You mean, the governor who defended Texas by sending in the Texas National Guard and preventing the US military from taking over? Because I'd stake money that True Believers think that's exactly what happened.

To clarify, I am not a True Believer.

Yes, thank you. There is no reason whatever that my non-technical family members should be able to easily not update their computers. They don't have the technical knowledge to make an informed decision other than "yes, please".

I'm not jo_ham, but I just did that and got about 270Kbps through Apple Music streaming.

But the thing is that I like my MacBook. It has its tradeoffs but everything does. My problem is that his statement implies that everyone else has been doing it wrong, and that only he is qualified to judge what's Good Enough, as though sound quality is the foremost or even only concern. Since pretty much no human has the audio sensitivity required to affirm his statements, it's just insulting to everyone who isn't him - or at least it would be if anyone took him seriously.

Ironically, enjoyment of music has very little to do with sound quality and much more to do with music, lyrics, and listening environment. If the audio fidelity were as important as he claims, then no one would be buying junk formats like vinyl. But yet, some people enjoy the tactile process of damaging their audio media as little as possible with their inherently destructive hardware, and that's an important part of their listening experience. Music isn't about bullshit concepts like "staging" and "presence", but about the enjoyment of the whole package. Focusing on one relatively small aspect of it misses the whole point, which is why it blows me away that Neil Freaking Young is making that mistake.

And more to the point, does it matter?

A 256Kbps AAC is objectively equal to CD sound quality, as confirmed by double-blind test after test. Furthermore, a huge portion of listeners will be hearing your angel's choir over cheap-ass ear buds or crap laptop speakers. Maybe you have a golden ear and can tell the difference between a CD and a FLAC file (are those good enough for you, or do they lack the sharp ones and smooth zeros of the digital masters?). Maybe you're not actually a delusional once-great who has lousy hearing and permanent tinnitus after years of playing rock concerts, and, well, being almost 70. Maybe your home hi-fi (do you still call it that?) was hand-wired by a wizened master of recording engineering fame. Maybe you have your own private anechoic chamber so you're not exposed to anything but the pure and sweet sounds of your own singing. But the rest of us listen to normal-person music with a dynamic range that's been shot to hell in the loudness wars, via normal-person audio formats, through normal-person digital-to-analog converters, into normal-person speakers, in a normal-person environment with kids playing and horns honking and dogs barking and coworkers chattering.

Your music, pristine to the heavens though it may be, sounds no better than Miley Cyrus when piping out of my MacBook. You've become a crotchety old curmudgeon trying to remain relevant to those kids who won't stay off your lawn, and maybe it's time to sit down with a hot cup of keep your yap shut and enjoy a nice book.

Good day, sir.

And 10240 = 10100000000000, which has 12 zeros, and 1+2=3. Half Life 3 confirmed.

Well, Texas has to take pride in something because their barbecue never was up to snuff. #KansasCity

And your example does nothing to prove your statement. I'm a graduate of public schools and I'm doing just fine.

"You'd also be able to move to cities that didn't have it"

Then why did segregation in the south exist for 100 years after slavery ended? The problem with this libertarian approach to civil rights is that we have just thousands of years of experience showing it doesn't work.

" If this was true then that would mean that two people who independently interpreted the law would come to the same conclusion."

No, that's why I said "it's hard to make that way."

Also, criminal law is overwhelmingly written in a manner where most educated people can understand it. If you don't believe, check out your state's criminal statutes.

That already happens.

Legal language has developed over hundreds of years to be as unambiguous as it can be, and even then it's hard to make that way. Starting over with non-experts and we'd end up with a lot of very vague laws with a lot more loopholes.

Annotated statutes have that (not the individual who introduced it, but that information is easy to find out).

"Case in point, recently a student was suspended for nibbling a toaster pastry into the shape of a gun."

One case does not prove anything. That's like saying nobody could plausibly leave their house because someone got struck by lightning once doing that.