If I were to say, "that's clearly begging the question: where did she go?", and you assumed a definition of "assuming the conclusion of an argument" in that sentence, what would that even *mean*?

It would mean that your question assumes that she went someplace but that it hasn't been established that she has actually gone anywhere. It's kind of like the old question, "When did you stop beating your wife?" Not only does it assume that you are married it also assumes that at one time you were in the habit of beating her, neither of which facts are generally established before the question is asked.

But where the hell do you think I should plug in a few dozen dongles?

If they're built right, you daisy chain them. Back in the Good Old Days before USB, dongles were plugged into the printer port and each one had another parallel port on the back. That way, you could have as many dongles as you needed plugged in, and still use your printer. No reason you couldn't do that today, including having the last item in the chain being your USB printer.

Ethics and journalism do not belong in the same sentence without negation, e.g., "There is no ethics in journalism."

Shrug! For me, at least a much better game is Oh Hell. The fact that the number of tricks never equals the number available means that somebody is going set on every hand. Not only that, but a hand can change from being underbid (at least one trick nobody wants) to overbid (not enough available) in the middle of a hand without warning because a player can't make their bid and is trying to "take company."

Measuring the sides of a triangle only proves that it does or doesn't conform to the Pythagorean Theorem. To prove it, you must demonstrate that correctly describes all applicable triangles.

For that matter, how many Slashdotters remember Tommy any more? There's so, so much of yesterday's pop culture that's just been forgotten because today's youth just doesn't care. Of course, you and I grew up back when most of the movies you saw on TV were from the '30s or '40s, so we got exposed to it and (sometimes) learned to appreciate it whether we wanted to or not.

If you want to prove that a chimp deserves human rights, you don't name him Tommy, you name him Jerry.

Currently, our cable TV is TWC, because it's that or nothing. Our Internet is ADSL and that's fast enough for us. More important is the fact that I can't remember the last time our DSL was out unless all phone service was out, and our local company still believes in "9 9's uptime." It used to be well known that if your power and phone both went out in a disaster, your phone service would be back first, and our phone company still works that way. TWC's standard is "next business day" if they have to send somebody out, because that's good enough for TV, even though that means your cable Internet is out too. And, there are enough minor glitches and hangs on our TV service that I don't want to find out what their Internet service is like.

Many years ago I was a programmer. Then, I found myself doing tech support and got a big surprise: not only was I good at it, I liked doing it. Yes, I had my share of ID10T callers, but at the end of the day there was the great satisfaction of knowing that there were people out there who's days were better because they'd talked to me.

Now I'm retired, and instead of using Windows I use Linux. I belong to several tech support forums and mailing lists for Linux and for various FOSS programs I use and I spend part of every day trying to help others, both to keep my hand in and because I still find it satisfying to be of help. And, when needed, I report issues to my distro's Bugzilla and respond, as best I can, to requests for information because if I'm having this issue, others are too and even minor bugs need swatting. I may not have (and maybe never had) the coding skills to contribute code, but I can still give back to the FOSS community by helping others.

The shorter version: fuck Republican stupidity.

And this is what keeps getting you modded down: it's not your opinions, it's your absolute lack of common courtesy towards people who don't hold the exact same opinions as you do. Right now, you've been modded down as Flamebait, and rightfully, because you've expressed yourself in a manner guaranteed to insult everybody you disagree with, and make them even less likely to be persuaded by your post. If you want anybody to pay attention to you, you might consider being more civil and less eager to insult.

Back when I worked the polls in the '80s and '90s, California was using the punched cards. Not only did we have to keep and return all of the stubs, we had to destroy or deface all unused ballots as part of closing down the station. If there was a low turnout, this could be the longest part of the job as we used pencils or pens to write a big X across the face of each ballot to render it unusable.

I think you replied to the wrong post, but thank you anyway. FWIW, I too have worked the polls, back when we still used the punched cards. I won't say that it would have been impossible to stuff the ballot box back then, but I will say that the procedures required to run the precinct and close it up properly would have made it very hard, especially as members of the public were always allowed to watch it being done. My feeling is that as long as there's a verifiable paper trail that can be re-checked, the exact method isn't that important. I'd only be worried if voting were by touch-screen or something similar, with no other record kept.

They do the same thing here in Ventura County as well. I'm not sure, but it might be state-wide by now.

Federal sentencing guidelines almost never ask for "fully stacked" sentences.

The term you're looking for is "consecutively." Most of the time, all sentences are served "concurrently," or at the same time. On rare occasions, as you write, a judge will specify that the sentences be served consecutively, to keep an exceptionally bad felon behind bars for as long as possible. Of course, the prosecutor can always threaten to ask for consecutive sentences to bulldoze the defendant into accepting a plea.

...pleading innocence also doesn't prove said innocence...

No defendant ever pleads innocence, and I don't think that such a plea is even allowed. The plea is "not guilty," and for good reason: in order to avoid conviction with a plea of innocent, you'd have to prove that you didn't commit the crime, and it's exceptionally hard in most cases to prove a negative. "Not guilty" is used instead because you only have to persuade the jury that there's a reasonable chance that you are not, in fact, guilty. And, as far as the value of a confession, IANAL, but my understanding is that once you confess under oath, the law presumes that you did, in fact, commit the crime and that fact can be used against you in any later civil case. That's why some plea bargain agreements allow the defendant to plead "no contest:" they accept the punishment but don't officially confess to the crime, giving them a better chance in later court actions because they haven't either been proven guilty nor confessed to having done the crime.