a bunch of "simpler" animals like frogs and newts and things - and they were coming in at around 80-billion genes.
So naturally we assumed that a much more complicated being like a human would have a much longer genome - many orders of magnitude more. So we built a super-computer for the kind of load we were expecting: that's where the 3 billion dollars went.
Except when we were done - it turns out the human genome was much, much shorter. In fact it only had about 32-billion genes. Figuring out why and how a more complicated creature can have much simpler genes completely changed our ideas of how genes worked. The entire science of genetics was turned on it's head - it was an expensive mistake but it paid off - it also made all the ideas that linked racism, sexism or classism to genetic inheritance thoroughly disproven - it's literally not POSSIBLE for them to be true, in order to BE true - human genes would have to contain significant brain structure encoding which they definitely do not and cannot because there aren't even enough of them to program 1% of our brains. The genetic contribution to human brains consist of "suck nipple when inserted" - that's about it.

That said - they never needed that 3-billion dollar computer, which is why this is a bad example.

There is nothing the least bit socialist about either Clinton or Obama - as a socialist, believe me I wish there WAS.
Please educate YOURSELF about what "socialism" means before spouting nonsense and calling "independent thought".

Hint: if the words "authoritarian", "state" or "government" is anywhere in the sentence, it's NOT socialism. There is even a very large branch of socialism called "anarcho-socialism" which is completely stateless yet socialist - in fact, anarcho-socialism would be more correctly called "classic-libertarianism" as that is what "libertarian" meant until the 1920's and it's STILL what Libertarian means anywhere OUTSIDE Britain and America: anti-state anarchistic socialists.

Unfortunately it also wouldn't hurt the cops responsible - it would hurt the insurance companies. Considering the severity ...

I would rather suggest each police department be required to maintain a fund to pay out cases like this - and if you cost that fund too much, you are demoted, beyond a high enough barrier - you are automatically fired.
Money in the fund that wasn't needed at the end of the year could perhaps be paid out as bonuses - to reward the good cops, though this would need to be subject to very careful auditing so that it doesn't turn into an excuse not to report things. Perhaps you could go so far as to say "the left overs will be divided as bonusses only among cops who have filed reports of misconduct or willingly testified against bad cops".

Different people have different brains - and it's also influenced by the type of work they do.
I work long hours very often, much of my free time is spent on DIY projects, sometimes electronic, sometimes around the house - occasionally just spending a day watching movies with my daughter is bloody nice - because it's so rare that I have the opportunity to not be chasing a goal.

If you do that you have to double the used web space, and that can be expensive. I'm already almost at the upper limit for my site and will have to go to the next tier of hosting soon. As it is, only three of the well over a hundred pages on my site need a special mobile version, and I would imagine a lot of other folks are the same way.

Having it first look for m.sitename, falling back to mobile.html if it exists and m.sitename doesn't, then index.html if there are neither m.sitename or mobile.html might be a good idea, though.

No, I had to round DOWN to 4 times. My numbers actually support them working rather harder than 4x as much.

Yes to ALL your flips.
A teacher is an position of authority and there is NO scenario where ANY sexual acts or treatment or prefferential activity to ANY student is acceptable behavior.
Indeed there is no situation where sexual advances to somebody over whom you have authority can ever be acceptable.