I find it strange that you blame the state legislature and the GOP for universities unable or unwilling to control their costs. Apparently university administrators exist only to request increasingly astronomical sums of money from the government.

If this were some esoteric and highly specialized area of knowledge that requires access to a scientist to verify then you might have a stronger point. But, in this case, the claim itself was patently ridiculous. And also easily checked by anyone with an ounce of skepticism or perspective on the issue. Scientists shouldn't be upset that they weren't consulted; they should be embarrassed that they've browbeaten people into this kind of mindless credulity.

"Now glaciologists are left trying to figure out how not understate the importance of the extent glacial ice melt, while at the same time correcting the error."

The problem here is that glaciologists, and scientists in other climate-related fields, are placing themselves into the position of determining the "importance" of ice melt in the first place. They need to focus on giving the world accurate data and admitting the limits of their knowledge, instead of proselytizing for their favored doomsday scenario. That way all of us would be more confident of the data, more informed about the possible meaning, and just generally have a clearer idea of what's actually happening. And, as a bonus, glaciologists wouldn't have to stay up nights worrying that their fickle followers would question their powers of climate prophecy and be lured into heresy whenever they make an honest mistake. If they want power and blind obedience without the interference of things like human rights and economic viability then they're doing it right. If they want accurate science and an informed populace, they're doing it wrong

Dealing with nuclear waste is a solved problem. Unfortunately, political interests and faux-environmentalists prefer to block that solution because they're zealots and demagogues with a superstitious fear of anything nuclear. And, quite often, a vested interest in obtaining subsidies for certain alternatives.

So, how many people die annually from nuclear power accidents due to all these sociopathically inadequate safety systems?

"Is there language in these old distributions that prevents the possibility of them being audited and revoked?"

There's no need to resort to punative action against holders who've done nothing wrong. Current allocation policies strip IPv4 addresses of all market value, so right now there's every reason for the current holders to keep them and no reason not to. If you want them to be redistributed more efficiently simply let holders of unusued blocks of IPv4 addresses sell them to people who want them.

"So yeah, European countries have race and poverty issues, and they've been dealing with them without guns because social problems like racial tension and poverty often can't be solved by guns."

Europe has not been "dealing with" their problems. They've been ignoring them, passing laws to stop people from talking about them, telling police not to enforce the laws, blaming the victims of violent crime. Anything to avoid dealing with the problems caused by a large population of unassimilated, violent, xenophobic immigrant population.

Could those problems be solved by guns? Ask the folks who had their cars set on fire in Paris, their property destroyed in riots, or the police who fear to enter parts of London because they know the bad guys there will kill them.

How about we ask the same questions about the people who stand to make huge amounts of money from "green" technologies and scams like carbon exchanges when they're mandated by governments in response to the "science" they've created. Or the "scientists" who falsify data, peddle shoddy work, or change the results to suit their own ideological biases. Or the insanely huge amount of government funding that they've appropriated by creating a regulatory environment that not only employs them, but only funds research devoted to one specific possible result?

I don't give a damn who funds what research. If the science is solid it doesn't matter who paid for it. Science that attempts to discredit research which may be contrary to their preferred results is not science. It's religion, and a bad one.

Maybe. But I suspect you're focusing on one threat while ignoring other dangers.

The consumer-level restrictions are more likely to be justified by the left. Watch for expansions of libel, "hate speech" and "cyber-bullying" restrictions (Hi, Canada!), and "fairness" laws. Because hate, unfairness, bullies, and lies are all bad, you know, and must be banned in order to have a free society.

At the next tier up, it's be the FTC and the FCC divvying up authority over everything from packet shaping decisions on major backbones to determining who is allowed to offer access to whom, and at what price. Oh, and seizing domain names without warning. To stop illegal activity and ensure a level playing field, you understand.

Oh, and emergency powers so one agency or another can shut it all down to save us from the threat of cyber-warfare. Because ISPs and network engineers who make a living in this field don't know anything about that important security stuff.

"You believe that having a creep know the town you live in is the same as the creep knowing your GPS coordinates?"

Sigh. If you're a homeowner that same creep can easily discover exactly where you live, when you moved in, and how much you paid. It's public information. Not secret. Never was.

And the fact that you have kids, and their ages? Also not secret. Never was.

And do you know why it's not secret, and never was? It's because this is most emphatically not "very private information". It's stuff that any reasonably observant or interested person can easily discover about anyone living in an open society. It's stuff the neighbors and the store down the street used to know when we talked to each other in real life.

Your faith in the magic of "net neutrality" is touching: Let's give the government unlimited access to monitor, regulate, and ration our electronic communications. That'll show those mean ol' corporations! And then we'll have real privacy, by golly!

"As opposed to the climate change deniers who release 900 page reports reviewed by the elite of the world scientific community with only 1 or 2 mistakes in them ?"

Please try to understand. It's not that they made "one or two mistakes". It's the sloppy and stupid nature of these errors, and the profound lack of scientific rigor that they revealed.

If you had a 900 page allegedly peer-reviewed report from "the elite of the medical community" which casually included a statement that cancer rates would rise because of increased demonic activity, would that make you wonder about the process? How about if a bunch of them then denied the possibility of a problem? Suppose it then became clear that a bunch of people had pointed this out in the past, but were ignored? Would any of that be enough to make you stop relying on faith, and start relying on thinking?

"Denialism also refers to a set of rhetorical strategies used to create the impression of uncertainty where none exists. Unsurprisingly perhaps, these bear a strong resemblance across the various species of denialism."

Ah, I see. "Denialism" is what zealots used to call "heresy":

"...but as for the others, since, in our judgment they are foolish madmen, we decree that they shall be branded with the ignominious name of heretics, and shall not presume to give to their conventicles the name of churches. They will suffer in the first place the chastisement of the divine condemnation and in the second the punishment of our authority which in accordance with the will of Heaven we shall decide to inflict." (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Edict_of_Thessalonica)

Since we're making up words, I suggest "scientism". That's the religious system practiced by people who pretend (even to themselves) they're practicing science, but who actually have no confidence in the scientific process, or the ability of others to make rational decisions based on the findings of that process.

Instead, they chatter about the need to enforce orthodoxy and limit public discussion of controversy, lest those who lack enlightenment become confused and lead others away from the true path.

There's no time to waste: Some may already be lost, actively in league with the evil which seeks to damn us all to eternal suffering. Left unchecked, that could require the defenders of the faith to resort to more drastic means of purging the seeds of doubt, beyond even excommunication and shunning. An unfortunate necessity, but this is Science we're defending, not some fanciful, power-hungry, and corrupt old belief system.

And when the world's salvation is at stake, is anything too extreme?

No, not really.

"Many user interfaces have been patented, including one of the most enduring, the QWERTY keyboard."

I may be mistaken, but I don't think that the two are comparable.

The patent which includes the QWERTY key layout is focused on the engineering specifics of one particular implementation of a mechanical keyboard. Sholes, the inventor, wasn't trying to claim a patent on "pressing keys to apply ink to paper", or even "rapidly pressing multiple keys". That had all been done before.

This seems very different from today's "user interface" patents, most of which seem to be a thin layer of design laid atop someone else's actual invention. Which is not to user interfaces are unimportant, just that they should not be patentable.

"Choose freedom first and interested parties will take care of attributes like security, ease-of-use, and compatibility over time."

You've made a common mistake, assuming that a particular combination of open-source "freedom" and the vague concept of "technical superiority" are the most important factors in everyone's decision-tree.

If you are willing to sacrifice your time and productivity waiting for "interested parties" to smile upon you, then that's fine. That's one valid point of view, but it's silly to insist that it should be everyone's point of view.

I have no problem with this. The state of Washington is not $2.8 billion in debt because corporate taxes are too low or because Microsoft makes too much money. The state government is in debt because they insist on spending vastly more money than they actually have available. The state could take every single penny MS owns and they'd soon find themselves back in the exactly the same situation, looking for someone else's money to take.

Creating a hostile environment for employers only encourages them to leave your state and set up shop somewhere else. Like another state where they're not punished for being successful.