A comic on this very subject!

http://theoatmeal.com/comics/tesla

Break his spirit early (or discover how awesome your kid is).

If I understand the mod system correctly, all it takes is one insightful/informative/interesting to kill the troll/flamebait moniker. Getting a +3 troll is virtually impossible because it requires all of your upmods to be "underrated".

If your comments consistently produce large discussions and your mods swing several times during that discussion, I would say you're doing it right. Or you're a master troll. Either way you're producing value to the operators of the site by encouraging user interaction.

On a related note, I would like to request an achievement for getting a +3 or greater Troll/Flamebait Mod.

I typed the post on a mobile. I didn't feel like running a list of telecom companies the Chinese government has ripped off.

Don't they mean Nortel's source code?

It is.

Fun fact: ginger is an anagram for another racial pejorative.

for future reference, the shorthand term for this is called a "strawman argument"

Thanks for the heads-up. When my kids get to school I'll have to keep an eye out for that one.

Oh, I wouldn't worry about that. The miscreants calling you will care about this law almost as much as they care about all of the other laws in place. Passing more laws to stop activity that's already illegal has been tried many times before.