I assume you thought to reply to me because of the similarity between your scenario and the mistake GP made?

It really sounds like another instance of regulatory capture, in which the industry encourages or allows an idea to become enshrined into law that just so happens to benefit its bottom line. The fossil fuel industry is one that can bring to bear a nearly unlimited budget for things like lawyers, lobbyists, advertisers, etc. If they ignore or applaud a law, it's because it serves their interests. Otherwise you'd get a demonstration of the clout they wield. I mean, to anyone unfamiliar with this industry, "you keep the first few years' revenue, then you pay" sounds gracefully fair.

So how do you do one without also doing the other? Or to put it another way: if you raise the taxes of all oil/gas companies, what do you think those companies are going to do next?

Comparing the current tax rate to the proposed tax increase is not a "rounding error" at all. It's five percent, just as you say.

Comparing the additional cost of this proposed tax increase to all the other costs involved in obtaining the fuels is what has been identified as a rounding error.

So, while what you say is correct, you're missing the point entirely. This is why context is more important than trying to show everyone how clever you are for finding the obvious "flaw" everyone else "missed". It would be wonderful to see a single Slashdot discussion where your mistake isn't repeated.

That's a useless statement of the obvious until and unless you provide another definition of "fair" that you believe better applies to society. The AC at least provided a line of reasoning.

Personally I'd like to see the IRS eliminated and the Fair Tax Act implemented. The funny thing about that Act: I've never seen someone rail against it who actually understood how it works. Of course total ignorance about its most basic details didn't seem to stop such people from passionately demonizing it. Gotta love that. One could say that a notion of "fairness" includes not opposing something you aren't even slightly familiar with.

What did you observe that led you to that conclusion? And ... where can I go to make the same observations?

Because as we all know, no one would ever use the fact that a word has multiple meanings to make a humorous statement. They can't possibly have done this intentionally, with full awareness of the intended meaning of the word versus the different meaning they are using in their humorous statement.

Thank God that never happens! Therefore you have done a tremendous and necessary public service by pointing this out. All of us would truly be lost without your guidance. You are to be commended, sir.

Between the repetitive memes and endless XKCD links ("obligatory" implies "redundant") on one end, and people who feel a need to spell out the obvious because they think they're so much clever than everyone else on the other (so it doesn't occur to them they might be interpreting it incorrectly), humor on Slashdot is on the decline.

I would never use Sendmail or BIND given their security history. Better tools are available.

That's also a frequent definition of "racist".

Yes because everyone is completely interested in your little quarrel and regards this matter as extremely important and compelling.

I get it, I really do. For most Slashdotters, it's standard procedure to disappear and stop posting to a thread the moment someone conclusively proves them wrong or otherwise calls them out. Heaven forbid someone say a thing like, "you know, that's a really good point and my position is mistaken - I should correct my worldview to accommodate this new information." That requires a certain character and emotional maturity that few possess anymore because the culture at large no longer values these traits. The childish desire to always look good, to save face at all costs has no room for these, you see.

The problem is: if you are in the right, no number of posts you create is ever going to make someone perform the growth and introspection it takes to correct their value system. They'll just find lower-hanging fruit, easier slam-dunk cheap-shot targets, and move on. If you are in the wrong, then you're simply lowering the signal-to-noise ratio with nothing to show for it. Either way, you cannot accomplish anything. The very secrets of the Universe Itself are lost upon those who only value dick jokes.

Meanwhile you're creating lots of irrelevant and off-topic posts that others quickly grow tired of seeing. Even the few who may have been sympathetic to your side will quickly become turned off, and if nothing else, they will lose their desire to be associated with a perceived spammer.

I'm sorry but what you are trying to do here simply can't work and it's not a matter of trying hard enough. Please reconsider your tactics. If you are correct about this person (and I have neither the information nor the interest to judge that), you demonstrate your superiority by being more correct, more classy, and more tasteful than he or she. The belief that only K. S. Kyosuke could ever have posted a complaint is a tad paranoid; therefore I make this post with my pseudonym.

The antidote for bad speech is more (good) speech.

You simply can't have freedom if people aren't allowed to decide for themselves what is worthy and what is disgusting. And in terms of free speech, it's worked out pretty well. Those who seriously express racist sentiments are publically humiliated and villified in our society. In fact I'd rather they be free to speak so that they can be identified and avoided, rather than driving it underground (like our futile efforts to proscribe drugs).

To frame this in terms of "supporting free speech is also supporting racism (because racists might speak too)!" is really very childish of you. If and when your intellect and emotions finally mature and match your chronological age, you will come to understand this for yourself.

I'm not commenting on porn one way or another. But if something that consenting adults do happens to go against my morality, do you know how I deal with that?

I don't do that thing myself. That's all.

You see, part of my morality involves recognizing the unnecessary control of other people as evil. Consenting adults == no victim == no crime == not a law-enforcement matter. I might speak against practices I disagree with, perhaps even vehemently, but in these cases trying to use government's police power (that is, armed men willing to do violence to force compliance) is just plain fucking disgusting.

It matters in the sense that the "young-earth creationists" are easily ridiculed and the mountain of evidence against them is strong.

It matters because it's easy, in the soft minds of so many, to represent all creationists as young-earth creationists who believe things that are easily and trivially falsified by geological, astronomical, and nuclear-physics data. So precious few people are willing to do a little reading and learn that in the hundred years prior to the 1960s almost all creationists were ancient-earth creationists, that a handful of charismatic, vocal, wrong religious people are the only reason we even know of such a thing as a young-earth creationist (oh and the idea of a pre-flood canopy of water vapor is frickin impossible as well, and not even Biblical).

If you have ever actually met and talked to a number of atheists, they tend to have a lot of anger and resentment towards established religion and the more nutty followers of it. Some of them even have victim/persecution complexes. They tend to paint with a very broad brush and deny entirely that reasonable spiritual people exist. That would, after all, get in the way of their resentment. I don't believe I have ever met a pro-atheism atheist, but I have met a lot of anti-fundamentalist atheists. The common trait most of them have is that they cannot disagree with something without also trying to destroy it, which could be a lot more effective if they made any attempt to understand why those beliefs arose in the first place.

All of this is readily understood by those who simply want to objectively understand the beliefs in question, both scientific and religious. It tends to be lost upon those whose primary concern is winning converts.

Actually as I said in another post in this same discussion, my preference is for stainless steel containers. No plastic -> no need for plastic softeners -> no exposure to BPA or any other chemical serving its purpose.

But many people here do feel a need to show everyone how clever they are and how dumb everyone else is, even if they have to make baseless assumptions to try it, don't they?

I still try to do what you are doing here, in the hope that it might make some kind of difference, and because it's the fucking truth that needs to be said ... but you will find (and probably have found) that people will cling dearly to their victimhood and closely embrace their conditioned helplessness as though it were precious to them.

Expecting a literate adult with no disabilities to be able to follow simple, clearly written instructions is some kind of heresy in our society. In the context of things like computer security, you will be accused of blaming the victim when you tell them there are ways they can stop being exploited. In the context of tasks like installing a filter or configuring a system, you'll be told that "not everyone is an expert" and treated like you are making unreasonable demands.

People just love to limit themselves and avoid learning new things. The society in general has become childish and self-centered to its core, and such people have one primary concern: avoiding blame. If you are a helpless victim then you can't assume responsibility for your life, your decisions, and your problems. If you are a helpless victim then nothing could ever be your fault. That's the appeal. Just as a cell infected by a virus never "intended" to become a virus factory, so also do these people believe their own bullshit. They fear the introspection and lack the objectivity to do otherwise.

Trying to convince them of the truth, that they CAN in fact do it, is tantamount to convincing them to accept responsibility for all the things they could have done differently. Over a lifetime the cumulative number of such things can be quite large. They have to get upset with you and invent faults with your truth because they're cowards who are not prepared to do that and don't even understand the value in it. If something is your fault, that's good! It means you can change it by making better decisions. It means you are not really so helpless. But again you have to be mentally and emotionally mature enough to value this more than avoiding blame.

While I use soap a bit more often than you indicate, I am right with you on the antibacterial soap.

I am not a doctor and this is definitely not medical advice. But If I were worried about bacteria I personally (deciding only for myself) would take a probiotic. About 70% of the immune system is in the gut.