As such, this would include second-hand smoke, impaired (or delayed) mental function where concentration is required (such as driving), or other activities which may end up requiring an undue amount of compensation from society to balance out

True, but you have to apply the same analysis to all recreational activities. If you're going to ban Cannabis because it's dangerous, you have to ban all other recreations which are more dangerous than Cannabis. Turns out Cannabis is one of the safest recreations, you're more likely to cause long term brain injury by playing football than smoking cannabis.

I start to wonder if the person isn't compensating for a fundamental life issue that is causing them undue stress that needs to be dealt with.

Possibly, but that's their business and you should mind your own.

i simply thought that sobriety was a trait held in high esteem by society in general, along with kindness, charity, and goodwill.

No, not really. A kind drunk is far preferable to a judgmental teetotaler. Kindness is in itself a virtue. Sobriety is at best loosely associated with virtue.

That's why you apt-get upgrade (or equivalent) frequently. If your OS vendor can't be bothered to patch their packages in a timely fashion, get a different OS.

external binary plugins are much more susceptible to security problems

Who said anything about "external binary plugins"? Use the system PDF viewer. Obviously you trust the system you're using, so why not trust the system PDF viewer?

That's what CUPS-PDF is for. Any application that can print, can print to PDF with CUPS.

Granted, this may be part of my lapsed Catholic upbringing, but I was under the impression drinking was considered morally wrong

They may have considered it such, but they were wrong. Not only wrong, but by judging people by the way they have fun they are themselves immoral. Moralizing is immoral. Live and let live.

By that argument, football, motorcycle riding, or hell, failing to put on sunscreen would also be immoral.

If that's the case, they should enforce it at the controller and advertise the usable space, not the maximum.

What would be great is if an SSD controller was smart enough to know which blocks haven't been touched in ages, and move the oldest data to blocks that are reaching their rewrite limit.

It's probably video games themselves that have contributed to the decrease in violence. Those who are prone to violence are attracted to violent media and this keeps them off the streets where violence is more likely to occur.

Why would you imagine that? There are crimes, e.g., pot smoking, that have no connection to morality whatsoever. And there are crimes, e.g., those commited by bankers, that are deeply immoral but never get prosecuted so they can never affect measured crime rates.

For shane.

What the grandparent does not understand is we live in a society; where you don't always get to make the rules.

What you don't understand is that we live in a society where we never get to make the rules. The rules are made by the rich and powerful, in order to benefit the rich and powerful. And when it doesn't suit them, they ignore those rules.

If you assume we had a functioning democracy, where the will of the people was accurately assayed and implemented, and weath and power was unable to bias or outright pervert justice, then you might have a point. But in this cesspool of corruption? No. I damn well do have a choice to not follow those rules, and I'm not going to play the chump.

If and when the law goes away, GPL will no longer need to exist.

Not quite. Some form of law will be necessary to ensure we all benefit from the four software freedoms. Copyright is currently used as a means to that end, and if copyright was simply repealed it would mean the end of "free software". There would be no way to enforce the share-alike provisions. But that doesn't mean that copyright is necessary. Copyright should be repealed and our software freedoms enshrined in law directly.

Why do you assume he was crapping on others? As an American I can confirm that his post was entirely accurate. If it constitutes "crapping on" someone, it's crapping on an entity that deserves it.

It has nothing to do with fear

As a liberal, I disagree. I fear going bankrupt because I cannot pay my medical bills. I fear getting sick and losing my job, and thus losing access to health care. There are many fear based reasons to favor single payer, and they're damn good reasons too.

I also favor drug legalization, because I fear being imprisoned. I also fear being robbed by drug addicts who cannot get their fix cheaply and safely. I fear for my wallet imprisoning more people here than in any other country in the world.

I also fear terrorism, which is why we should withdraw our presence in the middle east immediately. We've done nothing over there except create more terrorists.

I also fear the big banks. They've destroyed the economy once, and they will do it again unless they are stopped.

There's nothing wrong with being motivated by fear, as long as those fears are realistic, and the measures you take to address them are effective. The problem with conservatives is not the fear, it's the irrational response to the fear.