Mr. Assange, what you've just written is one of the most insanely idiotic things I have ever heard. At no point in your rambling, incoherent response were you even close to anything that could be considered a rational thought. Everyone in this room is now dumber for having read it. I award you no points, and may God have mercy on your soul.

You know, most of the time, the truth lies right in the middle of the fighting sides. Having seen two kids fighting over a toy a time or two, it is the toy that ends up suffering (broken, destroyed, damaged etc). Slapping the kids across the back of the head, and taking away the toy is often the only "real solution". Being a parent isn't easy, but the grownups sometimes need to simply smack the back of heads and issue a timeout.

And when it is the grownups are acting like children, the parent role becomes the easy target. "Don't tell me how to think or what to do". Please don't make excuses.

Note: I'm not taking sides in the GG debate. I have no idea what it actually is. Except that it involves Gamers who often act like little children.

Somalia!

Generally speaking, hurt feelings strike a nerve. Barking dogs don't strike a nerve, therefore don't hurt feelings. However trolls telling tramps that they are sluts hits a nerve. Hell, even my using those terms will get me in trouble because they elicit a certain negative connotation on the female gender (and done to illustrate a point). If a girl is secure in their sexuality, then no hurt feelings, but if a girl is not comfortable with their sexuality hurt feelings ensue.

Just to make it clear, I don't care about who people sleep with, that is their own fucking (pun intended) business.

The real defense to "hurt feelings" is thicker skin. Which can be learned. But instead, we've become a society of victims of "hurt feelings" and the outrage that is a result.

What is real, is that troll exist. Have existed for ever, and will exist into the foreseeable future. It would be much better use of time and energy helping people ignore trolls, than letting them get the best of us with their trolling.

I typically partition the drive into two logical drives. The inner partitions with awful performance are where my media goes (movies, music, photos). The performance falloff is non-linear. Also, performance degradation over time is worse for the inner tracks, so inner tracks are where you put data that is more or less static, or at least written sequentially.

Yeah, right, its the victims fault.

Ive been designing in FTDI devices for years. They work first try, they're cheap, the drivers are excellent, support is good. If I need a USB interface device, I only buy FTDI-based adapters because, well, all the same reasons. Plus they're faster than anything else Ive tested (a serial port at 1mbps can be iffy - only a few do it reliably and they all have FTDI bridges).

Given all that, why should FTDI support knock-off crap? I dont want the crap on my systems, in my board designs, and the faster I know about it the better. Hell yeah, brick it baby, and let the retailer sort out the counterfeiting mess in their supply chain.

And while we're at it, same for SD Cards. "If they work I dont care", seriously? Another place where counterfeiting is rampant, the knock-offs cant hit speed and reliability targets, if they work at all. Last bulk buy I made at Staples was 70% counterfeit and wasnt close to hitting published specs. And sure the store manager took them back, but Staples Corporate couldnt care less that their supply chain was contaminated. SanDisk and FTDI are *NOT* the scumbags here, its the consumers that dont give a rats ass as long as they save 3 cents, the retailers that make 3 cents extra, and the wholesalers that make 2 cents extra. You, sir, are the scumbag thats the problem.

You miss the whole point of Article I, Section 8 in your reply. It is there to tell the federal government to stay out of making these kind of regulations in the first place.

I won't go into the argument about what the interstate commerce clause actually says and what the Federal Papers said it was supposed to do, because that is pointless so far as to fan a whole major sub-thread on that topic alone. At least you acknowledge there is something that the federal government might be able to do to Michigan so far as to smack them down with constitutional authority when Michigan refuses to register a Tesla automobile sold to one of its residents.

Still, who gave the Michigan state legislature the authority to make this law prohibiting the sales of Tesla automobiles in the first place? I assert it is something claimed by the Michigan state legislature, with about the same level of credibility as if they were trying to regulate the value of pi through legislation.

Tesla is opening up stores and has repair shops in many of them (where it can legally be done). They just don't see the point of paying somebody else for the privilege of opening such a store that they will also have to pay to have constructed that will get a cut of the profits simply because they are an existing businessman in that state (ordinary citizens need not apply BTW.... you need to already possess the dealership license or pay a huge deposit to the state government that mere mortals need not bother with).

What advantage is there again for a dealership?

On the contrary. There are several dealerships (especially the mega auto mall groups in major cities) who want to sell Teslas. A couple of them have even been blunt to Elon Musk basically saying that he can't sell a Tesla without cutting them in for a piece of the action.

That is all that is happening here, where these dealerships in the big cities (it was a dealer in Boston who threatened Musk) just want to get a cut of all of the sales... including the on-line sales where the dealer doesn't have to do a damn thing except collect the royalty checks for a company he neither invested in nor even bothers promoting. Oh yeah, he even expected Tesla to pay him for the privilege of selling Tesla cars on-line in Massachusetts with an annual dealership fee.

Profit margins can certainly be derived from the whole endeavor, which isn't the real problem. I do think Elon Musk's assertion that by going to these dealers who also own sales distribution rights for other manufacturers will sideline the sales of Tesla vehicles by shoving a couple Model S cars in a corner and only use them to get customers in the door for sales of other vehicles. It would ultimately hurt Tesla sales to use these dealers in the first place.

As a matter of fact, those states allowing fracking have reaped huge tax benefits and for the most part has helped out ordinary citizens of those states too.

If only it was as simple as you suggest... and perhaps Detroit might not be so broke as it currently is. If only Detroit could become a major oil producing region of America, as it might do them some good.

I'm not saying there are so consequences to the practice that needs to happen as well, where the economic costs of the practice certainly need to be examined beyond the straight extraction of oil, but your illustration here only backfires and reinforces the GP post even more.

The question that should be raised here is not demanding a repeal of this law, but to question why the government thinks it has authority or purpose for regulating this activity in the first place? In the federal government, Article I, Section 8 explicitly states what Congress has the authority to regulate or control (like setting up laws for copyright, regulations for the military, controlling immigration policy, etc.) and the implication is if Congress doesn't have that authority explicitly granted by the Constitution, they are exceeding their authority to act. Not like that stops Congress from pushing boundaries on those limits in a huge way to absurd directions, but that is at least the original theory.

State legislatures similarly have defined limits on their authority according to their respective state constitutions. That state legislatures often exceed that authority may be true as well, but the voters in Michigan sure can question why they have that authority to act in the first place. It really makes no sense at all.

This is a classic situation where there is a very narrow constituency who wants to have a particular law or program in place, but no comparable counter group opposed to the idea. Corn subsidies is another really good example.

Just watch this video to see if it makes sense: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=l8JDx7FwdHk

Or if you want something less dramatic but still more of the same... and tries to explain why this happens: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fGOj8kBpsD4

The same thing that got Coca-Cola to make their products out of corn syrup is what got this legislation passed to prohibit Tesla from direct sales.

Queue up the "Somalia" thread here ...

Direct sales, when no franchise has been offered, is no business of the state to regulate. Great Job everyone on voting for idiots who like to control everything.

Vote Libertarian in two weeks.

So, you're okay with ID theft then as well. After all, opening up credit in your name didn't spend any of your money.