Hey, everyone needs a pet. Or eight. True, they don't have any practical usefulness, but they do cool tricks!

Are we assuming that he does or doesn't have time to learn the surrounding terrain? You don't need technology to use the environment against your opponent, but you do need familiarity. If you succeed in surviving long enough to develop that familiarity, you can use it to overcome bears and wolves.

And yet, despite your choice to remain ignorant, you nevertheless had to express your skepticism...

Did it yesterday.

Good for you.

What's the name of your company?

That really doesn't matter. It's not about liking or not liking Windows. It's about holding myself responsible for the part I play in empowering companies by giving them my business. Business decisions are the only meaningful political decisions left. I'll travel three times as far and pay twice as much to avoid doing business with people I don't like, and I'll stop at the businesses that I don't like, show them my money, tell them explicitly why they can't have it and leave, just out of spite. That's how I roll.

It's not about efficiency. It's not about who does the job the best. It's not about price. It's about supporting the decent, civic minded people and diminishing the selfish, decadent and exploitative ones.

This douchebag dismisses other peoples subjective experience as lies, and I'M a troll?

Who moderated this, Suey Park?

Do you realize that there was a young man with hearing so good that he could use echolocation to play basketball despite being blind?

Can you do that?

Does this suggest to you that, perhaps when people claim to be able to discern sounds you can't, it's because your hearing isn't particularly good?

I'm nearsighted with superior human hearing. At least, that's what the medical tests they gave me said. I can't see that well, but I can hear electronics in the room when no one else can and do other things that are unusual. Not nearly good enough to use echolocation, but statistically speaking, probably much, much better than you. If you're going to talk about me behind my back, you might want to walk another 50 meters away before you start. Not really much of an art buff, though.

Dated a woman for years who was both a tetrachromat and a synesthete. Her capacity to discern things visually was spectacular. Brilliant painter. Didn't hear that well though. Unless you're a woman, I can say with a high degree of certainty that her vision is far superior to yours. Her mutation is known to cause color blindness in men. Her taste in music was rather simplistic compared to mine, a reflection of my own failure to appreciate what it is in visual art that gets people so excited.

Are you a child, perhaps? You come across that way. Most people learn that other people have vastly different experiences of the world by the time they reach adulthood, and learn not to project their own capabilities and limitations onto everyone else.

You know that when we play peekaboo, just because you can't see me, that doesn't mean I've disappeared, right?

Dude, I hate to disillusion you, but we ALL want your head on a plate. If you meet someone and they lead you to believe otherwise, you should try to recognize that he's talking out of both corners of his mouth in an effort to get something out of you. None of us like you. I was half tempted to say that, maybe, the Israeli's, but honestly, I'm confident they think of you as a self-absorbed pack of idiots whose only role is to be exploited.

This is not a troll. At least, it's not intended to be a troll. I genuinely am trying to set you straight, help bring your perspective a little closer to the realities that exist outside your borders.

The shit you guys are responsible for as a nation is not a joke. No one is laughing along with you.

Inside your country, you can divide things up into "The CIA did this, the NSA did that, I didn't do shit, I was just here minding my own business and paying my taxes.", and that flies with the people you meet on the street.

But then when Chinese hackers do something, you say "China did it."

That's how it is for the rest of us too. Without open warfare, you can't intrude into the inner workings of China and hold individual citizens accountable, you need to deal with the entire state, hold them accountable, and leave it to them to hold the individual citizens accountable, or not.

We can't intrude into the inner workings of America and hold individual citizens accountable, we need to deal with your entire state, hold you accountable, and leave it to you to hold the NSA accountable.

So, basically, everything your government does to the rest of us, you have done to the rest of us. You can argue about fairness and prejudice till you're blue in the face, but these are the power dynamics, and that's just how it is.

You seriously need to clean your house before the rest of the world is forced to come do it for you. If you don't realize just how precarious a position your government has put you in, you really need to wake up.

I will agree with that. In the sense that any nation whose performance is lower than the US definitely deserves an "F".

It looks like a nice piece of hardware. I'd be tempted to get one. But, like you say, it's Microsoft. Once trust is gone, no argument can bring it back.

What planet are you from? Is it nice there?

America has no leverage. They don't make anything anymore, so they can't trade anything anymore. Just their funny money, and China is in the middle of an effort, coordinated with Russia, to topple the US dollar. But it's not like Chinese people are going to be cold and starving if the US cuts off the supply. Chinese people could dump their manufactured goods in the ocean and it wouldn't really impact them that much as long as their population had somewhere to go and something to do on Monday morning so they don't get bored and cause trouble.

You guys are like a big, fat, fat, lead albatross around the neck of the planet. Did I mention fat. Yeah, your technology is obvious, your music is poisonous, your cuisine is disgusting and yet, somehow, you're all fat. And liars and spies and war criminals.

Seriously, why are we reading an article about the Chinese when the entire US government is full of war criminals? Is this a joke? Is it April Fools day? Am I being punked?

I mean, yeah, I'm not American, so yeah, in the "We're all being punked by the Americans" sense, I know I'm being punked... but there aren't any hidden cameras here, are there?

I mean, yeah, I know there's a hidden camera in my laptop and two in my phone, and your criminal operatives have probably hacked it because I spout inflammatory rhetoric in public forums all the time and they probably have quotas like a traffic cop... but, this isn't a reality TV show intended to entertain the masses with a big silly joke, is it?

Please don't put me on one of those shows. I'm not a politician...

PS: Those nukes don't hide the fact that YOU'RE ALL FAT!!! Have another cheeseburger, fatty!

I will be so happy when this crap leads to the end of anonymous posting.

I suspect that is the reason we see so much more bad behavior veiled by anonymity these days... to destroy platforms that allow anonymous discourse, just as the big media companies pay people to pollute torrent sites with garbage. This feels coordinated, and it makes me happy.

Some day, we'll be able to go looking for trolls and physically assault them.

That will be a good day.

Yeah, just because YOU agreed not to be a dick, doesn't mean WE surrender OUR right to be dicks! Think Different! Bend Over!

But it's nice to know you're paying attention ;)