I suspect one of the points you are missing is that Germany certainly did call Einstein a traitor, and certainly had laid the groundwork for executing him specifically for treason and not just as part of the final solution if they had captured him after a successful conclusion to their war.. Another one is that the United States has a very limited definition of treason, which is actually spelled out in the constitution.

Article 3 - The Judicial Branch
Section 3 - Treason

Treason against the United States, shall consist only in levying War against them, or in adhering to their Enemies, giving them Aid and Comfort. No Person shall be convicted of Treason unless on the Testimony of two Witnesses to the same overt Act, or on Confession in open Court.

The Congress shall have power to declare the Punishment of Treason, but no Attainder of Treason shall work Corruption of Blood, or Forfeiture except during the Life of the Person attainted.

            By that definition, neither Einstein nor Snowden would even possibly count as a traitor. The arguement you're making comes off as everyone should use some other definition of traitor that is broader than in the US Constitution, but somehow doesn't allow the sort of abuses a nation such as Nazi Germany would commit with such a legal basis, so that Snowden might count while Einstein, Fermi, et. al. couldn't possibly. .Unless you care to formally offer such a definition, and see what happens when a few hundered Slashdotters try to pick it apart and you find it isn't anything like any of either the precise LEGAL, the proper ETHICAL or the GENERALLY ACCEPTED definitions of treason, the side you're supporting boils down to saying "I know it when I see it, and everybody else needs to just shut up and let me decide". You can guess how well that will be received playing to this crowd.
          The point is, we have two entities who appear to fall in the same domain (non-treasonous things). Someone created an analogy that correctly asserts these two entities do in fact belong in the same domain. Then someone else declared, by apparent fiat, that the analogy was irrelevant. Not flawed, not violating some principle of logic, but simply irrelevant. Every analogy is imperfect. All are flawed to some extent, and matter only because they can still be useful to get to a correct conclusion despite the flaws. This analogy may have more flaws than a great many, (In fact, I think analogies of this sort seldom lead to the correct conclusion, and generally shed more heat than light on their subjects) but still, in this case, it has somehow led to the correct conclusion, therefore it simply cannot be irrelevant. Declaring it irrelevant is thus not a counterargument, but an attempt to suppress speech. You probably don't want to endorse the AC doing that, instead of rationally addressing the flaws specifially and not just dismissing the whole.
         

You can easily put the gun somewhere safe.

Ah, but if the gun is somewhere safe, you're unlikely to be able to get to it quickly. For a gun to be viable for self defense, you need to be able to get it and load it in a very short period of time. Otherwise, you might as well invest in a squirt gun. If you put the gun somewhere that's actually safe from a child, you're also making it considerably harder for you to get access to the weapon quickly. Those critical seconds could mean the difference between life and death.

In any case, if I was going to use an electronic lock, I would much rather use a RFID lock over a fingerprint lock. There would be a much smaller chance for error.

That seems like a perfectly reasonable alternative. I certainly don't think laws need to mandate a specific technology, just a minimum certification level or some such, which different weapons could achieve in different ways.

Also, if you have children in the house, they should be taught gun safety and that if they even touch any gun without your permission, there will be hell to pay.

I completely agree with you about teaching your kids gun safety, and even though I don't intend to have guns in my house, when I eventually have kids, they will learn how to properly unload a firearm. The problem with having guns in houses with kids comes when they invite other kids over. Chances are, your kids' friends haven't been taught about guns, and they may not know not to touch them, or worse, might think that they're toy guns. That's why particularly in households with kids, having some form of electronic safety is a really, really good idea.

Russia is still inhabited by a lot of people who still have power AND who were trained in the Soviet version of MAD (Mutual Assured Distruction, for those who didn't spot or don't grok the acronym already) . This means that, when people in the west start classifying Putin as another possible 'classic nutcase leader', along the lines of Saddam Hussein, Moammar Kadafi or the Ayatollah Khomeini , they should remember, Putin has some very different reasons why he might just want to give the appearance of being one. ,

Now put that same firearm in a household with kids. Do you really want a gun that might fire because somebody got curious? You shouldn't be required to use the digital lock, but it should be required to be present on the firearm as a mandatory safety feature, just like you can disable the air bags in your car, but by default, they come enabled.

Given her low approval ratings, the only reason Feinstein is in office at all is because the Republicans keep miraculously finding people even more unelectable.

I'm pretty liberal and fairly progressive, but I'm not 100% anti-gun, so your statement is certainly not broadly generalizable outside of conversations in the media, in my experience. I voted against a gun law just a few months ago, though it passed anyway. I wanted to vote for it, because the requirement that weapons be stored securely (either in a safe or with a trigger lock) was good, and the requirement for timely reporting of stolen firearms was good, but I couldn't vote for it because it also contained a ban on large magazines, which violates the fourth amendment by depriving people of property without due process—in other words, eminent domain all over again.

We do, IMO, need to mandate some changes, like gun safety classes for anyone purchasing a firearm for the first time, electronic fingerprint safeties on all new firearms, etc. And I wouldn't personally want to have a firearm in my house because I think the safety risk exceeds the safety benefit, at least in my neighborhood, but that doesn't mean I think that my opinion should be forced on everyone else. That's part of being a true liberal. Anyone who believes otherwise is a progressive authoritarian, not a progressive liberal.

I'll let the AC explain what he thinks is wrong, if he will actually step up to the plate.
But, you do realize that this story starts with Timothy mentioning what a small percentage of the OS community thinks, and doesn't mention a somewhat more likely possibility - that Google is dissatisfied with the GTK, finds it very difficult to work within its limits, and doesn't feel it can get any cooperation from the GTK designers. If that is how Google feels, then the AC would probably say Google's position is reasonable. I tend to agree with that, myself. But, what's the point of asking the AC to defend his position, when that same position was totally left out of Timothy's original summary, and the position of those who don't see any problems with the GTK is presented as the default of the whole open source community?

Summary: Ooooohhhh! Anybody who doesn't like FOO is a rapist of dead baby seals and unmutual to boot! We're gonna just assume that absolutely everybody reasonable likes FOO, and raise only the questions those reasonable people would ask mean old unreasonable Google.
AC: Well I don't like FOO because it's smelly and might let girls into the Sekret club...
You: AC, you need to explain mo' betterer

Yes, AC probably should present some specific facts, if this was a debate over GTK's quality. But even if you turn this whole thread into a debate with the AC and others like him, win every point, and leave the rest of us impressed with your clarity and logical superiority, do you really think that will prove Google's reasons are as invalid as your debate opponent's?. The facts are, there is an ongoing debate o in the OS community over the conduct of the GTK developers. The summary needs to be written like the community is still seriously divided, not like the only questions being asked are from people who don't see a problem with the GTK and assume that Googgle can't really have a good reason.

That's a paraphraseof Joe Stalin's “Those who vote decide nothing. Those who count the vote decide everything.”. It's a good quote, but it raises the question, is that true of governments in general, at all times, or only when the government is a dictatorship like his was. As you've given it, you could mean either a warning people should heed and can maybe still do something about, or an exercise in sophomore pessimism that says we should all do nothing at all. It's easy to sound wise by saying something most readers will interpret whichever way suits their temperament, but which way do YOU see it?

Not quite: The idea is that you pay as much as the work is worth to the worker, and charge as much as the product is worth to the customer. The difference between these two can still be a positive number because the same good can be worth different amounts to different people. If it is, you profit. If it isn't, why did you start that business, when a market survey should have told you not to. Nobody pays more than what they have to to get workers, or gives a customer a better deal than will gain sales. Still, thank you for at least saying customers rather than consumers.

Exactly. The right answer is to fill the tank with a pressurized inert gas like nitrogen so that there's no O2 left for combustion, similar to what they're doing to the fuel tanks in modern jets.

You're assuming that the speed at which the problems are solved is positively correlated with fundamental understanding of the concepts. For problems like multiplication, this isn't really the case.

Not only is it not the case, in highly intelligent people, for large problem sets, it is often reverse-correlated. When I was a kid, if you gave me 50 math problems, I'd take longer to solve them than the folks who were making Fs in the class—not because I was struggling, but because after the first five or ten problems, I was so bored that I'd spend a few seconds working on a problem, followed by fifteen minutes daydreaming about anything else but the subject at hand.

Here's a nice video of Dr. Feynman explaining why a mirror works the eay it does - be thou unstymied!

https://www.youtube.com/watch?...

Republicans are opposed to giving your hard earned money to people such as wounded veterans:

http://www.washingtonpost.com/...

There's the latest group of "lazy poor'"people the Republican party kept from getting any of your hard earned money.
        Every single vote against this bill came from a Republican, and the 60 vote Super-majority rule in the US senate means a pure Republican minority managed to block the bill. Reasons given include the claim that the VA backlog has increased and spending the money would encourage veterans to try and use the system instead of giving up on it. VA backlogs had been steadily decreasing until the sequester kicked in.
          I'm pretty sure this particular case of stupid Republican thinking has affected you, and will continue to affect you. It's certainly affected me - now every time a Republican says "Thank you for your service", I hear "... you sucker that thought we really meant it.".

                  TOMMY, by Rudyard Kipling

I went into a public-'ouse to get a pint o' beer,
The publican 'e up an' sez, "We serve no red-coats here."
The girls be'ind the bar they laughed an' giggled fit to die,
I outs into the street again an' to myself sez I:
        O it's Tommy this, an' Tommy that, an' "Tommy, go away";
        But it's "Thank you, Mister Atkins", when the band begins to play,
        The band begins to play, my boys, the band begins to play,
        O it's "Thank you, Mister Atkins", when the band begins to play.

I went into a theatre as sober as could be,
They gave a drunk civilian room, but 'adn't none for me;
They sent me to the gallery or round the music-'alls,
But when it comes to fightin', Lord! they'll shove me in the stalls!
        For it's Tommy this, an' Tommy that, an' "Tommy, wait outside";
        But it's "Special train for Atkins" when the trooper's on the tide,
        The troopship's on the tide, my boys, the troopship's on the tide,
        O it's "Special train for Atkins" when the trooper's on the tide.

Yes, makin' mock o' uniforms that guard you while you sleep
Is cheaper than them uniforms, an' they're starvation cheap;
An' hustlin' drunken soldiers when they're goin' large a bit
Is five times better business than paradin' in full kit.
        Then it's Tommy this, an' Tommy that, an' "Tommy, 'ow's yer soul?"
        But it's "Thin red line of 'eroes" when the drums begin to roll,
        The drums begin to roll, my boys, the drums begin to roll,
        O it's "Thin red line of 'eroes" when the drums begin to roll.

We aren't no thin red 'eroes, nor we aren't no blackguards too,
But single men in barricks, most remarkable like you;
An' if sometimes our conduck isn't all your fancy paints,
Why, single men in barricks don't grow into plaster saints;
        While it's Tommy this, an' Tommy that, an' "Tommy, fall be'ind",
        But it's "Please to walk in front, sir", when there's trouble in the wind,
        There's trouble in the wind, my boys, there's trouble in the wind,
        O it's "Please to walk in front, sir", when there's trouble in the wind.

You talk o' better food for us, an' schools, an' fires, an' all:
We'll wait for extry rations if you treat us rational.
Don't mess about the cook-room slops, but prove it to our face
The Widow's Uniform is not the soldier-man's disgrace.
        For it's Tommy this, an' Tommy that, an' "Chuck him out, the brute!"
        But it's "Saviour of 'is country" when the guns begin to shoot;
        An' it's Tommy this, an' Tommy that, an' anything you please;
        An' Tommy ain't a bloomin' fool -- you bet that Tommy sees!

The producer in this case pled to four criminal counts relating to his contracts with the actors, and has been convicted and is now serving time. He also has a previous history of multiple felonies, including a previous fraud conviction. The whole of every single contract was invalidatable, not by some technicality, but by the very fact that he was a felon still on parole, and used an alias in all his dealings and signings, and that is entirely settled law that such contracts are invalid, before we even get to the counts where he actually admitted to fraudulent representations in those contracts. I'd just about guarantee you that's enough to make the lawsuit, and others like it from other actors involved, both reasonable and prone to survive appeal in any circuit. They could probably survive an appeal to SCOTUS, in the Oliver Wendell Holmes Jr., Louis Brandeis or Thurgood Marshall eras.

Find my earlier post in this thread, and read it. You owe a couple of people, at least one of which is ten times the person you might ever hope to be, an apology (starting with the judge you keep calling a thug, and ending with Holi). The question is not whether you will hear nonsense, it's will you hear facts, when those facts make you look petty and judgemental.