Do not try to be over-the-top on the internet. There is no top to be over.

She, per the fourth sentence of the post you're commenting on.

Everyone involved in this debacle is pro-trans rights. The issue was that one SE moderator incorrectly thought another was not, and SE committed to backing them without understanding the situation.

I feel like you didn't read the article, you just saw the word "pronoun" and got super triggered.

I would and have.

The downloader was already trackable. Bittorrent was never a secure protocol; that's where all those lawsuits got their targets. Knowing who paid for the original copy of the downloaded file changes nothing.

Well, in that case, we ought to be allowed to experiment on humans against their will, surely. I mean, chimps are similar to us, but they're not identical, and those dissimilarities slow down human-applicable research. if vivisecting a few hundred screaming humans can advance lifesaving medical science, why, it would be selfish not to strap them down!

I find that it's a really good idea to try to understand why people prefer the systems they do. Be sympathetic, get inside their heads, and you'll be better able to both defend your own choices and sympathize with theirs.

This part really should be obvious, but on Slashdot it's not: if you ever conclude that anyone likes any system because "they're stupid", go back and try again. For non-techies, a dirt-simple, friendly, easy-to-use system that does the tiny set of tasks they need is genuinely more useful than a powerful, complex system that they don't have the time or inclination to learn about. Not everyone derives pleasure and satisfaction from figuring out complex systems, and many people simply have other things to do with their time.

My guess is that there's several reasons: BAC below a certain threshold doesn't measurably affect your ability to drive; lots of innocuous things contain alcohol in quantities too small to ever cause intoxication; and breathalyzers are far from 100% accurate. You don't want people losing their license because they drank a glass of orange juice, or just because the breathalyzer erroneously showed 0.01% instead of 0.00%.

"Think of the Bluetooth headset: it’s a really sensible way to use your phone without having to take it out of your pocket—so sensible that there’s really no reason not to keep that headset in your ear most of the time. But you don’t, do you?"

Yes. Yes, I do. Know why? Because I'm a nerd, I'm practical, and I don't give two wet shits what you think.

What weirds me out about this excerpt (I did not RTFA) is the vague implication that if people are too image-obsessed to use a practical, advantageous product, it's the product that's defective and not the people.

This is gonna be like when we all scoffed about the iPad's potential market, isn't it?

You're new to this "humor" thing, aren't you?

Serious question. Can you store files and run apps locally? I don't know. If the answer is "no", then it's obviously worthless garbage.

The questioner asked how to deal with a problem at school, and your answer was "Finish school, then..."

You're not answering the question that was asked. You're answering a completely different question that is useless to the asker and is only intended to make you feel better about yourself, you Hard-Minded Realist, you. Thus, you're a troll.

This is true in general, but when you're having trouble with something--a coding problem, say--it can be very useful to describe it out loud. Processing things verbally makes your brain think about them differently. I'd like to have a dollar for every time I've struggled with something for three hours, gone to ask a coworker for help, and then realized the solution while I was explaining the problem to them.