The House of Representatives is "the people's house". That's why they stand for election every 2 years. And that's why all tax bills must originate in the House. Now, of course, that has been thoroughly subverted both by Gerrymandering and by Senate workflow (amend some House bill to replace all the text with a tax bill - see, it originated in the House!). But still, that was the clear intent.
 

And you probably get more noticeable gain in audio quality by acoustically treating your listening room. What good is a set of expensive speakers when the environment makes the sound crappy?

MOTU, RME Hammerfall, Pro Tools, Mackie. Or a cheap hobbyist like me uses Presonus, M-Audio, or Behringer. These sound interfaces feature TRS or XLR balanced 3-conductor connectors and cabling that are more resilient to RF noise. Sound Blaster cards offer only RCA 2-conductor which is a joke on the audiophiles.

This is the other kneejerk response to any suggestion of reduced government spending that needs to die forever.

1 - How about we cut government spending in some are other than the tiny percentage spent on protecting people against corporate abuse?

2 - We have a system in place for this. The problem with it is not that it's underfunded, but that it's been corrupted by the very corporations it tries to regulate! Arguably, stuff like the DMCA shows that more harm than good is done in some areas, thanks to this. This is perhaps the most serious problem in internal politics in America today but it's not in any way a funding problem.

Both times I lived in areas with high temps and humidities, no one even had a basement. When you're near the coast, and near sea level (typical of high humidity areas), underground anything is right out.

Government, police, etc will always be corrupt. Always. People are people. The only defense is to give them just barely enough resources to do their job, with no excess or space for overreach. It's all about taxes - taxes are the only practical weapon the common voter has against government overreach, and the Constitution was written with this fundamental truth firmly in mind.

Of course, of all of Congress there are but a handful of congresscritters who actually are for less government spending, and usually the voter's choice is merely between which group of supporters the tax money will go to. That's a cultural problem in the US, and we can't begin to fix it until every call for lower taxes stops being dismissed with "you anarchist and probable racist, why do you want 0 government".

Fixing the problem starts with popular acceptance of the idea that one can say we're sending too much without being some extremist calling for the end of government. Less does not mean none - spread the word!

It is legal because there is no Law against it.

Everything is legal that is not prohibited by a Law.

Laws are a blacklist, not a whitelist, just like the Constitution is a blacklist of things government is not allowed to do, not a whitelist of things Citizens ARE allowed to do.

Never seen an evangelical mega-church? You don't pass 10k members by without a lot of up-with-people let's-celebrate. But then again, they barely mention Jesus, and certainly don't mention sin - wouldn't want to offend anyone in the audience after all. But then, that's exactly why the fundies hate the evangelicals.

There are a couple of big religions that grew during medieval times, and so are very feudal in their structure, with God as the king-of-kings, and humility and suborning one's will to him are the key to salvation - this was after all the fundamental basis of feudal society. But that's just a handful of religions. Pantheistic religions have a different model. Religions without a deity seem to actually focus the most on humility for some reason, and like support your argument the best. But there sure are a variety of religions out there!

Predicting that x86 would go away was more wishful thinking than anything else. At the time, Intel had just switched from pushing the i960 to pushing the i860 and would later push Itanium as x86 replacements (their first attempt at producing a CPU that it was impossible to efficiently compile code for, the iAPX432, had already died). Given that Intel was on its second attempt to kill x86 (the 432 largely predated anyone caring seriously about x86), it wasn't hard to imagine that it would go away soon...

I found Modern Operating Systems better than the Minix book. The Minix book tells you exactly how a toy OS works in detail. Kirk McKusick's Design and Implementation of the FreeBSD OS (new version due out in a month or two) tells you how a real modern OS works in detail. Modern Operating Systems gives you a high-level overview of how modern operating systems work and how they should work. If you want to learn about operating systems, I'd recommend reading the FreeBSD D&I book and Tanenbaum's Modern Operating Systems and skipping the Minix book (which was also a bit too heavy on code listings for my tastes).

Minix has been BSD licensed for well over a decade. I'm not sure exactly how long, but it was when I was an undergrad and that was a depressingly long time ago now. As the kids today say: Old troll is old.

While this is true, it's worth noting that a lot of the compartmentalisation and sandboxing ideas that most of the userland programs on OS X employ (either directly or via standard APIs) have roots in microkernel research. OS X is in the somewhat odd situation of having userspace processes that are a lot more like multiserver microkernels than its kernel...

This is confusing in Brussels, because there is Université libre de Bruxelles (Free University of Brussels), but there is also Vrije Universiteit Brussel (Free University of Brussels), a different university.

Objection: relevance.

These other things are not the topic of discussion. They are just red herrings to distract from the fact that the US appears to have acted in a civilized manner this time.

Civilized behavior should not be swept under the rug because you have a hate-on for some particular country. Your nonsense undermines the positive reinforcement that encourages good behavior and discourages bad behavior.

Doesn't matter if it's the US or Hezbollah.

"In order to ensure our security and continuing stability, the Republic will be reorganized into the first Galactic Empire, for a safe and secure society which I assure you will last for ten thousand years."

-- Emperor Palpatine