They give me the source to some of the most useful (and beautiful) software on my machine, stuff that I use every day. And they ask nothing whatever in return. Even their website is handsome and has no advertising. And they have a sense of humor, that you seem to have trouble appreciating. It is a good thing.

Actually, I use some contributed patches and changed the header file myself a bit. But I don't seem to need to do any maintenance on these. On the very rare occasion that I install a new version, there doesn't seem to be a problem in applying the patches. But I can see where it might be. Also, I think that changing the source to configure is cool. As they say on their webpage, "Because dwm is customized through editing its source code, itâ(TM)s pointless to make binary packages of it. This keeps its userbase small and elitist. No novices asking stupid questions."

How come I use dwm but don't need to "maintain custom patches"?

When I said that "the government is not punishing her for speech" I meant speech in the general sense in which it is commonly used in discussions about the 1st amendment, not just vocalizations. Sorry if that wasn't obvious. I was replying to "The blogger was stripped of her right to freedom of the press" and to another claim that she was stripped of a "constitutional right." I'm still wondering why anyone thinks these things, especially as the government did not punish her in any way for any form of expression.

What does "those" refer to?

No, she wasn't. The government is not punishing her for speech.

And in those days, as now, if you libeled someone and they found out who you were and were wealthy enough to get a lawyer to go after you, you suddenly joined the ranks of the destitute. The shield laws providing extra protection to bona fide members of the press are a modern invention. This protection from lawsuits did not exist 200 years ago. This judge just doesn't think they apply to this "blogger".

Who got stripped of what constitutional right?

Didn't you read what the judge in the case said? It has nothing to do with whether the writer expresses an opinion.

How do you know that the screen she was looking at had anything to do with the scanner? Couldn't she have been looking at Facebook?

YouTube [i.e., Google] is already providing some of the censorship this guy is asking for. Perhaps not for him yet, but certainly for the Chinese and Pakistani governments and various Muslim groups. And not just for overseas consumption: much of this censorship applies to content served in the U.S.

Last time I went through the TSA's full body scanners, I looked at the woman watching the results.

With your x-ray vision? I thought the people viewing the images from the pornoscanners were supposed to be in a different room.

I often post from a position that is critical of Google. My karma goes from Excellent to Terrible to Excellent to Terrible

I've posted a handful of comments strongly critical of Google. Some of them were upvoted, and my karma never changed from "excellent." Maybe you were unlucky, or maybe there was something else about your comments that provoked this response.

Of course, some of us still can't moderate because we replied to The Post nearly a decade ago

What's that? I'm curious because for years, despite my "excellent" karma, I did not get mod points, after getting them a few times shortly after joining. This year I suddenly started getting mod points again. Very mysterious.

This is all depressingly familiar. I've made comments very similar to the parent's and received a similar barrage of weirdly hostile, obscenity-laced responses. He happens to be correct. Those who disagree just never learned how to use a computer. LaTeX is great. Word processors suck. And the last time I edited some video, I did it from the command line.