And yet, Karl Marx got it wrong.... go figure.

I know I shouldn't feed the trolls, but get bent. The tired, debilitating Keynesian crapola that is causing the western world to take a swirly down the tubes needs a counter-argument.

I notice you don't bother to put anything down as a counter-argument, so I'm going to assume AC that you're a Statist Progtard.

And what do we say to progtards? Get bent.

Brave New World, Aldous Huxley
C.S. Lewis Space trilogy (Out of the Silent Planet, etc.)
Night, Eli Wiesel
On Anger, Seneca
The Road to Serfdom, Frederick Hayek
Free Speech for Me, but not for Thee, Nat Hentoff
Lawrence Lessig (Free Culture and any of his others.)
2001: A Space Odyssey (great movie too.) Arthur C. Clarke
The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich, William L. Shirer
Common Sense, Thomas Paine
Nostromo, Joseph Conrad
Moby Dick, Herman Melville

And anything by Philip K. Dick. The must-reads on him are well, most of his work.

You don't have to install them if you don't want. At least they don't include "non-truly-free-patent-encumbered" codecs by default.

Hah! You used the old designation of MicroSoft by capitalizing the "S"! That's even more clever... You old softie.... :P

It's a trial balloon. Microsoft does it all the time. They gauged the response and sent out the "apology"... meaning that in a few months, they'll re-spin it... Make no mistake the 720 is going to have always-on DRM. It's just a matter of how they're going to present it to the customer... they'll figure it out. :) Trick is, though... will they "buy" into it?

They're REALLY hungry this year... the posturing is more blustering than usual...

Would Clinton send them some bags of UN Rice so that fat fucker will shut the hell up?

That wasn't a choice when I bought it. Why should it be a choice later on after I've sunk money into the damn thing? As for newer models not having the feature, that's fine... no one is forcing them to include it, but since I bought it with that feature, they took a big fat dump on my PS3 to make it continue being a PS3. It doesn't matter if YOU thought it wasn't really special. You don't get to dismiss a valid point because you think the choice is obvious (you chose PSN, I am guessing.)

I didn't want to make that choice. But I am making this choice. No PS4. They can shove it up their tailpipe. I won't buy one.

Crap... that's one more than I have ascended. :) I have come close (? relatively speaking) once... but that's about it. I'm also a masochist who plays nethack on his google phone too... :)

Indeed. I still play Nethack. One day I'll win... one day....

And I play the terminal version (not the slash'em or other improved versions.) :) I just like the game a bunch... and forget Demon Souls and Dark Souls... you want crushing difficulty, play Nethack. ...and get off my lawn! :)

She could've handled it without the "shaming twitter pics and righteous faux-anger" schtick. If it was offensive, the policy for most companies (and the conference itself) is for you to confront the person who offended you unless you feel that retaliation would be detrimental (like you tell your supervisor that was inappropriate) then you go to their boss, or to HR if it's a high enough official. She could've told the PyCon people about it and let them confront the men, or kick them out.. it's their conference after all.

You don't get on Twitter, after taking a clandestine photo of the "offenders" and then proceed to smear them without giving them opportunity to rectify the situation, explain their position, or to know that they were offending someone. Remember, this was overheard, not directed at her. She could've misinterpreted the conversation she wasn't a part of.

Life's hard, buy a helmet. Humans of all stripes are walking on eggshells... those who don't are jerks anyway. The rest of us have no recourse to defend our speech or actions because half the time the offender gets an anonymous tip that "you said something offensive" (since they won't say what for fear of retaliation), you're left with some head-scratching. Sometimes it's obvious... but sometimes it is NOT.

Courtesy is contagious... but in this climate, we have too many people being busybodies. The world isn't Mr. Rogers Neighborhood....

If they're not talking to you and you can avoid listening to their conversation... yes. If I am in a whispering conversation in a public place and you come up to listen what I'm saying, if you find out there's something you might not like in that conversation... too fucking bad. I wasn't talking to you.

Saying it when everyone can hear, and no one can reasonably avoid eavesdropping... that's another matter. And I'm not talking about in a place where such things are already prohibited. There is some discussion as to what the method for dealing with this at PyCon was... and it wasn't how Richards did it. And I suspect that the first offense (these guys were never given the opportunity to change their behavior, or informed that it offended someone), they wouldn't have been kicked out of future conferences and fired (well one of them, after all.)

It just is this hypersensitive crap... As I've said elsewhere in the thread... (to you, actually)... it's an epidemic of hypersensitivity.

Devil's advocate:

She made an off-color joke in public (twitter isn't private) about body parts, which is the very thing she got these guys on, but two guys whispering to each other in the audience (or talking, who knows?) made a dongle joke that may or may not have been inappropriate, considering they were talking about forking a project too (you can see where these assumptions go) is different? Why, because of the conference? They weren't making a presentation or officially commenting in a Q&A at the conference. And i imagine the joke in question, brought up by one person, would've gotten them a stern talking to by the organizers if Richards had gone to them instead of the "vigilante" crap she pulled.

/ Devil's Advocate

What I see is a double-standard. I know what's appropriate in a workplace. It's policy. Sorry, smells like a publicity stunt on her part. I doubt she was offended at all, just opportunistic. And even if she was offended (judging by her comments on twitter, she's more salty than the two she helped railroad), that was a cunt move taking a pic of them, THEN sending the "oh, they made body part jokes at PyCon" allegations. Yes, I said cunt. Kick me off Slashdot... I am not impressed with Political Correctness.

People are too fucking sensitive. I think it's just the byproduct of being in a society where everyone claims victimhood over anything that makes them upset. Fuck it.

Very true. In the immortal words of Bob Zany (google him, he's funny!)

"If I've offended anyone tonight.... HOW 'BOUT THAT!?!?"

That's not the point. The Big Gulp was exempted from the ban, btw. I don't need the state telling me how much I can drink. I don't need the state telling me that a gun with a collapsible stock is somehow more 'evil' than one without. The government needs its nose out of my bedroom and my house. That's what the Bill of Rights was supposed to enumerate. They were not for us, because we already have those rights... they are for the government to know where not to tread. They're not rights up for "negotiation", or "manipulation" because of someone's distorted idea of what's good for us.

C.S. Lewis said it best:

Of all tyrannies, a tyranny sincerely exercised for the good of its victims may be the most oppressive. It would be better to live under robber barons than under omnipotent moral busybodies. The robber baron's cruelty may sometimes sleep, his cupidity may at some point be satiated; but those who torment us for our own good will torment us without end for they do so with the approval of their own conscience.

That sums up that asshole in New York, that cunt from California, and the morons in the White House.