I actually have a credit card through Citibank and another through Discover. I have maintained the Citibank card since around 1990 (I got it my first year in college and it was my first credit card) and the Discover card for over 15 years. The reason it's basically a free ride for me is because of the fees they collect from the sellers. The credit cards are paid off automatically through electronic fund transfer from my credit union checking account (again, no fees). I have never had a credit card canceled on me and I maintained a credit rating of around 800 with no loans and never an outstanding balance.

You need to research the different cards that are available.

By paying off a credit card every month I am not paying any fee to use my money. In this case the seller is paying the fee and I collect on the benefits. On one card I earn cash back and on the other I earn airline miles which I have used to fly all over the country with very little out of pocket for the tickets (mostly various airline fees and taxes). I don't pay one cent for the use of my credit card. I don't pay interest or fees. In my case, the sellers are paying the credit card fees, not me. I'm basically getting all of the benefits at no cost to me being paid by the companies I purchase from.

The scam is when you end up paying fees to use a credit card or when you don't pay it off and pay obscene interest rates. I could see someone doing that on a rare occasion like an emergency, but it should be paid off as soon as possible. Carrying debt for the sake of carrying debt on a credit card is stupid. I have never done this and always had a very high credit score.

All of my regular banking is through my credit union where I do not pay any fees to use my money. I don't pay ATM fees at any other credit union (and they'll reimburse me for any). The more I hear about banking through the big banks the more disgusted I am.

There is nothing wrong with using credit and loans as long as they are used responsibly. All of my cars up until my latest one were paid with cash. When I could get a 2% interest loan for my latest car it made a lot more sense to get a loan than to pay cash. If I can earn more than 2% on my savings then I am ahead. That's easy to do today. In the case of my house I did everything I could to pay of the principal as fast as I could. I also use my credit card for most things but I always pay it off in full every month. That way I get all of the benefits and protections it offers and none of the downsides. While I may have a car loan I certainly do not feel that I am in debt, especially when my savings exceeds my debt and is earning more than the debt is costing me in interest. I could pay off the loan any time I want to but it is in my best interest not to.

I find that there are more benefits to using a credit card and paying it off every month than just plain cash. For one thing, I earn bonuses and have flown for free all over the country using them. Second of all, if there is a dispute it gives me far more leverage. Third, in a number of cases it offers me a better warranty. There is nothing inherently wrong with credit cards as long as they are used responsibly. I ALWAYS pay it off every month so I never pay any interest or fees to use it. It saves me from always hitting the ATM machine, many of which charge an obscene amount of money to use. I can get reimbursed for the fees through my credit union but it's always a pain to have to always enter in the amount of fees I pay for a transaction. I can also use my ATM card, but the protections on credit cards are far better than those of ATM cards. It's a lot easier to deal with someone getting my credit card number than if someone somehow steals my ATM card number and PIN, which has happened at a number of places in my area. One of the big grocery stores in my area had someone running a scam where they were stealing the ATM card numbers and PIN numbers and it's also happened at a number of gas stations and even ATM machines.

The few times I have had my credit card number stolen and used I never paid a cent in fees or anything else.

The credit score is based on credit. My score was quite high even though I never carried a balance and did not have any outstanding loans. Credit scores, sadly, do not look at savings. Years ago when I went to buy a house I had no problems getting a rather large loan at the time even though I had never had any other loan before in part due to my credit card usage because I always paid cash for my cars.

In time I eventually paid off my house. When I went to get my new car I ran the numbers and with the insanely low interest rates it was far more economical for me to get a loan for the car than to pay cash. Since the loan is at around 2% all I have to do is see if I can do better than 2% with my savings. If I can do that then I'm ahead and it makes more sense to get a loan.

Even though I have a lot of savings I use my credit card for most things. By paying it off every month I get all of the benefits without the downsides. Debt is not always bad. I could pay off my debt in an instant but it makes more economic sense not to as long as my savings is growing at a faster rate.

Yes. We are restricting your freedom to restrict freedoms of others.
In particular, we are imposing a very small restriction, which prevents you from imposing arbitrarily large restrictions on others.

Are you going to cry foul that the government is restricting your freedom to force people into slavery?

Swap file in RAM?
I always thought that's a kind of in-joke. Something like that marathon runner carrying bricks, so that he could drop them before the last mile for extra boost.

Usually the recharge times don't matter. I own a Tesla model S and sold my gas powered car. For most of my driving I just plug in at night and have the equivalent of a full tank every morning. It's only on long trips where the superchargers come in to play. I rarely bother with public charging stations since I don't need them. Now on long trips the superchargers come into the picture. In my last trip to Reno I stopped in Folsom to charge up. It took about 40 minutes during which time I got a nice lunch, took a bathroom break, etc while spending not a dime on fuel. Granted, more range is always better for long trips, but having to take a 30-40 minute break after several hours of driving is often a good thing.

The extra time spent waiting to charge during long trips is more than offset by the time not spent going to gas stations when most of my driving is under the range limits of the car. I typically spend 5 seconds plugging in at night and 5 seconds unplugging in the morning rather than several minutes at a gas station waiting in line and filling up.

There are plenty of car chargers out there like Chargepoint which basically use a RFID credit card. You wave the card in front of the charger to activate it and it bills your account for charging. They've had this for years.

How did he pronounce the asterisk?

...in 4.8.3. Then it resurfaced in 4.9.0 and .1

You're calling 'more liberal' 'more free'.
Doesn't work like that. How free is OS X (based upon BSD-licensed software)?

BSD is very permissive - to the point of permitting software being based on it ceasing to be free.

GCC is more restrictive, assuring both the license and the source spreads "virally" with the program, so the program never ceases to be free.

Amen to that.

Professionalism is primarily doing your job correctly.

Stuff like good behavior, dress code or good relations are all secondary to that.

If you lack in the latter cases, you may be in for a mild reprimand. If you regularly fuck up the former - oh well, Linux is unable to fire a GCC developer, so he goes for the next best thing in that situation.

Without root privleges, and with properly set up security?
Because of course there are things like 'drivers in the userspace' where the user can create a blocking function where one that's supposed to return immediately should go, and obviously these can hardlock the kernel. But you need root to do that.

There's more than technical merit to every product.
There's the price, the licensing, the support, the market, plus all these factors applied to dependencies (e.g. hardware your software is meant to run on.)

Bad management can snuff the most superior technological merit.