I've attempted my own research on this and discovered that I could not count on official statistics at all. A lot of the issues you mention make direct comparisons difficult to useless. It takes, as far as I can tell, an in-depth and frankly professional (as in, paying someone with an actual degree in statistics) analysis to make anything compare properly.

My greatest frustration is with the NRA's influence having caused the (I could be misremembering which department) CDC to be unable to record/publish relevant information on a national level. I'm almost certain the NRA general constituency believe the stats will bear out firearms as a safe factor overall, yet the lobby prevents the actual numbers from being available, aside from the FBI stats which from what I've been able to tell are constantly redefined/recategorized to make historical comparisons impossible (a necessary component of evaluating trends following the passage/sunsetting of legislation).

I've had to resort to philosophical reasoning rather than real evidence to come to my conclusions. A proper analysis would be invaluable, and explaining the intricacies of the other flawed methodologies and why they need to be discarded would probably require a full book. One which I would most likely buy, if I could vet the author well enough to believe the relevant biases have been accounted for.

No, McAfee started sucking well before the Intel acquisition. It had more to do with the OEM ISP bundling deals and the flaky HTML interface since about '06-'08 as I recall

God I remember all the Norton Internet Security 2004 installs that would bork in the firewall and take down the entire network connection. I hate them for buying Sygate and locking it up but I am sure not going to miss that headache.

Exactly. Give me a secure dock for a Nexus device and call it a day. Auto manufacturers may be the only bunch worse than carriers at updating OS and software elements. I got a Nexus 7 (1st gen) with the express intention of hack-retrofitting a pogo pin dock into the dash and being able to remove the most expensive part and take it with me when I leave the vehicle. It's replaceable, upgrade-able, and has no retarded app availability issues, and comes without the ridiculous price premium. Installed media widget and active visualizer wallpaper; done.

The real irony here is the original justification of outlawing pot in the first place. "Gateway drug" to harder stuff was the original argument.

Here we are some years on and we can review and see that even if that theory was good (it's not), the price we pay to draw that line in the sand is way too high. I can grow coffee plants on my own land for noncommercial purposes that have more dangerous effect, and yet we're willing to let people break down your door, shoot your dog, and give your whole family PTSD you just might need drugs to help with, if only there was a miracle crop that could safely reduce anxiety... (seriously, have you *seen* the list of uses hemp has? The original US Constitution document was written on hemp parchment, among many other things)... oh, look at that house of cards collapse. Intent is a pretty stupid thing to consider without speaking to some more serious crime (i.e. first degree murder vs. manslaughter). I'm not saying you're wrong, but you really shouldn't be right in a just world.

Honestly, there's no moral theory that makes the law reasonable, particularly given how racist the enforcement tends to be, now that we have actual data on how the "war on drugs" is prosecuted. We'd save a boatload on prison spending if we legalized it across the board, to say nothing of restoring the actual freedom politicians like to reference but have gone AWOL in the last few decades, and maybe give the US some of its international dignity back.

As I recall, MS made the decision to save money by not including codec licenses with every Windows install. Instead, they want you to purchase the media pack upgrade - a pretty sour move, I'll agree.

Just one more reason to hate Windows 8, along with the fact that if something goes wrong and you need to boot Safe Mode: good luck.

Same story every time MS launches an OS. Windows releases, includes drivers currently in the development channel, then around a year later new hardware is being produced and the drivers slowly become less and less available out of the box. Any day now, if you go to install Windows 8 with a generic install disk on a new computer (say, to clean off all the bundled crapware), you'll have the same problem. Hell I'm probably going to face that situation with one of my clients in the next month.

I figure the Linux devs have more of a big-picture concept of their work, vs. the Windows guys who have a very specific version they are targeting. Not that I give them any slack for it, but their priorities are probably different. You can blame MS for their driver signing process not including certain interoperability features I suppose, but let's not forget that chipsets do evolve and change as time goes on. I love an excuse to slam MS but it's been like this for over a decade.

This issue has been addressed here previously on slashdot.

I can say the above link matches very closely my own experience: having attempted the e-match thing myself once upon a time, I saved myself some major depression by giving up on it. Seriously, it truly is a soul-crushing experience if you aren't the lucky 10% or so of most-attractive contestants looking for the "typical" match. Also note that not everybody is comfortable with doing deeply personal things on the internet, for good reason (see: almost every Facebook story ever) - some of the smartest people won't be found online.

My recommendation: expand your interests a little, and get out somewhere that you are exposed to new people. Take up Tai Chi. Join a book club. Take a course or two of something new at a community college. Sure, there can be some money involved here, but you're likely to get a much higher class of results. Most importantly, keep in close contact with the better people you know. I met my current SO at a friend's house out of the blue.

Yeah, there's even an account of them swallowing an entire alien invasion fleet "due to a terrible miscalculation of scale."

This may be moderately true in the US - for now. It is certainly not true overseas, particularly Europe. They are up in arms over there, and it's going to be really bad for American business. It has already begun. Once business starts crashing, and the jobs are lost, we're going to discover we really do care. How much we care is going to depend on how many people can follow the chain of consequences, rather than just watching MTV or whatever the kids are doing these days, but inevitably Senators are going to be listening to their campaign contributors if nobody else.

What does "environmental enrichment" mean? Better nutrition? A nanny called GLaDOS? Your link does not say, and I'm rather skeptical of your argument. Given the vocabulary and glut of random facts I have picked up from reading, I'd say TFS's reported result is hardly surprising, but still significant to keep in mind for educational purposes

YES. We should not attempt to bend the rules of physics or disrupt the working structures that hold our society together simply for the benefit of our nation's police forces, at any level. I don't care who they get to sign off on it, building a time machine to go back in time and snoop on any documents that have historically been un-snoopable (even if it were possible) is not the way to fight nebulous enemies of the state. The difference between an invisible time machine, and blanket surveillance of all communications "which isn't looked at until there is a warrant" is essentially the same. We wouldn't give anyone the state-sanctioned ability to go back in time and use infrared cameras to peep through bedroom windows of even Marilyn Monroe, because it's simply not ethical; if they can do it to her, they can do it to anyone. And here we are, doing it to everyone, recording the whole thing, and calling it OK because hey, it wasn't a human being behind the telescope.

Look, I don't dispute that there are bad people attempting to do bad things. The question is really one of cost, and there's a popular Benjamin Franklin quote going around I could refer you to. My own take is that, if you give up the freedoms that have made America the best country on earth, you are sacrificing the parts which most make America worth defending in the first place. It's throwing the baby out with the bathwater. Secret power is a dangerous society-killing drug: just say no.