> If all my options are pay taxes and live in country A, OR go to hellhole country B where I will get killed but don't pay taxes, then you're not really giving me the option.
Have you considered that maybe the world is trying to tell you something? Do you see a pattern? If every place without taxes is a hellhole where you'll get killed, maybe that means something. Perhaps the place you imagine, one that has no taxes but is not a hellhole, cannot exist in the real world?

> Nor did you ever intend on giving me the choice, because you gave me no avenue for recourse via this system you call democracy.
Sure we do, just vote for politicians who support having no taxes at all. If there aren't any, become such a politician and get elected. Doesn't work? Guess what, most people don't agree with your point of view and democracy works as planned.

> Now that I think about it, what you propose is actually a protection racket. "Live in my neighbourhood and get my protection, give me protection money for it, though."
That is how public services work, yes. What separates them from protection rackets would be that the government actually offers you something useful in return, and you get to affect policy by voting.

> Heck, you don't even allow us to claim a piece of unused land in the middle of nowhere as our own to govern as we wish with like-minded individuals.
Countries don't like to lose territory. Are you truly surprised they don't allow you to just 'claim' a piece of land? Suppose you had your hypothetical tax-free country, how would you feel if another guy just walked in and just claimed it as its own? I imagine the situation would quickly turn the place into something one might refer to as a hellhole.

> You don't even allow us the chance to BUY that land from you. How is that freedom? How are you giving us an option/choice?
Do you think everything should be for sale? Replace 'land' by 'slaves', or 'nuclear bombs', or 'smallpox'. The same whiny 'argument' applies. You have the freedom to attempt to change your country through democratic means. That is the freedom/option/choice you have. Freedom does not mean you can do whatever you want.

> Personally, I think the only real alternative is giving people direct control over government spending.
By all means, vote for someone who will change your country like that.

> Give me a bunch of damn sliders and categories so I can fine-tune the damn budget how I see fit by assigning my tax money to each cause/agency/whatever.
By all means, go ahead. It will be hilarious to observe.

> Give me a bunch of damn sliders and categories so I can fine-tune the damn budget how I see fit by assigning my tax money to each cause/agency/whatever.
I suppose this will leave the unemployed to pay the unemployment benefits?

> People aren't nearly as selfish and greedy as you think, when given the chance and responsibility.
Perhaps most are not, but they are irrational and will act often against their own best interests when given the chance. Many people will refuse to spend any money on things that don't benefit them or their close friends/family directly. A part of me wishes you get what you want, so that in 10 years we'll be able to use you as an example why this doesn't work at all.

> Give anti-tax people a feasible alternative.

Sure, they can go live in Somalia. If that option somehow appears 'unfeasible' perhaps you should provide a definition of 'feasible' that is compatible with a realistic situation.

Yes, yes it does.

When you also use '.' for method calls and accessing fields of a struct, using '::' instead of '.' for namespaces doesn't seem like a bad idea.

> Then there's the asinine stuff like omitting a semicolon to return the value of an expression...

I was a little sceptical at first as well, but it's actually surprisingly nice once you get used to it. You can still use 'return someValue;' if you like, but it will look a silly. I for one really miss this feature when I have to touch other languages again. Don't knock it till you try it.

> The fact that no human being could live 800 years also disproves this account, unless the guy expects "god-level magic" to be an acceptable explanation.

If you accept the premise 'god creates the universe from nothing', 'god enables a human to live 800 years' is not really that far-fetched, is it?

> So the majority of citizens live in countries that have the death penalty and actively use it. The list of countries that have abolished it includes many small nations with low population numbers. It isn't fair that you use that number to support your stance on the death penalty, because those low-population states get extra representation in the results.

Except that GP said most governments. If schneidafunk wanted to make this into a popularity contest rather than (by accident?) presenting a verifiable statement (which just so happens to be very false) perhaps they should have said so, rather than implying that most countries in the world would resort to worse barbarism than is currently practised in the USA.

It seems the USA like to pretend they are somehow better than the rest of the world. It would be nice to see them hold themselves to standards that are equal or higher than the rest of the world.

> Most governments would have either shot him in the head or hanged him by now.

Do tell, what is your definition of 'most'? Looks like most countries don't practice the death penalty, and over half have abolished it completely: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Use_of_capital_punishment_by_country#Capital_punishment_in_the_world

Why are these two unrelated topics in a single post? The word 'robot' does not even occur in any of the 'Unnecessary Medical Procedures' articles (does using 'find' count as RTFA'ing?)

Perhaps they weren't using any birth control while shooting porn...

> Fast typing helps, but I think your son would find this boring.

Writing documentation is also considered boring by many, but learning how to type fast now will speed it up by a factor of two or three. Imagine how many hours of boredom will be saved over the rest of his life. Imagine the same advantage when communicating by email with other students and co-workers.

I definitely considered my typing course to be fairly boring *at the time*, but looking back it is one of the most useful things I've learned in my youth.

They should employ you at a hospital to sort out the Münchausen people :p

Perhaps he develops on multiple machines, which may or may not be running at the same time?

But given that they're not selling them, they don't really have a valid excuse to complain about him downloading them. Ostensibly the copyrights are there to give the authors a chance to earn money, but if they don't want to make use of that arrangement...

As I recall, when he was no longer in power he was also dead. I think this limits the possibility of requesting information to be deleted somewhat.