A fad that has lasted decades, and is growing.

Yes, of course. If it's bad, the US is to blame. And independent, totally unbiased, fair-minded and honest organizations with no agenda whatsoever, like the UN, ratify that conclusion at every opportunity.

Sounds like "he said - you said." Some actual facts would help the discussion.Buzzphrases like "bloated piece of bad software" on the one hand and "secure, enterprise-ready solutions" on the other, tell us nothing that can be used as the basis for a choice or decision.

I know very little about Active Directory, but I'm willing to learn if something of substance could be presented.

"the spread is lower than 8% going by score"

That should be 12%

I actually had to read the article to figure this out. The statement that White wins 56% and Black 44% is for games in which a non-draw decision is reached (per the actual article). But with 10% to 33% draws, the actual difference in score is definitely lower. Conventional scoring is 1 for a win and 0.5 each for a draw.

So White does have a persistent advantage, but the spread is lower than 8% going by score. And I think you have to go by score, that's what counts in tournament play.

Let's say over the time period in question there are 20% draws (just for the sake of calculation). Out of 1000 games there are 200 draws. White wins 56% of 800 or 448, so Black wins 352. White scores 548, Black 452, or 54.8% to 45.2%. Still a clear White advantage, but somewhat less, and lesser still as we approach the modern 33% drawn.

I'm no fan of MS or MS Office, and I use Linux/LibreOffice myself. But I'm willing to try to be open-minded and listen to the other side, and you seem willing to present it in a logical fashion. Can you say in what way or ways LibreOffice lags MS Office so badly? I'm not talking about obscure features used by only a few people. A decade of lag implies some really fundamental problems. Can you elaborate?

Heh. I live in Hawai`i. No Canadian Tire here :(

I don't have any of that junk either ... but I'm also an old codger who thinks email is modern and up-to-date, and since I play on chess.com I think I'm an advanced internet user :) I don't bother with Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn, SnapChat, or any of the others. I sometimes wonder why I bother with /. for that matter.

But hey, I run Linux and I use Emacs org-mode, so I'm hip, right?

The internet can bring us information but we have to develop critical judgment on our own. That takes experience. However I think for someone willing to put in the effort, having a vast array of knowledge available can be very useful and an aid in the process of developing thinking skills.

I like it a lot more today when I can quickly look up nearly anything at all. The old days, when it took a trip to the library to consult likely out-of-date reference books, were certainly not as good.

And I used to love Canadian Tire. But that was, what, 40 years ago? Will have to look online to see if they still exist...

Huh? You can just forward classified material to non-secure servers outside of a classified network? I think not!

As Secretary of State she would have access to incredibly sensitive material.

Truman had to make the toughest decision any human being was ever called upon to make. It's easy to criticize in retrospect. He called it "a decision that would challenge the wisdom of Solomon himself." (approximate quote)

Was he right? Was he wrong? I think he did the best he could. Say what you want about his advisors, what information he had or didn't have, and so on, but in the end history would hold him and him alone responsible, and he knew it.

I would have hated to have been in his shoes.

Norway, Sweden, Canada, etc., are not super-powers and don't have the same world role, like it or not.

Can the US be a better place? Absolutely. That's what we have to work for. America espouses high principles and when we don't live up to them that's a problem.

But is the US the worst place around, or even a bad place, as things go? Answer for yourself.

Let's try to build up the US, by making it better and striving toward those high principles that we ought to not just espouse but act out. But let's not just blindly tear the US down.

This is just another way to say "The US is bad and everyone else is oh-so-wonderful" which is a popular theme around /.

I'm sorry America can't be as moral and upright as North Korea, Cuba, Russia, Iran, and all the other paragons of virtue that you love so much.

Truman had to make one of the toughest calls ever made in human history. It's easy to second guess today. But put yourself in his shoes. I believe he weighed the information that he had and made the decision that he thought best, knowing full well that history would both praise and condemn him.

No one could possibly be happy about the deaths at Hiroshima and Nagasaki. But no one is happy about all the lives that WWII claimed before that time and would have claimed had the war gone on. Paul Tibbets, the pilot of Enola Gay, famously said (rough quote) "I deeply regret the loss of life, but I do not apologize."

This was/is not a simple issue with a simple answer.