But really, the federal government doesn't even have the constitutional authority to ban drugs to begin with. Absurd interpretations of the commerce clause or other sections of the constitution don't count.

Why are people still talking about constitutional authority? Can't you just accept whatever authority that exists, regardless of the source of its power? I'd think this would be particularly relevant whenever you're talking about things that do, or don't, count.

The Lord Humungus (Warrior of the Wasteland, The Ayatollah of Rock and Rolla) says he wants your refinery. The topic at hand is whether or not you're going to give it to him, not whose name is written on some deed title document.

At this rate, the Republicans deserve to win

No, the Democrats deserve to lose. Protesting dishonesty and corruption by voting for dishonesty and corruption, is not a protest.

Letting Republicans win, gets you nothing. If anything, that'll just tell the Democrats that they weren't dishonest enough.

If Tesla can do this, then so will Ford and GM, and then you just killed a very large job market, seeing as how many dealerships employ 50+ employees.

Wouldn't that be to everyone's advantage? Those people could be doing something. Imagine 50 people contributing to the economy rather than being dead weight. Multiply that by the number of dealerships. You just gave the American economy a shitload of "new" resources, for free.

CO2 output is assumed to be part of the user's cost, unless the pollution is subsidized by a third party. Oh wait, we do that. (I think they call subsidies "conservativism" now, though they fell under the umbrella of "liberalism" when I was a kid. I guess part of being a conservative is keeping up with the fleeting whims and ephemeral fashions of the times.)

The ratio that really matters is cost per distance. (Whether that's euros per kilometer, or dollars per mile, or silver pieces per league, I don't care.) The volume of fuel is not nearly as important as what it costs. This puts diesel, petrol, alcohol, or indirection tricks like electric (whether it be sourced by coal or nuclear or solar or whatever), etc all on the same playing field.

If instead of talking about Steam, we were talking about iTunes Store or Google Play or XBox Live, 100% of the Steam users here would immediately start laughing about how stupid "those people" are, to be using the store to determine what to buy. That is obviously the very last intell source that you'd use. THAT WOULD BE STUPID.

But somehow, if you're a Steam user, all your common sense happen to be inapplicable, whenever we happen to be talking about Steam (and you get your common sense back whenever you talk about the iTunes store or XBox Live). You and they can each look down on each other, correctly secure that you're wiser than the other, and oblivious to the fact that you're also dumber than the other.

And you both chuckle at the guy who uses Amazon's star ratings to determine which widget to buy from Amazon. How fucking moronic is that guy? Doesn't he know how to Google for reviews? He stares back at you, being dumb in his Amazon purchases, yet shaking his head at how idiotic you two behave, when you're shopping for software.

But anyway, no, obviously of course, you wouldn't ever actually use Steam, to determine what games to buy on Steam. (Steam's rating system is totally irrelevant, because they're selling the things they're trying to rate. It's impossible for anyone to do a good job of that, unless you define the job as Fuck The Users.) To determine what to buy on Steam, you use the same method as you'd use for any other store: you go read disinterested third party reviews published on disinterested third party media, just like you expect the Amazon and Apple and Microsoft and Google customers to do, and you shake your head with sadness and despair for humanity's dim future, every time you see people doing it exactly, perfectly wrong.

But NOOOO, the one store I use, happens to also be the first store in history to have done it right and be trustworthy! Because I am SPECIAL!!! My vendors never have conflicts of interest!

"Dumb all over, yes we are, dumb all over, near and far, dumb all over, black and white. People, we is not wrapped tight." -- FZ

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.

Thank you for telling us what kind of car you drive. Our ad network's profiler will appreciate this information.

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.