It's the amount a willing buyer and a willing seller will agree on if neither is under any external constraint (such as rent controls).

There is no such thing as "if neither is under any external constraint".

The very nature of "property" is that it is an external constraint created and enforced by the state. It's the state saying to the "owner", "Here is a piece of paper that says you own this thing. If anyone uses it without your consent, we will send men with guns to stop them," thus placing a constraint on everyone else.

but the rider for giving a simple speech includes such gems as "If you buy a captured wild parrot, you will promote a cruel and devastating practice, and the parrot will be emotionally scarred before you get it."

Way to take something out of context. To paraphrase what RMS is saying there: "I'd rather crash at a friendly person's house than stay at a hotel. But I'm allergic to cats, and dogs sometimes freak me out. Parrots are really cool though, and I'd love to visit a house with a parrot. But don't buy a parrot just to impress me, because having a parrot is a big deal, a big commitment, and if you do it wrong that's cruel. And meeting a sad parrot would not be fun."

A large part of what you're referring to as a "rider" is more of a list of hospitality considerations. It's socially awkward, sure, but it would take a really gifted person to maintain the sort of speaking schedule he does without writing up some advance care and feeding instructions.

Couldn't a machine exist like you that did the exact same things you'd do but wasn't conscious at all?

I don't think so, no. An organism that monitors and predicts its own state and the states of the members of its social group has a competitive advantage. When that process is complex enough, looping back to monitor and predict the process of monitoring and predicting -- and monitoring and predicting the process of monitoring and predicting the process of monitoring and predicting, and so on -- we call it consciousness. A machine that wasn't conscious wouldn't be monitoring and predicting its own state and the states of its social group in that complex, looping fashion, and so wouldn't do the exact same things.

Linux doesn't make your dick bigger.

No, and thank goodness for that -- why mess with perfection?

GNU/Linux and Android systems do, however, make your freedom bigger -- not perfectly so, but contrasted with the freedom-shrinking offerings from MS and Apple, Linux is a clear win.

And, more relevantly, on a tech site (this is still one, right?), we ought to expect people -- especially those who ask loaded questions -- to know that Linux is a kernel and is common to both GNU/Linux and Android systems (as well as a few other rarer OSes).

The problem is that generally, in the absence of any other agreement, the photographer owns the copyright to the image and can give that image to whatever site he or she chooses.

And that's the heart of the problem. We need to recognize that interesting photographs of people should be seen by default as a collaboration between the photographer and the subject, and ought not to be publishable without the subject's consent.

My life is an ongoing creative work, and photographs of me are derivatives of that work. A photo of me walking down a public street dressed normally might well fall under fair use, but not so for a photo for which I pose deliberately in all my creative awesomeness.

Guess who is the Constitutionally appointed authority on the Constitution?

Not the SCOTUS. They assumed that power for themselves with Marbury v. Madison.

i'm not talking all FOSS and this doesn't include Android...I'm asking specifically about the Linux OS

So, you want to know who runs Linux, and you don't know what Linux means. Facepalm.

My desktop runs Fedora, and my laptops run Ubuntu Studio, which are versions of the GNU/Linux OS. My Transformer, my no-name tablet, and my phones run Android, an OS based on Linux.

I also have one cheap second-hand laptop that runs Windows, bought only because I had to make precise changes to the layout of a Word doc for my book. Gross incompetence on the part of the person doing layout for my publisher.

I thought you meant the GRAs were having their beliefs enshrined in law and thus using state power to force their religion on others.

Civil marriage has nothing to do with religion. Your church is free to administer the sacrament of matrimony, or its equivalent, to whoever it likes. There are plenty of legally married hetero couples who are not married in the eyes of the Catholic church...few give a damn. Same sex marriage is no different. Doesn't interfere with anyone's religion.

Especially when the civil union would give the same legal protections as marriage.

No. You are in grievous error. Civil unions do not grant the same protections as civil marriage. They are a second-class sort of union, and are far more discriminatory than merely not being permitted to sit in the front of the bus.

I just don't see why people can't be polite while they disagree, instead of all of this jumping up and down and screaming.

"I like the music of Rick Astly." "I prefer the smooth sounds of Barry Mannilow." "Well, we disagree, but I see no reason to be polite about it."

"I would like to have equal rights under the law." "No. My religion teaches that you are subhuman scum." "Well, get the fuck out of my way because I'm taking equality anyway."

Some things you get to disagree about. Some things you don't. The legal equality of all human beings is in the later category.

Your'e free to assert that, but you're not really engaging in the debate.

There's not a debate in which to engage. Under the U.S. Constitution, states must grant equal protection of law to all citizens. That implies making civil marriage available to same-sex couples. When a person can't do something because of the shape of their genitals or the pretense or absence of a Y chromosome, ipso facto that's not equal treatment.

If you (general you, not aimed at DoofusOfDeath) disagree, you're simply wrong, the same as is you claimed that equal protection didn't apply to interracial couples. If you think same-sex couples should be discriminated against, you're a bigot,and debating bigots is as pointless as debating creationists or climate science denialists.

The legal and moral situation is no different than if a state tried to block interracial couples from marrying. Anyone who supports such efforts, including Eich, should be shunned by all decent human beings. Until such time as he issues a public apology and states he's renounced his bigotry, fuck him and the horse he rode in on.

it's about not having the same brain mapping as "normals"

Being different is not a disease. Pathologizing deviance from the statistical norm is a piss-poor idea.

Yes, some people do have an actual pathology. But the problem is broadening the diagnostic criteria, to the point where everyone can be suffering from some sort of "disorder".

Over 20 years ago I watched news video from California plowing a HUGE mountain of perfectly good, edible oranges into the ground.

Goes back a lot farther than 20 years -- there's a passage in The Grapes of Wrath that talks about perfectly good produce being destroyed in order to prop up prices:

The works of the roots of the vines, of the trees, must be destroyed to keep up the price, and this is the saddest, bitterest thing of all. Carloads of oranges dumped on the ground. The people came for miles to take the fruit, but this could not be. How would they buy oranges at twenty cents a dozen if they could drive out and pick them up? And men with hoses squirt kerosene on the oranges, and they are angry at the crime, angry at the people who have come to take the fruit. A million people hungry, needing the fruit- and kerosene sprayed over the golden mountains. And the smell of rot fills the country. Burn coffee for fuel in the ships. Burn corn to keep warm, it makes a hot fire. Dump potatoes in the rivers and place guards along the banks to keep the hungry people from fishing them out. Slaughter the pigs and bury them, and let the putrescence drip down into the earth.

There is a crime here that goes beyond denunciation. There is a sorrow here that weeping cannot symbolize. There is a failure here that topples all our success. The fertile earth, the straight tree rows, the sturdy trunks, and the ripe fruit. And children dying of pellagra must die because a profit cannot be taken from an orange. And coroners must fill in the certificate- died of malnutrition- because the food must rot, must be forced to rot. The people come with nets to fish for potatoes in the river, and the guards hold them back; they come in rattling cars to get the dumped oranges, but the kerosene is sprayed. And they stand still and watch the potatoes float by, listen to the screaming pigs being killed in a ditch and covered with quick-lime, watch the mountains of oranges slop down to a putrefying ooze; and in the eyes of the people there is the failure; and in the eyes of the hungry there is a growing wrath. In the souls of the people the grapes of wrath are filling and growing heavy, growing heavy for the vintage.

Android phones have Google lock-in

How is a device on which I can install CyanogenMod locked-in to Google? Please explain.

I REAL capitalism, when you screw over your customers, they leave you and go to the competition.

In REAL capitalism, companies acquire each other until there are only a handful (or only one) left, and there is no effective competition.