No, he's referencing the idea that authorities would rather shoot the plane down than let it crash into something important.

Which rises a question of whether it's possible to prepare specifically for this sort of thing. For example, could one have a missile/chaff specifically designed to choke a jet non-explosively and use towing cables to drag the plane somewhere it could be allowed to glide down? That would give the passengers maximum chances of survival while protecting ground population.

New threats call for new methods of dealing with them.

Get back under your bridge... troll.

Thank you for your well-reasoned analysis of the problems with binary-only drivers on Linux, and why my misgivings about them arenot only unfounded but must be a case of arguing in bad faith. Your contribution to the discussion has enlightened us and enhanced the human condition.

I would go with an nVidia consumer card.

...On Linux?

140 characters ISN'T ENOUGH! That's not enough to say anything of substance.

140 chars is enough for a pithy soundbyte. Those pay better than analysis. Blog if you want to write a manifesto.

with width and height specified (via CSS, of course)

...Why? Width and height of an image are functions of its content and have nothing to do with style. What do you gain by specifying them separately from the IMG tag itself, apart from more complexity (and probably slower page loads due to the need to download and parse more CSS)?

Children, people banned for the more serious traffic offences, the blind and poor sighted, and older people who fail the driving re-test they must take periodically. How they get around is their own problem.

How children get around is usually their parent's problem, actually. And it quickly becomes my problem if the group who cannot drive becomes large, since that means they cannot get to work. Guess who's going to pay for either their upkeep or the security force needed to keep them from rioting?

I understand it's fashionable to display a near-sociopathic lack of empathy nowadays, but it can very quickly cross over into sheer stupidity, and usually does.

One solution is not to live somewhere they can only reach by driving a car. I live in a remote area and I accept that one day, when I get old, I might have to move into a city.

Choosing where you live requires resources, which requires income, which in practice requires being able to drive or hire someone who can. Which gets us back to large amounts of people being prevented from driving very quickly becoming my problem.

You know, when something says that we are so close to destruction for over half a century... well you have to wonder why anyone would put any stock in it. It is a bit hard to reconcile with being on the edge of destruction, and yet everything continuing to not be destroyed.

Did you know the most dangerous drivers are not those who have just gotten their license, but those who have had a bit of experience? The reason is that new drivers are all too aware that they're one bad decision away from being gruesomely killed, while those who have driven for a while let their guard down because "nothing's happened so far, so nothing ever will".

This is true for dangerous acitvities in general. Someone who's handling boiling acid for the first time will make damn sure to think what they're doing. Someone who's done it a hundred times is busy thinking what they'll be having for lunch. And then acid gets somewhere it shouldn't, and suddenly things get very exciting again.

We haven't been destroyed because we've been very lucky. During Cuban missile crisis American ships actually dropped depth charges on a nuke-carrying Russian submarine. The captain and the political officer were all for launching it in retaliation, but the idea was vetoed by Vasili Arkhipov. And it's not the only time humanity's fate has hung on the decisions of a single person.

And of course this is all ignoring the possibilities of, say, biological warfare advancing technology is bringing to within reach of even non-state actors. You may not have noticed, but some of these actors are nowhere near as rational nor benevolent as the Soviet Russia of old.

Finally, the dawning of the Information Age is challenging whole new facets of human capacity for evil. Hypocrisy is quickly becoming impossible as privacy continues to erode. At the same time, anonymity serves to strip away pretensions of civility and expose the grinning skull beneath all too many faces. With Industrial Age, the choice was "cease warring or die"; with Information Age it's "stop being hypocrites or have your souls crushed". Given that it took two world wars to get humanity to the point where we had any chance to survive harnessing the power of the atom, I shudder to think what it'll take to prepare us for omnipresent computation.

We're running a gauntlet, a purgatory forcing us to choose between our shadow or increasing amounts of pain. Every aspect of our existence is being confronted by its shortcomings like never before, for there are no more second chances. Humanity will either demonstrate it has mastered its dark side before it will master nature and reach the stars, or it will send itself to oblivion so more worthy beings might inherit them instead. It's not two minutes to midnight, it's Judgement Day.

for backwards compatibility with C (IMO Vala does better -- YMMV)

If this is a priority, why not just use C?

But it does a reasonable job of "good enough" on all three fronts, and that is what has made it so enduringly popular over the last few decades.

Or, more cynically, it's simple enough to pick up basics fast yet has enough complexity to take years to master and an endless amount of obscure gotchas for true gurus to demonstrate their superiority. In other words, once it got adopted it helped establish a pecking order of programmers, who then have every incentive to keep it popular to protect their investment and the resulting status.

There is no field of human activity where psychology didn't rule supreme.

Or, as a more serious DIY solution, use a 3D printer to make a new case for a regular mouse. Isn't home manufacturing customized items pretty much the ideal scenario for them?

You don't have a right to be able to afford anything. At least in any society beyond pure communism - which has never existed in groups of more than say, 100.

That is untrue. For example, food stamps are all about ensuring everyone can afford food.

Also, Cold War is over and you won. Congratulations. However, it also means that the Red Scare is no longer an effective rhetoric. Get over it already.

Driving isn't a right, it's a privilege.

No, it's not. Like the parent said, it's a necessity. Banning people from doing whatever they must to survive is neither effective nor reasonable. All you get is yet another class of outlaws. Who'll be driving the cheapest, most dangerous cars they can find, should "automatic impoundment" actually become a rule.

I've paid for that privilege my entire adult life, maintaining my registration, my insurance, and my license despite having no at-fault accidents. I expect others to do the same.

But they won't. You can punish them or try to minimize the damage caused by them, but not both. Such is life.

There are clear lines between what is personal and what affects the job. If you take drugs it'll likely affect your work and health costs (still somewhat paid for by the company) - that means the company has a valid interest.

And of course, since me breaking my leg will cost the company in the form of training a replacement, at the very least, it has a valid interest to keep me from going skiing, too. Not to mention my vote - a company is affected by legislation, thus it has a valid interest to make sure I vote for whoever it tells me to vote.

Just because a company has a "valid interest" in some matter doesn't mean it has any business putting its proverbial nose there. Companies exist to serve people, not the other way around.

OTOH, your private emails (or facebook posts) between family and friends has very little to no affect on the company - therefore they don't have any valid need for access to it.

And this is downright absurd. Of course your personal relationships affect your work performance. But you have them so they're off limits.

It's the dishonesty, even moreso than the authoritarianism, of the anti-drug movement that bothers me.

Sounds like you feel entitled to that job...

I wonder if you would give the same answer for, say, mandatory hymen inspections as a condition for employment?

People are entitled to have their private lives, and accepting any kind of end run around that means no one's rights are every going to be safe.

So a company doesn't have to assume you are innocent at all, as neither does your friends, family or random person in the street.

If a company chooses to take upon itself law enforcement, it should bloody well expect to be held to the same standard.

I'm guessing you don't like the sound of a nicely tuned motorcycle engine too, right?

All of us don't need to bother other people just to confirm our own existence. Which is what noisy engines ultimately amount to.

Also, it's hard to take concepts like "nicely tuned motorcycle engine" seriously when the first image that comes to mind is a high schooler who's moped gets 2 hp at 200 decibels.

because some substances/ items actually cause harm and have no fucking reason to be in civil society

That can become a convenient excuse to justify forcing your personal preferences on other people. And if "civil society" reaches beneath my skin to claim ownership on my very body itself, it's hard to avoid thinking it as pretty totalitarian.

the concept of freedom?

completely untouched by this simple truth

That is an absurd claim. Of course freedom is affected by regulations. The question is whether a given set of regulations achieves goals worthy of the sacrifices it requires. Which, I suppose, is easy to answer if you, personally, aren't being called to sacrifice any activity you'd like to partake in.

we, society, LIKE restrictions on, for example, kiddie porn.

Yes, we do. We, as a society, are addicted to power and enjoy wielding it. That does not make such lording over others right. If anything, this particular addiction has caused more misery than all others combined.

this is where you get really mad at me and compare me to an authoritarian freedom crushing "statist" goon... just because i don't want people freely trading in kiddie porn or heroin. which would make you a brainless teenaged drama queen. let's hope you're not

Your entire argument is just one long appeal to authority, mixed with think of the children and with a little bit of an argument from intimidation at the end. You are an authoritarian, or if you prefer, a power addict.

As for trading "kiddie porn or heroin", these are very different and quite obviously so. Heroin is a chemical substance the production or use of which does not imply harm to anyone or anything except the user. A society might seek to ban it on those grounds, but current one jails addicts so its hard to take seriously it's concern over them. And that doesn't really leave many reasons other than a power trip.