You're downplaying Ubuntu's huge impact on drawing ordinary, non-tech-savvy people toward Linux. Its influence dwarfs every other distro's. You mention other prominent distros, but when you actually ASK other people (who aren't programmers) who have just adopted a Linux distro what they use, they don't answer "Debian" or "Arch" or "Mint," they answer "Ubuntu." Your own solitary opinion on Ubuntu or the FSF doesn't matter.

I don't THINK my generation is better than my parents'; I KNOW it is. Note the lack of self-imposed racial segregation in most schools. Checking your phone mid-conversation might be rude, but you know what's much more rude? The racism, homophobia, and overall bigotry your generation showed (and in many states continues to show). You can pull the "you'll see in 20 years" card, but you must realize that even with that taken into account, our faults are much smaller than your generation's.

And please, even 4channers know 4chan is the ass of the internet.

Actually, no. It's the electoral college and winner-take-all system that keeps it that way. The reason most other democracies have more than 2 parties is because they have PROPORTIONAL representation (aka an actual democracy). Until we ever get something like that, a third-party vote is no different than staying home on election day.

Those "young 'uns" take longer because they're new to real-world programming. You were exactly the same, except the software YOU worked with was nowhere near as large as what younger programmers have to familiarize themselves with. And the fact that they have to sift through legacy code written by people as close-minded as you only makes it harder. It takes a special kind of stupid to criticize your kids' peers like that, as though they're expected to have your 30 years' worth of experience right out of college.

Honestly, I'm GLAD the the worst thing you can say about my generation is that a few of us have picked up some rude habits. You know what we can say about YOUR generation? That your peers are/were:

-bad parents that led to those rude habits
-racists
-homophobes
-less educated
-hypocrites (high taxes when you were getting the services, low taxes now that we need them)
-cluelessly ruining environments around the globe, for slightly cheaper fuel and other products

I could go on, but I think you get the idea. I'd take the occasional inattentive classmate over the common racist classmate any day.

"Paid for"? Funny!

But seriously, though, you must not be in America, because medical care isn't considered infrastructure here. And the rest of what older generations have left for my generation is pretty laughable. Transportation is horribly inefficient pretty much anywhere outside NYC because all the baby boomers need their own McMansion with their own lawns and gardens, most likely tended by the same people they say should be deported. So now the tallest buildings in most cities are two-story houses, and it's impossible to simply go get groceries without a giant gas-guzzling 5-to-8-seat car that you only drive in alone/with one other person 99% of the time.

And educational quality is horrible in the US for 2 reasons: bad/absent parenting and politically-connected textbook publishers (both of which are, again, on older generations) that put profit ahead of textbook quality; and don't forgot the massive tuition rates my generation is having to pay just for the CHANCE of making a comparable salary (adjusted for inflation) to what our parents made without a degree 30 years ago.

And then there's the retirement age, which is pretty much going to be stuck at 65 for the next few decades so everyone currently above 50 gets to retire by then, effectively contributing to the economy for maybe half of the 80+ years they'll be around. But even all that isn't enough; older people also want lower taxes, which is effectively the same as passing the bill to their kids/grandkids/great-grandkids/great-great/ and so on, because they aren't even willing to give back to society just like society gave to them when they were our age. And let's not even get started on the wonderful global climate disasters we get to inherit while our parents and grandparents are long gone.

And then after all that, older generations accuse ME of being entitled and self-centered? Your generation doesn't exactly get to act morally superior. Like one of the parent posters said, entitlement isn't an age issue, just a personality issue.

Well CLEARLY, America's only answer to this is another $50 billion in stealth fighters that we can store in a military hangar for the next 100 years.

because they can be processed faster without risk of human error? The malfunctioning rate of voting machines is very low, but you wouldn't know it when the only information you get about it is extremely overblown bs like what Glenn Beck is doing here.

If you're going to criticize Americans, at least choose something worth criticizing, like how almost half of Americans shriek in terror at the thought of universal health care, or a 3% increase in income taxes, or a microscopic reduction to America's $1 trillion annual military budget, or their kids being taught the theory of evolution and sex education at school.

This is a completely illogical analogy. You can't compare the richest people in the world (who have the freedom to do much more than we could in 50 lifetimes because of it) with some dog that's been locked in a cage.

And you're basing your reasons on absolutely no scientific data, with the assumption that the downsides of deregulation are somehow only "temporary," with no explanation as to how it would only be temporary. And if that's the case, why has Monsanto gotten away with terrorizing smaller farmers for decades? Why do oil companies continue to cause natural disasters like the Gulf and Alaska spills (and those are just in the US) or Shell's constant leaks on the west coast of Africa?

  And what makes you think efficiency "suffers" because of regulation? Regulation is one of the things that keeps monopolies from forming, and last I checked, monopolies aren't good in terms of efficiency. Regulation is also the reason banks can't charge you astronomically high interest rates on simple loans, and can instead only charge you outrageously high interest rates, which is also an improvement in terms of efficiency. Regulation also INDIRECTLY helps with efficiency by, say, not letting companies dump chemical byproducts close to water supplies and poisoning every other company's employees.

Why does /. reward these kinds of posts?

you KNOW that's not why they're doing it. If this were the case, half of court cases would have the lawyers looking through victims' internet history. They're only doing it in this case because widely-publicized stories always lead to biased rulings, and they want to look for any and every angry comment or argument the kid's ever made online to give him a negative image.

You aren't going to see the defense showing any tweets like "brb gonna go beat up this neighborhood watch guy" or "lol gonna rob a store without a gun" or anything that would indicate that Trayvon had bad intentions the night he was killed. Instead you're only going to see negative comments he made on completely irrelevant things like youtube videos or on somebody's facebook wall weeks or months prior to his murder.

Because clearly that Zimmerman psycho knew all about some kid's online comment history when he harassed and shot him.

The defense lawyers and the judge need to be thrown in jail along with him.

$100 billion/year is a STEAL compared to what the US spends on travel. Consider our highway system, which already costs billions a year, and then EVERYONE needs a car for it, and all the GAS for those cars (which alone probably costs more than that whole high-speed rail system), and most people will be using a GPS so they don't get lost. And then for those people who don't want to sit in a car and stare at the road for 5-10 hours or more, just consider the upkeep costs on our air travel and airports. $100 billion is nothing compared to all that.

There's also the little fact that high-speed rail is by far the safest form of travel available. Accidents almost never happen, it's actually faster than air travel up until the 4-hour mark, AND most trains have wifi service (at least in the EU).

a class like political science would be the last thing to replace a science course with. Americans are already dumb and opinionated enough as it is; for god's sake, don't let the curriculum reinforce that in following generations.

you can't seriously be blaming a middle-school kid for being manipulated and subsequently tormented by a 32-year-old psychopath.

I'm a pretty avid gamer, but I wouldn't really mind this law in the US. I already go out of my way to get parts that are rated energy-efficient anyway, and everyone else should as well. If that means you have to settle with a slightly lower clock speed that might result in an ALMOST-noticeable framerate drop... you'll live.