I don't mind sharing my bandwidth with strangers. I mind the **AA motherfuckers suing me for someone who doesn't know how to obfuscate downloading a movie or something and getting my broke ass in court. I'll be happy to open my access point when I can't be held accountable for what someone I don't know would do with it.

I'm not being selfish, I'm preserving myself in a world of sharks.

The answer of if it's faster than light is "maybe", but it's reasonably certain that information can't be exchanged faster than light. All entanglement can be used for is to verify something that is already known and you only get on chance to test the condition. If you get it wrong, you waste the entanglement by adding new information to it. It's essentially a one-dial etch-a-sketch.

I'd like Nintendo a whole lot more if I didn't hate the Mario world so much, and it's all about the fucking, boring, racist and campy mascot everywhere on every title in every iteration. It's not funny. It's not sexy. It's not cute. As a pop culture icon, it's just as dull as it's always been and the only reason left to insist on it (in the US) is to pander to Generation Xs and Generation Ys who think they're Generation Xs.

The issue I see here is that the qualities we already screen for are "master" flaws, things that will definitely, objectively ruin a person's life or prevent them from surviving at all. Medical care can't keep up with these problems.

Lesser flaws, like alcoholism, psychopathy and a predisposition to violence are things that are held subjectively and have a a social stigma against them... however, none of these things make someone inherently a bad person. There's also a lot of therapeutic or medical options available for things like this that will only improve over time. Then there's the possibility that society must have assholes to function.

All this does is raise the line of "good enough" and that is undeniably in the direction of eugenics. Maybe that's a good thing, but I don't believe society really has the awareness, wherewithal or objectivity needed to improve itself in such a way. I'll be happy to come back to the question once religion is forgotten.

Beside you ruining my joke... nonsense. I stopped using Macs because I was struggling with similar issues. With Windows I can find a dozen alternatives for anything as a binary. With Linux I can easily use .debs or other binaries or easily install libraries and compile source code. By "thinking differently" it's brutally difficult to make any changes I want, fix problems when Apple doesn't have a solution for me, find the software I want or good alternatives and the strict dependence on specific, overpriced hardware is madness.

If I need a computer for someone who knows nothing about computers and I suspect they lack the developmental capacity to learn anything more about them, then I'll recommend a Mac; The screensaver they include in OS X is fantastic.

I don't know what you guys are talking about, I use Metro all the time. Every time I start my computer it shows up, then the first things I do is click the Desktop application on the start page. I love this Desktop application, seems to do everything I need. I don't actually see myself needing any other Metro apps.

That... is actually pretty helpful. I think I turn on the oven the kitchen turns straight into hell, I suppose there's a lot more kitchen outside and all out ovens together aren't so big in relation.

We're releasing energy stored over the course of 150 million years, there's a lot of sunlight in that oil, coal and wood. The funny part is we're releasing this energy to do things that are believed to cause less energy to radiate back into space (for the time being).

I was excited about a Metro frame Chrome, until I noticed that when I'm playing YouTube videos and go to another application I can't hear it anymore.

I do like the "Start Page" though, I think it's going to be the only Metro application I'll use.

I wonder if destroying specific buildings and replacing them with parks or bodies of water would help.

Air conditioners don't "blow cool air", they remove heat from one system and move it to another.

The Earth is one big, fucking air conditioner and winds take heat from one place and move it to another. They very much "cool things down". This is especially nice when home air conditioners are relocating heat into the space around those homes, taking it a step further.

I hated Windows 8 before I actually installed it.

The fears of "new thing" I had were eliminating the Start Menu and that Metro would be compulsory. It turns out it's all exactly what I've wanted in computers.

I've had Mac friends bitch at me, like "I can tell you're a Windows user!" because I maximize everything. Since Windows 3.1 the only state I've felt comfortable with is maximized with a taskbar. The only time I want to see more than one window is when I'm dragging something from one to another.

People say this is a matter of multitasking, but multitasking doesn't exist in any real way until there's independent processors. Computers don't "multitask", they shuffle short parts of a job together to give the appearance of multitasking. People are the same, and I'm just not built for it. I only want to see what I'm working on and something telling me when it's time to look at something else. I benefit highly from a non-overlapping user interface, which is what Metro offers.

Ubuntu's early netbook designs were very inspiring. A few applications worked together to clean things up, Maximus would maximize everything and take off the window frame and buttons. Window-picker-applet would replace the regular tasks applet in Gnome, cleanly fitting in with the frameless windows and offering a fixed close button at the end. What they had effectively done was turned the taskbar into browser tabs and I was thrilled.

The Start Page is an excellent replacement to the Start Menu; When I opened the Start Menu, I wanted to look at the Start Menu, and I just happened to have to kludge through a million things or pin a short list of things to the top of it that depended on my resolution. With the Start Page, you pin everything you want and ignore the rest until you need it. I will never have to think to myself again, "Well, I don't want this application on the Taskbar, but to put it in the Start Menu I'll have to remove something else..."

As far as the Windows Store goes, it's just another case where IE got the spotlight. You can use alternatives, the ethical question is whether Microsoft will let you choose them (they will) and if they're play dirty to hurt the competition (they probably won't, much, nothing that they won't be condemned for). I'm looking forward to Steam's Metro app, Chrome's Metro app is already fine.

Really, it's entirely possible to create a wrapper that will put any application into a maximized frame to pretend to be a Metro-native application. I just wish Metro didn't segregate from the Desktop so much and that it had a cleaner way to switch between Metro and Desktop applications.

Finally... I don't know what people mean about this nonsense with "only good if you don't use a keyboard or mouse". When you're like me and you always maximize everything, there's no damned difference. If you don't, don't use Metro because the rest of the Windows 8 is a hell of an improvement.

We got where we are thanks to the dead animals time has gifted to us and buried beneath our feet. Going by the inevitable and grim prospect of running out of the good stuff, if our own fate is the likely outcome of sentience blessed with 150 millions years worth of sunlight compressed into goo, then intelligence life is going to be a whole lot harder than even the skeptics want to appreciate.

I think life is very likely. I think us seeing it won't happen. I certain us meeting other, intelligent life in the universe during the tiny window we'll get to survive as a species is simply impossible.

We don't deserve intergalactic travel. Maybe, though, we'll be lucky enough to be a part of the next fossil fuels that kickstarts the next dominant species' intellectual revolution. It would almost be the responsible thing to just decimate the human species now before we waste what fossil fuels are already there so that the next contender has a better chance of unraveling the mysteries of the universe.

Better when it was a law, at least then you'll notice when they silence dissidents and have it on record.