Show that the level of false positives/negatives is higher with genetic testing than with conventional testing, and you might have a point. Otherwise, alarmist "OMG MY BREASTS!" scare mongering.

Correct, but -- again -- irrelevant unless the error rate is higher than in hands-on testing that's currently being used.

Ahh...THERE it is. We can't have patients going around getting informed about what's in their own bodies and making decisions based on that information. That's the purview of PROFESSIONALS.

Kind of like auto mechanics telling you they're the only ones that should be allowed to read the OBD messages from your car.

No, GIMP was doing that by itself without any help from Sourceforge. I've used some good OSS/FOSS alternatives to commercial software, but GIMP is a clunky, counter-intuitive mess.

I gave GIMP a solid college try -- I tried to use it for a VERY straightforward project: create a banner image out of several photos faded and alpha-blended together on the sides (something like this or this).

Starting from scratch, I downloaded GIMP and, using included help and any external tutorials I could find, got 1-1/2 hours into the project having accomplished precisely nothing of value and getting frustrated to the point of literally screaming at my screen.

Before you deride me for blaming someone else for my incompetence -- when I then fired up a computer with Photoshop (CS4 or 5, I believe it was) and started from exactly the same scratch (I had never done this sort of thing before), I had the entire project finished in under an hour, and actually understood the logic behind what the application wanted from me. It wasn't without its frustrations, but it enabled me to get my work done. Which is what a program needs to do in order to be a "legitimate piece of professional software". GIMP is a legitimate piece of something else -- SF or no SF.

The problem here is you (well, us) as consumers. We not only want FOSS, we want delivery to be free, too -- without regard for the fact that the infrastructure to facilitate that delivery actually takes tangible resources (i.e. money, not just developer time) to operate.

So, in effect, we the consumer base are CHOOSING this advertising model. If you were willing to pay $0.25 to Sourceforge every time you downloaded a program or code tree from them, you could make a reasonable demand for SF to do away with the stupid ad shenanigans. But you're not. Even if you personally are, the user base as a whole has gotten accustomed to delivery being "free" and now demands it. And since it's not actually free, sites like SF have to find a way to stay solvent.

The "bad actors" here are consumers of free stuff who get their panties in a bunch whenever the silver platter that their free stuff is served on is even the slightest bit tarnished.

Except how many gasoline-powered cars have actually caught fire through the mechanism you describe? Would be an interesting comparison. If the sort of debris impact we're talking about has happened to 3 Teslas out of a mere 21,500 in just a couple of years, you can bet it happens to conventional cars pretty regularly.

My guess is that gasoline-powered cars are more likely than Teslas to catch fire under different kinds of circumstances, but that a Tesla is more likely to catch fire by being hit by roadway debris because the batteries cover much more surface area under the car than the profile of the gas tank and the thin fuel lines on a conventional vehicle

Because ISPs can't charge you $X/month for easy-to-deliver service in the city while charging your uncle in Glasgow, Montana $20X/month because his is harder and more expensive to provide.

Kind of like the USPS - it costs them less than $0.46 to deliver a letter from New York to Chicago, but a lot more than $0.46 to deliver one from Corona, NM to Reedsburg, WI. Since they can't (either by law or by popular acceptability) charge more for the more expensive service, the lower-cost markets subsidize the higher-cost ones to make up the difference in cost-of-delivery. Same thing with ISPs - there's a lot more miles of cable to lay and maintain to connect rural areas. In contrast, France, Britain, South Korea, etc. don't have to wire rural areas to nearly the extent the US does.

It's not like Tesla has become a profitable company and paid off this loan with the spoils of its success. To date the company has had one profitable quarter, to the tune of $11.2M -- made *entirely* from the sale of ZEV credits (a freebie from the government), not cars.

The only reason that Tesla feels it can afford to sink its investment capital into this PR move is because it learned form the 2008 crash that when car companies say "jump", Washington says "how high?", so it knows it's a safe bet -- i.e. if/when Tesla finds itself in trouble because it overextended to pay off the loan, Uncle Sam will bail it out.

Only if people who belong to that group have actually been shown to be "more likely to try to dodge taxes". Do you have proof of that, or at least legitimate evidence?

It's one thing to be "out and proud" and march in the annual Gay Pride parade. It's another thing entirely to publish a f*cking map, with names and addresses, of where all the gay people in the state live.

Similarly, if I'm not mistaken, car registration is public information. And you might be quite proud of your Ferrari. But I'll wager a nickel you'd be pretty pissed if someone published a detailed map with the name and address of every Ferrari owner (including you) in your state. You know, to allow prospective homeowners to know which neighborhoods are "wealthier"...

So, in other words, data about climate change is only legitimate if it points to dire straits. Got it.

Question for you and other CC hardliners: How is it that any claim of political play in AGW promotion is dismissed as right-wing hyperbole, but doggedly insisting that ANY climate data that casts doubt on the World-Will-End-In-Hellfire hypothesis is politically driven is somehow valid?

You'd be surprised how many average people the KGB was rich enough to assign agents to.

The sad thing is that there are people who actually thought such a plan could be effective. The even sadder thing is that there are people who still do. The spirit of Neville Chamberlain is alive and well in the collective psyche that governs British policy.

I'm sorry...it's the POLICE who are insulting the memory of those who died to protect our freedom?

And unlike Steve Jobs, he first put it there himself, and only "saved" it by pissing in his investors' and customers' pockets and telling them it was raining.

...Which might be forgivable, if he had put himself as far out on a limb as he put them. He didn't; through the process of milking his investors (big and small), he managed to hold on to almost every penny of his personal multi-billion-dollar fortune. And frankly, even THAT could have been forgivable, had he not also leveraged the Department of Energy for an additional $465 million of taxpayer funds.

Ostensibly this was a loan; realistically, with an anticipated total market of 1 million electric cars by 2015 (the DOE invested in 2009), even if every one of those came from Tesla, it would have to pay almost $500 from the sale of *every car* to pay this "loan" back. Hell, they finally made the FIRST payment on this loan this month after more than 3 years. How? Not from being profitable. Not even from being frugal. From a $200-million influx of investor cash, which investors are only putting up because they know it's all but secured by the US government (having seen how Washington says, "How high?" when Detroit says, "Jump.") -- in other words, if (rather, when) they don't pay that money back, you and I will.

Screw Elon Musk. I'll happily let the Brits get a head start on private-sector space travel if it means we don't have to reward the fetid values and practices on which Musk builds his vision.

Right about both of those "mentally unhinged people" being Islamic terrorists. In both cases Fox was one of the first networks to report on the religion of the perpetrators, and certainly the first to call it out as a relevant factor in the attacks. Every other (major) news outlet initially either glossed over their religious affiliation, sidelined it as tangential, or omitted it entirely under the guise of not knowing. The fact is they did know, and it was relevant.

You will no doubt say this only shows bigotry on the part of Fox News and caution from everyone else, and/or that Fox was right "accidentally"; I say it shows a lack of integrity on the part of other outlets in not saying what's clear but uncomfortable until someone else says it (and bears the brunt of the public backlash) first.