It's not due to him not knowing about science, it's due to him not doing enough math, probably because he doesn't know enough science to ever apply any information about th-- oh, you got me.

Metric is for people who work with measurements. But if you never actually do anything, then you don't need metric.

I really don't understand what this stuff (either Matchstick or Chromecast) is good for. Why don't you plug your HTPC into the TV? Are these things for oddly-shaped rooms where people just have to have the computer and monitor on different sides, without a cable?

Someone please ELI5 me (that's the currently hip way to ask for explanations, I hear) WTF the use case is for wireless HDMI?

If I needed a bigger screen, I'll pull out my tablet..

Not if your phone completely obsoletes your tablet, so that you're never carrying one around.

(But yes, I can see how not everyone wants a tablet, so they might not want a phablet either.)

Your employer probably gains nothing from you attending the conference. Whether you go or not, likely makes no difference to how much work they get per dollar of your paycheck.

Note my wishy-washy words "probably" and "likely." If you can provide an argument that a particular conference is an exception, then you have an argument to offer your employer, for how they will come out ahead by paying this money.

If it's a gray area (you have a valid argument, but it's somewhat weak) then splitting the cost with you (which seems to be what they proposed), seems sensible.

Didn't South Park point out that 1 in 4 Americans are idiots?

Yeah, and that's the problem; it's still not nearly enough. Even if they weren't idiots, the secede opinion would then just be 2/4, and you can't secede with that much lack of consensus, without a lot of societal strife and unhappiness.

(Before anyone replies "whoosh": whoosh yourself!)

(I'm not even sure why you'd want to use any web browser at all for this kind of thing. They should just make XBMC, MythTV, etc plugins. No, scratch that: they should publish APIs, and then let those teams write the plugins themselves. But anyway...)

If a vendor can't use standards well enough to be compatible with what you use, then just pirate. They'll either supply the files that you can use, or someone else will.

I don't see the problem, unless it's that you feel compelled to fight someone who tells you they don't want your money. If that's the case, then get over it. You can't make someone be greedy, and it'd be a pretty shitty world if you could.

I think it's impossible for a government to do anything without at least some real threat of violence behind it. How do you enforce a nonviolent sentence?

Government: "Pay me a $1000 fine."

Offender: "No."

Government: "You're a poo-head."

Offender: [sobs pathetically] "Ok, ok, I'll pay! Just please, please don't hurt my feelings again."

The vast, vast majority of tech engineers that I talked to who are from the United States are very supportive of bringing in people from other countries

That's easy to believe. I feel the same way.

Yet sometimes I hear people bitching about immigrants in other contexts. If they're agricultural workers instead of tech workers, somehow they're undesirable. That doesn't make any sense to me at all. It makes so little sense to me, that I think it's just plain stupid.

But that's just, like, my opinion, man. We don't open the borders. Every election we nearly unanimously scream that we want highly restricted immigration consisting of very few people, and the thought of making any moves toward meritocracy makes us so incredibly angry and resentful, that we go out of our minds with blind rage.

So, tech workers and tech industry customers (i.e. most of America), if this is how you really feel, then you need to live with the consequences. You can't say justice, fairness, and efficiency are important, yet also things you totally don't care about. Make up your fucking mind. If you speak about programmers from India in a fundamentally different way than farmers from Chihuahua, maybe you are the problem, psycho.

there is no point in abusing the power to brick someone's phone

How does someone get as far in life as being able to write sentences, yet still has not encountered their first senselessly-destructive anonymous unaccountable vandal?

I normally don't recommend vandalism, but I actually think you would learn a lot, if someone were to go break one of your car windows or take a baseball bat to your mailbox. I don't really wish you ill, but just letting you experience your first sudden stupid loss at the hands of some asshole who doesn't give a fuck about other people (or who enjoys seeing others suffer) would probably help to correct this amazing misconception of yours.

The only question is how cheaply the lesson can be learned. We can do this without totally abandoning compassion. I suggest this AC's teachers start small, and then just gradually move up. Long before we have a Nazi prison guard callously and flippantly shoot his wife, we need to try merely throwing his $200 phone into the toilet, or maybe even just splashing some grape juice on his $5 T-shirt. Geez, someone, just throw a piece of chewing gum on the sidewalk near this guy's office. Let's not go "full asshole" right at the start. I think this person's naivety can be overcome with a gentle touch of douchebaggery.

Just enough, so that he learns of the existence of currently-unsuspected asshats. That's as far as we need to go, before he shifts his position to "of course I see the point in abusing the power to brick someone's phone, and it doesn't require any paranoia at all."

Also, for it to be a DCMA, doesn't the requested takedown have to have something to do with DRM?

No. DMCA is a "big" law with several parts. Part of it is to outlaw DRM compatibility and another part is about takedown notices. There's even a part specific to boat hull designs, though I don't know if it's as controversial as the crazier stuff.

The reason it's so confusing is that when someone makes something that works with DRM, whoever's interests are negatively impacted by people buying the DRMed item (e.g. Disney fears that if you have a way to play "The Little Mermaid" DVD then you might buy one instead of just downloading the mp4), they'll have their lawyer write a nastygram. People sometimes confuse this nastygram with a DMCA takedown notice, but it's a different thing. Same named laws being referenced, possibly even the same lawyer, but a totally different part of the law.

DMCA is about balance. The anti-circumvention part was written with a pro-piracy agenda and the notice part was written with anti-piracy agenda. The idea is that unless you just completely abstain, they'll have you breaking some law, so most people should be extortable.

You can't grant mineral rights without assuming ownership of whatever you're granting the rights on.

"Can't?" Ok, I'll bite: what happens when you try? (Did you get an error message? What did it say?)