I have a free account from years and years ago. It still works as long as I visit a URL that they email once a month (of course, they deliberately make the URL unclickable, while there are other clickable URLs within the *same* email... seriously, guys, offer free or don't offer it, but don't be a dick about it)

What TFA doesn't make clear is whether they are ending the grandfathering of existing free accounts or ending the offering of new free accounts (something I thought they already did a few years ago). The wording they've used is ambiguous.

Thing is, fundamentalist Christians honestly believe the two are inextricably chained together and not mutually exclusive. Having grown up in a small and highly religious community, it was hammered into our heads constantly that one cannot be a good person without deference to their bearded sky friend.

Does he obsess and study and pour years of himself into a technological endeavor as the primary drive for creativity or career?

Last I saw, he was an actor hopping on the geek chic bandwagon, milking every last drop of minor fame from his Star Trek TNG days. Don't get me wrong, I don't think he's bad actor, but an MMORPG enthusiast and patron of pop sci-fi does not a nerd make.

No, quite the opposite. Your suggestion to make licensing more restrictive is misdirected. Driver training needs a serious overhaul so that licensing doesn't need to be restrictive. There are countries where everyone requires years of training and a multi-year probationary period before they can get behind the wheel without significant limitations; you don't actually get your full license until you're about 20 and regular re-testing is required after that.

Certainly, not everyone is capable of being a naturally-skilled driver; everyone has varying degrees of vehicular awareness and mechanical understanding. But with years of training and practice, and an attentive attitude towards driving, most people can become adequately skilled. The problem is that we don't mandate years of training. Our standard of pass-this-15-minute-test-in-non-real-world-conditions is woeful and pathetic.

Also notice I said that transportation should be a right, not driving. If that means that public transit needs to provided or subsidized at a loss to made up elsewhere, then that's what it means. Either we afford people rights and without removing the means to exercise them or we don't afford them the right at all, because it's equally meaningless.

Only on Slashdot will you see such a bizarre juxtaposition of rabid rights defenders -- to the point of saying that sometimes people need to die in order to uphold our civil rights and freedoms -- who so quickly reverse course when it comes to driving. In a country where one is afforded the right to move about and take residence where they please and has thousands of small, remote communities (not everyone wants to live in a big city, y'know), transportation, by necessity, needs to be made a right. By the far the most practical and affordable way (to tax payers) is to license people to drive without unreasonable restrictions.

Slashdot will defend the rights of suspected *child molesters* on the basis that every citizen deserves civil rights until it can be justifiably determined to suspend some of them. But bad drivers? Pffft, fuck those guys!

You're as bad as everyone else with their pet rights you like to defend because they could conceivably come around to affect you.

You misspelled "minions of Satan"