Were it not for this compromise, there probably wouldn't have been a constitution at all.

I had this same thought. I maintain that this, more than any mis-attribution of credit, is the reason GNU/Linux never took off as a name.

You were doing great until "Except 0.999... is not a rational number. It is an irrational number."

0.999... is as rational as 1 is, since they're equal.

In your dimensional explanation, 10 is a dimensionless scalar. 10 meter sticks measure 10 meters, not 10 square meters.

I've never seen the floor function defined as "just take the integer part", since this is wrong for negative numbers. It's usually written as "the greatest integer that is less than or equal to the given number", which would work correctly for 0.999... and other repeating decimals.

Welcome to the cutting edge of mathematics 2500 years ago.

No, you're missing the whole point. 1/3 is exactly equal to 0.333... with an infinite number of trailing digits. It's not an approximation or an estimate, it is two ways of representing the exact same real number.

Here's how you convince yourself: If 1/3 was really close but not quite 0.333..., then we could split the difference between those numbers and find another real number between them. But we can't, which means we were wrong to assume that 1/3 and 0.333... were distinct.

That doesn't really sound like Carl Sagan at all.

Read it again. There's a comment about the FCC followed by a question about government regulations that doesn't mention the FCC. Your interpretation is that the poster was only talking about FCC regulations since he mentioned them in the previous sentence, the other interpretation is that the poster was generalizing from the FCC to all government regulations. I think both interpretations are valid, but quoting only part of the message to make it seem like your interpretation is the right one is poor form.

Way to selectively quote the part that wasn't being responded to. Good show.

It's more like yelling at your neighbor across the street, and then getting upset when someone driving by overhears it. With unencrypted traffic on a wireless network you are quite literally broadcasting information to the world. The argument that someone is the intended recipient and everyone else needs to pretend they didn't hear it is bullshit.

Something like this? http://www.mindhacks.com/blog/2010/06/mickeys_amphetamine.html

Yeah, because "all plastics are bad" is totally what I said.

...he says, taking a long drink from his plastic water bottle.

I don't disagree with you, but I strongly suspect this will be one of those times that it really would have been worth it to take precautions.