Devastation? What complete and utter bullshit. There more than enough willful ignorance to go around apparently.

"Unless you don't care about PC gaming at all, by now you're aware of Valve's entry into the MOBA/ARTS genre, Dota 2."

Unless you're a total douche-bag, you wouldn't even think of penning something like that.

Instances of me getting cut off and tailgated dropped to nearly zero when I started driving an '85 CJ7 with a 4" lift and steel bumpers. Happens nearly every time I drive my other car (an old Mercedes diesel) so I noticed the effect almost immediately. And the Jeep is not significantly faster than the diesel except off the line, nor do I drive it faster (the opposite if anything).

"Firearm possession is illegal in my country, dumb fuck. And in the rest of Europe, by the way."

No, they aren't.

What was the name of that Venus story? I'm rather certain a film version was made of it and I was just recently trying to locate it again. I definitely remember seeing a film about kids on a rainy world many years ago that stuck in my mind, and your description fleshes out the hazy memory of it perfectly.

Well, they had to pass it to find out what's in it after all.

Oh yes, yes. That's OBVIOUSLY exactly what I was saying. Guns, bombs...pshaw. Nerve gas and radioactive material should be allowed too. After all, what's to be afraid of? LOL

Fucking dumbass.

"Lofty language." - A couple of hundred years from now your descendents will probably think that mine talk 'gay' too. Go back to greeting people at Costco.

"It's not hard to imagine scenarios"

That is the problem. That right there.

I choose not to live in fear.

Fear is the mind killer. Or society in this case.

Actually it is an emergency brake. It just gets used for parking a lot. In my car it's a purely mechanical system completely separate from the vacuum/hydraulic and uses brake shoes inside the wheel hubs instead of the disc pads. Also, they are only on the rear so that when you are truly in an emergency you can mash the emergency brake, potentially locking the rear wheels, and yet still have steering.

The alternative is that they installed a completely separate braking system purely so you could park on hills without relying on the transmission, which I find very unlikely.

Projected support costs of Linux version vs. Projected revenue from it would be my guess. It's oft-repeated unfortunately.

U.S. Copyright Law

Is the Table of Contents Copyrightable?

Bernard C. Dietz, current head of the renewal section of the examining division of the U.S. Copyright Office, October 17, 1991, stated in his deposition, "...it has to be kept in mind that in the vast majority of cases the table of contents itself is not copyrightable; it's nothing more than a listing of the citations in the book. There has to be something uniquely attributable to that author of the table of contents to make it copyrightable."

From here. (Never heard of that book before. The world is bizarre.)

Right, it's a direct and meaningful comparison because those two countries are equal in every other way. The Netherlands being more homogenous culturally and ethnically, combined with 7th in the world per capita net worth and a tiny population, have absolutely nothing to do with it.

How are they heroes for getting murdered? I'm pretty sure not a single one of them was thinking, "Good, now I get to lay down my life for, um, something*...!"

* = coming to work that day? being in the wrong place at the wrong time?

You don't put someone on the 'hero' pedestal for those kind of reasons. A hero is someone you look up to and want to emulate, in common parlance anyway. What is there about those people that falls into those kind of categories?

Excepting the ones who had moments of selflessness trying to help others get out or were on the planes and could fight back, the bulk of those who died are simply victims. Using the term hero for anyone we feel connected to that has something bad happen to them is belittling to those who have genuinely earned it by standing on principle, willingly sacrificing themselves, etc.

And by the by, exactly how is fighting anyone going to help the dead in any fashion?

I'll take whining over senseless patriotic drivel any day.

The next government form that asks for religion...

To my old codger brain PK == Phil Katz.

You aren't forgotten Phil.