It does, actually. As a member of the press operating under the jurisdiction of UK libel law, I'm not going to say he committed any crime until he's convicted.

Have you read the details of how DPR got caught? Satoshi may be some kind of genius, but if Ross Ulbricht really is DPR then he definitely does not have the skills to run any kind of criminal enterprise. As for balls, stupidity can convince a person to do all kinds of things.

I, at least, am unlikely to be weaned off ethanol.

Errr... apparently Twitter IS worth more than Red Hat, but Zynga's market cap is less than half that of EA and Facebook's is less than half that of Microsoft.

Yeah, this. I've never heard it called orgo. In fact, this description of the class does't ring any bells with me at all.

Dammit! Until I read this, I had been proud of the inch-long cockroach corpse that had been lying on the ground near my desk for months. Biggest damn roach I'd ever seen in San Francisco, and I squashed it running right across the carpet. Only it didn't take much damage, other than dying; there it lay, legs folded up in death, antenna and all. But just now I turned around and it's GONE! Some bastard has stolen my gigantic dead cockroach, and I want answers.

On the plus side, when Obama conjures Satan from the pit and takes dominion over Earth with his Dark Fourth Reich from his skull-bedecked throne in Kenya, my demon-possessed body will be able to rise, come back, and admit I was wrong.

The POS might make it easier to itemize people's bills if people hadn't got drunk during the course of the meal and decided to debate and ask questions about everything on their bill only to decide, "Yeah, you're right, my mistake." How many times would you want to go through that a night if you were a waiter?

Also, the POS doesn't make it any easier for a waiter to have to ring up five separate credit cards for a single table. In addition, splitting the bill among five people means the tip (which is the all-important part of a waiter's wages in the US, because it accounts for the majority of his/her earnings) is divided among five people, all of whom are more likely to leave a cheap tip because the other people at the table won't know what they're leaving.

No they're not. Not in America. It depends on state and even municipality, but in many (most?) places, waitstaff are exempt from minimum wage laws. I repeat: exempt from minimum wage laws. They are legally expected to get most of their wages from tips. And I maintain that the more you split up the check between more people, the more work you make for the server (so what you're saying is "they get paid, but I deserve a bargain"), while at the same time you have less incentive to compensate the server fairly (because nobody else knows what you're paying).

That may be because they wait until they get away from the table and do their grumbling to other servers, because if they grumbled in front of the customers and the customers complained they would quickly get fired. But call me crazy.

It's pretty standard practice in the Bay Area. Any more than six people and they'll probably add the gratuity to the bill automatically, too.

Wow. Not only would I feel utterly embarrassed to do that to a waiter, but where I live a lot of restaurants won't do it. It's not uncommon to see signs saying they won't split between more than two or three credit cards, either.

Maybe it's a factor of my age, too? As in, I'm not fresh out of school and most of the people I go out to eat with are going to be from more or less the same economic class as me, so we all just split the bill, or one person picks it up because they're feeling generous.

Your method just seems so petty and trifling to me, making way more work for the waitstaff than is necessary. If everybody wants to pay their own check, you should go somewhere where everyone can order individually, too. Like McDonald's.

He paid someone $80,000 for the torture and murder of a federal witness. The government tends to frown on that sort of thing. But I supposed to you that's a "victimless crime," because the person he paid was an undercover agent and nobody was actually tortured or murdered.

I think you'll find I've been there more recently than you. But the fact that you drive to the Cliff House (personally, I take the bus) doesn't change the fact that every single last square foot of the restaurant is on public land, owned by the National Park Service. The restaurant operates solely under a license from the National Park Service. If you look at its website, it says quite plainly that even the prices of its food are subject to approval by the National Park Service.

If you don't know, why boast about your ignorance as if it helps to prove your point? The currents on the coastline near the Cliff House are very hazardous to all but the strongest swimmers, and there are strong "rip currents" in the shallow areas that can pull unaware people out into deeper waters. People drown near there every year. The Park Service does employ lifeguards, but they're not the Baywatch kind that sit in towers and watch the surf. They mostly do visitor education and respond to rescue calls. In addition, among the agencies that respond when rescues are needed in the area are the San Francisco Fire Department, the US Coast Guard, and the US Park Police. Some of these agencies are still funded, while others aren't. So you tell me -- with the government shutdown, is it better to have the parks closed, or have them open but more dangerous to visitors due to diminished patrol capacity?

That's incorrect. Again, check the website. The restaurant offers valet parking after 5pm. There are also parking lots nearby -- which, though they may abut city streets, are also on National Park Service land. (The one up the hill from the Cliff House may be city-owned; I'm not sure.)

Yes yes yes, and a Muslim, and a Kenyan, and he eats babies for dinner. I heard he was monitoring some woman via radio waves so he could broadcast her life on TV, too. Now you're showing your true colors.

OK, fine, start here. It's a list of marijuana dispensaries in the Bay Area that's maintained by the local free weekly newspaper. These are not "drug dens," they are licensed businesses, and if you're capable of a little logic, you will put two and two together and realize that you can't get a license if there is no law governing it. Since there is a law, that makes it ... with me so far?

You will need a recommendation from a doctor, which might set you back a couple hundred bucks. That's between you and your doctor. To get one, you may be required to be a California resident. Once you have a medical marijuana card and a valid picture ID, you can legally -- yes, legally -- buy marijuana in various forms from any of these places. Thanks to the California Compassionate Use Act of 1996, you may also be able to grow a fairly generous amount of marijuana for your own personal use, depending on which city you live in. Exact laws regarding the amounts you are legally allowed to possess and grow vary by municipality. You're welcome.

The link above is to a story that largely repeats claims made by the Washington Times, a far-right newspaper run by the Reverend Moon's Unification Church (aka the Moonies).

The quote from the so-called "angry park ranger" is completely unsourced: the ranger is never named, and the paper never even establishes who supposedly told him to "make life difficult." His cousin, maybe? His wife? A real newspaper would have called up the National Park Service and asked whether this was its policy. The Washington Times, unfortunately, is not a real newspaper.

Then the Examiner, which is not a newspaper but a blogging network, comes along and basically repeats everything the Washington Times says and throws in some comments from Fox Business to spice it up. Only Fox Business never actually mentions the word "dictatorship" -- that was the Examiner reporter's own color commentary.

Show me a legitimate news source that backs up these claims and we can talk about it.

That's weird. Whats this photograph of, then?