It's the amount a willing buyer and a willing seller will agree on if neither is under any external constraint (such as rent controls).

There is no such thing as "if neither is under any external constraint".

The very nature of "property" is that it is an external constraint created and enforced by the state. It's the state saying to the "owner", "Here is a piece of paper that says you own this thing. If anyone uses it without your consent, we will send men with guns to stop them," thus placing a constraint on everyone else.

There is the probably reasonable assumption that this type of activity often comes with drugs, prostitution, etc.

Typically it's much more mundane stuff like tourists taking up parking spaces in the neighbourhood,

What is the logic behind that?

In the case of San Francisco, the hotel tax is used to fund the arts -

http://www.sfgfta.org/about/hi...

Tourists don't vote, so you can fund the arts without annoying taxpayers who might not otherwise want to.

but the rider for giving a simple speech includes such gems as "If you buy a captured wild parrot, you will promote a cruel and devastating practice, and the parrot will be emotionally scarred before you get it."

Way to take something out of context. To paraphrase what RMS is saying there: "I'd rather crash at a friendly person's house than stay at a hotel. But I'm allergic to cats, and dogs sometimes freak me out. Parrots are really cool though, and I'd love to visit a house with a parrot. But don't buy a parrot just to impress me, because having a parrot is a big deal, a big commitment, and if you do it wrong that's cruel. And meeting a sad parrot would not be fun."

A large part of what you're referring to as a "rider" is more of a list of hospitality considerations. It's socially awkward, sure, but it would take a really gifted person to maintain the sort of speaking schedule he does without writing up some advance care and feeding instructions.

I think this SMBC comic is very appropriate as well: http://www.smbc-comics.com/?id...

Couldn't a machine exist like you that did the exact same things you'd do but wasn't conscious at all?

I don't think so, no. An organism that monitors and predicts its own state and the states of the members of its social group has a competitive advantage. When that process is complex enough, looping back to monitor and predict the process of monitoring and predicting -- and monitoring and predicting the process of monitoring and predicting the process of monitoring and predicting, and so on -- we call it consciousness. A machine that wasn't conscious wouldn't be monitoring and predicting its own state and the states of its social group in that complex, looping fashion, and so wouldn't do the exact same things.

I don't think FB will 'Power the Future' because there's a lot of stuff they simply can't get right. Take their new search. If I enter "James Bond" into a Facebook search, my expectation is that the first thing it will search is my friend's feeds, followed by the feeds of companies and organization I like, followed by public feeds - Returning "James Bond"- related Facebook posts. Instead it just does a lousy web search. Why?

Or take ads. I'm a Facebook regular, posting daily. Yet FB has never been able to serve an ad up to me about anything I care about. Never. Not once.

...and my feed is just a total dog's breakfast with FB selectively choosing what to show me. I know I can pick "show recent" but the setting doesn't stick for more than 48 hours or so...

So will they power the future? No. They can't even power themselves.

Linux doesn't make your dick bigger.

No, and thank goodness for that -- why mess with perfection?

GNU/Linux and Android systems do, however, make your freedom bigger -- not perfectly so, but contrasted with the freedom-shrinking offerings from MS and Apple, Linux is a clear win.

And, more relevantly, on a tech site (this is still one, right?), we ought to expect people -- especially those who ask loaded questions -- to know that Linux is a kernel and is common to both GNU/Linux and Android systems (as well as a few other rarer OSes).

you are quickly into the (very low admittedly) billions.

You're into the high(er) billions once you add all the satellite bandwidth into the mix.

The problem is that generally, in the absence of any other agreement, the photographer owns the copyright to the image and can give that image to whatever site he or she chooses.

And that's the heart of the problem. We need to recognize that interesting photographs of people should be seen by default as a collaboration between the photographer and the subject, and ought not to be publishable without the subject's consent.

My life is an ongoing creative work, and photographs of me are derivatives of that work. A photo of me walking down a public street dressed normally might well fall under fair use, but not so for a photo for which I pose deliberately in all my creative awesomeness.

Guess who is the Constitutionally appointed authority on the Constitution?

Not the SCOTUS. They assumed that power for themselves with Marbury v. Madison.

And yet, people stated that "it would be soooo expensive" to add proper tracking to planes.

The 'people' are correct. $50M is much, much less than the billions it would cost to add 'proper tracking' to planes that cross oceans - And it still doesn't address the problem of someone in the cockpit switching the tracking off.

the only explanation that makes sense to me is okham's racer

Occam's razor dictates that there's no way some guy named Okham turned the plane into his own private racer.

i'm not talking all FOSS and this doesn't include Android...I'm asking specifically about the Linux OS

So, you want to know who runs Linux, and you don't know what Linux means. Facepalm.

My desktop runs Fedora, and my laptops run Ubuntu Studio, which are versions of the GNU/Linux OS. My Transformer, my no-name tablet, and my phones run Android, an OS based on Linux.

I also have one cheap second-hand laptop that runs Windows, bought only because I had to make precise changes to the layout of a Word doc for my book. Gross incompetence on the part of the person doing layout for my publisher.

The post says the total number of exits is fixed. You're just shuffling the order of the queue. A limited benefit, if any benefit at all - the people in the general queue will wait even longer, with more breakdowns and medical emergencies as a result.

And the post itself mentions the solution: Make off-site parking more viable so more people get in and out on buses. That would benefit everybody, rather than pitching one subgroup against another.