and restricting access to the DNA that would let drug cartels reproduce them

One problem there - Humans contain the DNA for producing morphine. It works so well precisely because out body already uses it to regulate our natural pain response.

You could ask the same about why a US dollar has a higher value than a Mexican Peso.

Whoever used bitcoin is on a watch list.

Would you like some Taco Bell to go with your paranoia?

FWIW, that'd make for a preeety long list at this point... The feds might do better just using the phone book.

I believe the correct response to extremist right wing guff like this is "fuck off to Somalia then you retard".

As a liberal, do you actually approve of your tax dollars funding the killing of brown people on the other side of the planet because something something terrorism ?

download the file, pay $3.49 for it, and print it at home

Umm, no, nice try - I don't pay the original manufacturer to fix their own defective merchandise for them. I would expect them to host files like that entirely for free, the same way PC hardware makers currently let you download drivers.

Of course, I don't actually expect them to do so; but that matters not at all, since countless other sources will.

If you want to arrive unmolested you might try not taking part in an ongoing criminal conspiracy.

Unfortunately, I pay taxes in the US, thereby providing material support to a terrorist organization.

Easy to say "just don't do it", not so easy to spend a few years in Club Fed for resisting the IRS' annual shake-down.

Strange - This exact exchange has happened around a dozen times in this discussion already.

Read the Fucking Article. It bluntly says as much.

(* 25 * $2.5M = $62.5M, $62.5M - $53M (the amount they already have) = $9.5M still needed)

Try another $522M - The FP's "$2.5 million" counts as an extremely misleading number from someone with an obvious agenda. That $2.5 million literally only covers bandwidth and electricity; WMF actually has an annual budget of almost 10x that, $23M.


Okay, so you're saying that Wikipedia will raise another $9.5 million* and then stop, right? If they do that, then I won't complain.

Would they stop begging for donations if someone handed them a check for half a billion tomorrow? I can't say even if they should... That would depend on whether they have aspirations to make the WMF something even bigger and currently just don't have the funding to take it to the next level. If not, then yes, I'd like to think they would invest it and operate off the proceeds.

Realistically though, it amounts to a moot point. They won't ever reach that level of funds in reserve; but the closer they get, the more their investment yield reduces the need for immediate donations on a quarterly basis.

which should focus not only on biology and safety, but also on emotions, physical contact and romantic relationships.

Yeah, that will certainly encourage boys to turn down what they perceive as a superior good (porn). Let's make them directly confront aspects of sexuality that even adult males try to minimize, in a context with the highest potential to lead to embarrassment in front of their peer group, at an age when they still haven't even figured out the basic logic of "to date a girl, ask her out".

They have annual expenses of roughly $23 million (do you go to work for free every day?), not just the $2.5 they spend to physically keep the lights on. That makes their current position comfortable but still not self-sustaining.

Realistically, they need 13+ times that much in investments to have a self-sustaining income stream.

Yes, they most certainly do. Every nonprofit on the planet has the long-term goal of having an endowment large enough that they can focus on their core mission rather than bullshit fundraising drives. In order to do that sustainably, they need to have an endowment approximately 25x their annual operating budget, plain and simple.

Nonprofits still function as corporate entities that need to pay the bills, they just don't have - as you might infer from their name - "profit" as their primary mission.

I have my objections to Wiki's policies (primarily editorial), but the fact that they have targeted a self-sustaining endowment, I don't fault them for - Quite the opposite, I give them credit for actually having a viable business plan. Yes, "business plan" - Nonprofits still need one of those, like it or not.

Perhaps your assumptions about what devices people own don't hold for everyone.

Quite right! I clearly made a grave error in assuming the average Slashdotter as an American and not a Luddite. Mea culpa.

If you live in the US, your cell phone also has one as required by law. You may not have access to it, but 911 and the police do.

I find it odd that "1-2" has the most votes - I have to suspect many people have no idea how many GPS receivers they really have.

Your phone has one. Your tablet probably has one. Some laptops and even PCs have one. Your digital camera probably has one. Any newer car has one (whether it has a nav system or not). Your nav system obviously has one (possibly shared, possibly separate from the car's). I would expect just those alone to easily push the baseline up to 3+.

And that doesn't even get into niche products like toy "drones". Between me and my housemate, I would estimate my household owns no fewer than 9 GPS enabled devices (and I've probably missed a few), and only one of them actually takes the form of a handheld dedicated GPSr.

Are you claiming that suicide == homicide?

Hoplophobes like to include suicide stats in that number because it makes their argument look somewhat better - As though someone deciding to end their own life via a fairly effective method somehow magically also endangers random children and strangers in a 10-mile radius around them.

Some even go further and claim that guns make you more likely to try to kill yourself (as opposed to merely more likely to succeed, two radically different concepts that they don't quite "get") - Because my sweet, sweet lord Satan tempts me with lullabies from the barrel, no doubt.

The whole argument, however, counts as inherently unwinnable by either side. Oh, no, wait - The pro-2nd-amendment side wins by default. Go team! XD