Whether you are religious or not, or believe in the existence of the leaders of these religions or not, or believe that there is corruption within the human organizations that run some of these religions or not; the country was founded on values that are consistent with those espoused by "real" religions (oh yes I did), and inconsistent with values tied to the concept of "Satan".

So I'm sorry, but: Satanists, shut up.

At some point, the common values of 98% of people do matter, even while protecting a reasonable freedom of anyone who wants to identify as a minority in some aspect of life. You DO draw a line at hate and violence, for example, regardless that a small minority wants to spread that. Their freedom stops when it goes against the most fundamental rights of everyone else.

That trashes the BS "economic" argument that the slashdot article claims. Most of the reasons in that post were wishy-washy or just plain BS.

In the modern world of auto-time-setting devices and instant information (google "time in new york"), there is no confusion caused by DST, certainly not economically harmful confusion.

The "minimal" energy savings, across a whole population, are still probably worth it on their own, but I agree with other posters that most of us would like light in the evening for a number of reasons (I hate shopping, but I strongly prefer keeping DST on all year round, if possible, even with a second hour added in the summer if you want). I'm in Southern Ontario (Canada, not California), and don't like the bright sun shining right through my curtains at 5:30am in June anyway.

I can sympathize - I think I'm a bit under 190 cm. (almost 6'2 - switching to imperial for largely American audience)

I just did a crude measurement of my femur with a ruler - from hip bulge to patella, it's 22.5 inches. + another 4 inches taken up by tailbone / skinny butt behind the hip ball. I have been on planes where I didn't physically fit - my knee pushed into the hard part of a seat in front of me - had to constantly sit on an angle. Very annoying.

I don't know if it's fair to equate height requirements with obesity, in terms of arguing who should pay extra. I'm skinny. I eat well (mostly) and exercise. Maybe a few obese people have medical reasons they can't control, but I believe conventional wisdom is that most such people got that way by making bad choices (yes, in large part due to marketing and the food mass-production system in North America, but they still made those choices).

There are plenty of ways tall people already have to suffer to accommodate shorter people - door handles and kitchen counters/sinks are too low, so it's literally a pain for us to navigate a building and do the dishes. If one thinks tall people should pay extra (over double) because of needing an extra inch of forward space, then fair is fair, the airlines should design variable or configurable row depths and ensure the seat in front of you is touching their short femurs, too. Save all that wasted space in front of short people!

I doubt the average body weight in the US is only 164 pounds. Are you averaging all people, right down to babies?

I think a better metric would be average body weight of a US adult. Or at least pick an age range that represents most flyers.

Sigh, can't find anything good when I have mod points a few days ago, and now this.

Original sig is absolutely correct: (except possibly by a fringe standard of morality that someone might claim to have, but that would quickly not hold up to the scrutiny of just about anyone)
"You do not have a moral or legal right to do absolutely anything you want."
and it makes a good point. I rather like it.

Just a random thought (not exactly OT for this subthread, but I had to find somewhere interesting to tack this on)

The cracking time today is irrelevant. How many years until a reasonable sized quantum computer comes out that can decode it in seconds? 10? 20 at the most?

+1000 !

I am an intelligent person (probably like most people here), and also extremely observant by anyone's standards, and I find that the majority of the time, at least one character of the captcha is so hard to read that I have a 50% chance at best of getting it right.

I agree with what you do with your kids, but surely you realize that it's overkill to "nuke it". Forcibly removing both parties would be a bit more palatable, but still, in practice, where would you put them? No, I'm sure the world powers have thought of these ideas and agreed that it's preferable to keep pushing for a more reasonable outcome, even if it has taken too long.

@RealTimeWWII has been doing this meme for years. I like it, fairly educational in a few ways. And relatively neutral.

Really? Do the math. How many BlackBerry users would you have to sell the app to in order to make enough money that those one or two days are worth your time. I don't know your app or its price, but surely a few hundred would easily make it worthwhile.

There are 80 million BlackBerry users and growing. You don't think you can sell even a few hundred copies out of 80 million users? Even if you make 10x more money on other platforms, it never hurts to add an extra few % to your bottom line.

I'm not sure what is so hard to understand. You have a phone lock password, which stands in for the client memorized password, as the "something only you know".

Unless you don't have a phone lock password, in which case you are explicitly stating that you don't give a shit about security at all...

Why don't I have mod points when I need them. It's a sad day for /. when the one by AC above scores lower than its troll parent.

I don't know why the one above went by AC, it's a great shut down of an insulting, not well thought out comment by... (oh my, user 137! - respect for that)... ok, maybe that's why someone went AC. Even though #137 made an ugly post, didn't want to make an enemy of someone in the top 200....

You care if you own a smartphone. The new BB10 browser from BlackBerry outperforms desktop browsers in HTML5, and runs on top of QNX, which is like a more stable, secure version of Linux. I'd like to see someone try to hack that, especially in comparison to Android and iPhone.

Good link above. If I had mod points....

But since I don't, I can reply: The one I wanted to chime in with was the former East Germany, or German Democratic Republic. It was hard for my parents to answer when a young me asked "but if the people there are trapped behind the iron curtain and also can't vote, why are they called Democratic?"