You're really on to something here, Tigersha..

Just looking at my own little town in the USA, the effect of culture and environment are tremendously noticeable.

The other kids I went to school with from grades 9-12 have now all grown up and gotten very diverse lives for themselves. I haven't myself, for various reasons (whole other story), but when I correspond with them, the effects of culture are striking.

My former high school consists of two primary populations, White Suburbanites and White Rurals. We did have two "token" black families... who were pretty much just "White Suburbanites with Really Good Tans". So we can rule "race" right out.

Between the two populations.. The "White Rurals".. whom we call "rednecks".. primarily have jobs working at gas stations, doing manual labor, or, if the individuals possess a certain level of drive, have furthered their education and gone into the skilled trades.

The "White Suburbanites", whom we call "yuppies", primarily have gone on to have jobs in the Corporate sector..IT, Business Management, Accounting, Medicine, and Education.

Yet it's only the "Weird Kids".. who were called "freaks".. that you can actually have an intelligent conversation with. Those "freaks" were the oddball outcasts who didn't fit into either the Redneck or the Yuppie groups. They had their own interests, pursued education more more heavily in the main, even informally, and acquired a depth of experience and erudition that allows them to be decent conversationalists and thinkers.

Members of this tiny minority have gone on to become Academics, Entrepreneurs, Artists, or, like me, "Professional Weirdos".

This is all from the same school.

If you correspond with these individuals online.. somewhere like Facebook..the differences become immediate in terms of language. There is an increased difficulty for linguistic analysis in such a system, as some members of both main demographic groups have resorted to "text-speak" primarily as a result of accessing Facebook only via a mobile device..

But the Rednecks, for instance, almost constantly use hideous misspellings, "text-speak", and brutally poor grammar, resulting in difficulty parsing what they're trying to communicate.

The Yuppies, on the other hand, tend to spell better, but exhibit high levels of mistakes with contractions, and a slightly exaggerated tendency towards substituting "b" for "be" and "u" for "you".

Curiously enough, the Freaks show very little tendency towards shortcuts, misspellings, or grammatical improprieties, other than the occasional lapses one would expect to find from an educated person. Even more curiously, they tend to adopt proper spelling, punctuation, and sentence structure even when sending text messages.

Everyone being discussed here grew up within 20 miles or so from each other, yet I can clearly see the delineations between these groups even now, 20 years later. To my mind, this strongly supports your theory, and raises the question "What can we do about it, as a society?"

I just dropped $2200 on a new pc specifically to get back into gaming. My old Linux box would have worked fine for most of the "Games for Linux" on Steam.. but no, for what I really wanted to play, I needed slightly more capable hardware and I needed Windows.

That annoyed me.

I was overjoyed when I heard about Steam OS. I thought that finally I'd be able to play the titles I really wanted on Linux. I read all kinds of promises about "major announcements Q1 2014"... and I've heard diddly squat.

That's the problem with SteamOS and the SteamBox. Until the major devs sign on, or some way shows for our favorite titles to get ported over to Linux in a fully playable fashion.. it just ain't happening.

They get Bethesda Softworks to sign on, and I'll go to SteamOS in a *heartbeat*. But they really need to at least... keep the momentum building by talking about how the process goes getting the Triple-A's onboard..

Hell, some of the more maladjusted friends of mine from my High School graduating class could pull that off. One doesn't even need to get the Survivalist or Militia movements to put off their infighting.. You just need a few angry, maladjusted people around the country who share the idea at the same time.

Fortunately, I've explained to all of them why terrorism doesn't work.

Not everybody who gets ticketed was breaking the law. The vast majority simply don't challenge the officer in court for a variety of reasons. I've been ticketed for speeding before when I was not speeding at *all*. I was, however, driving out of state within 10 miles of the border leaving the state in question. I'd just been ticketed 10 minutes before by a different Arkansas State Police Officer in a zone where I was the only out-of-state license plate in traffic that was passing *me* left and right.

Sometimes, Cops are just abusive scumbags.

Hell, the town of New Rome, Ohio was so bad at writing false tickets that a guy ran for mayor on the promise of dissolving the municipality and firing the police force. He won, and he did exactly that. It was one of the worst speed traps in the nation for years. It was so bad that anybody who actually challenged the ticket in court got it dismissed out of hand, and the State Police would actually run off the New Rome cops if they happened to see them pull someone over.

I lived 10 miles away in another small town for about 2 years and got to watch the whole drama unfold.

Just because the police *say* you are breaking a law doesn't mean you actually *are*.

There are a lot of ways to implement "free to play". The problem arises when developers (or more likely the suits who control the company) forget that what they're developing is a *game*, and not just a "revenue stream".

I've not gotten into mobile gaming, beyond an ad-supported word game that I've spent maybe 5 hours playing on my phone while waiting in parking lots. But I've played a few F2P online games, usually MMORPGs, and quite a few of the more "Standard model" games as well.

Some games, like Runescape, for instance, did a decent treatment to F2P.. It's possible to play a free "version" of the game and have rather a lot of fun doing it.. but you need to be a paid subscriber to access the other 80% of the game content. I eventually got bored and wandered off to other pastures, but they got my reasonably inexpensive monthly subscription for a good several years. And it was quite worth it, from an entertainment value perspective. I could get hundreds of hours of enjoyment out of less than the cost of 1 movie.

The other side is the "Pay to Win" model..which I abhor. I briefly got hooked on Evony.. (yes, I feel stupid admitting that).. Which was so poorly designed from a *game* perspective that it not only was impossible to "win" without paying, but it became impossible to "remotely contend" without paying a *lot*.. AND without botting nearly 24/7.

I was even part of the "player advisory board".. which made a lot of very good, considered suggestions to the company on how to re-balance things and fix some of the serious problems from a "gameplay" perspective. The company's response was to ignore every single one of the suggestions we put forth and release a major "update" that did exactly the opposite.

That was when I quit playing, despite the friends I had made and all the effort I had put into building my virtual kingdom. I realized that what the Developers were actually developing was a revenue stream, not a game. That was the deception. I was sold the idea of a game, not the idea of an "experiment in marketing."

I realize that game developers need to make money. But like any company, some become scumbags in the pursuit of it. With a standard development model.. "you pays your money and takes your chances". Everybody's been burned on a crap game at least once. But studios who put out crap games in that environment don't tend to survive long. The F2P model allows for a lot more subtle and insidious douchebaggery to persist for much longer periods of time, and *that*, I think, is the real reason it gets the skepticism and derision.

You know.. I think one aspect of the problem that a lot of folks are just missing.. especially if they work for Microsoft.. is that a lot of the reason why people are fond of XP isn't because they're explicitly "fond of XP" or that they need it for particular hardware/software that isn't supported on anything newer.. Although I'm sure that does happen to be important for a sizeable percentage..

I think a lot of it is that there really hasn't been anything compelling on offer in any post-XP version of Windows. That statement alone is pretty damning of the Management of Microsoft's Windows division.

The last version of Windows I personally *owned* was XP.. although I worked for a year at an office computer with 7 on it. Friends and family have had Vista and Windows 8.

XP worked. It did what it was needed to do without much bullsh*t... a rarity for a Microsoft product. And look at what replaced it. Vista. (that should almost be a "'nuff said" in and of itself) Bloated, slow, overfocused on bling and underfocused on actual usability... (I swear, it's like every other release of Windows is designed by the Marketing department, and then on the alternate releases they let the engineers in to try to repair the damage to the brand...)

The Windows 7.. and it's a *decent* OS. Improves some things.. makes other things kinda needlessly complex.. Most of the "new features" however.. are just things that I couldn't care less about. The only thing I particularly took away from a year of using 7 was that it was "a more complicated version of XP with weird eye-candy stuff that I turned off."

Windows 8? The words "Flaming pain in the ass" come immediately to mind anytime anybody mentions it. I don't know what the bigwigs in Redmond were smoking when they thought these UI changes were a good idea, but it's certainly not anything you can buy where I live. Even the druggies look confused when sat down in front of a Win 8 UI. It's like the same "UI Zombie Virus" attacked the Windows Dev team, the guys behind Unity at Canonical, and the Gnome 3 people all at once.

Because honestly... it's the *height* of idiocy to take a device that operates almost exclusively on one input format and try to make it identical to a whole class of devices that use an entirely *different* input format. This. Is. Braindead.

The lack of particularly useful *benefits* from any post-XP release for the average user, even though we've now been through 3 such releases is the elephant in the room nobody's talking about.

and a total waste of money.. typical bureaucrat thinking.

I work for a snow removal company in a more northerly city. We service some 300 commercial properties in our area, and a have a contract for servicing city streets when the city's crews can't keep up. In additon, we have a constant pool of subcontractors that we can tap for extra help when events require it.

The only difference between a "salt truck" and a "dump truck" is a salt spreader attached to the back gate. Ties right into the PTO system. Buy a stack of those, subcontract with some of the local haulage or construction companies that have dump trucks, and in that rare event of a winter storm, have a plan in place where these companies report to various city maintenance yards for outfitting and loading with salt, and get them out on routes covering the major roads. Highways being the priority.

Instead of $55,000,000 worth of trucks added to a city's fleet, all you really need is under $1m worth of salt spreaders and a bit of logistical coordination. That itself would make a world of difference. And they could use the money saved for some Public Service Announcements like "What is that white stuff falling from the sky?" and "No, it's not cocaine, get back in your cars and quit trying to snort it." and "Snow is slippery, drive a little slower."

A full pardon.

Then a medal.. I'm thinking maybe the Presidential Medal of Freedom...

Then a large statue on the national mall, depicted collectively with other whistleblowers in a monument to those who risked their lives and freedom (and in some cases, lost it) to expose government abuses.

Windows 9 should be fairly decent. It seems like Microsoft works on an "every other version" model.. one version will be designed totally by their marketing department, and basically be a flashy but unworkable piece of crap. The next version they actually let the engineers have a go at making something that works in a desperate attempt to save the franchise.

Having seen a great many of my friends 4 year olds... unless you want to be replacing that phone *weekly*.. you're going to need something damn near indestructible.. like the Sonim XP1300 Core, or, of course, the obligatory Nokia 3000 Series...

I have seen 4 year olds, when unattended for a second, put "Mommy's" Iphone/Android in the toilet, in the toaster, in the microwave, in the pool, bury it in the sandbox, drop it off the deck onto the flagstone patio to see if it would bounce, fling it across the room in a fit of pique...

Personally, my *opinion* is simply "no way in hell should a 4 year old, any 4 year old, have a cell phone, ever..".. but you didn't ask my opinion on that.. so my second option is just to recommend anything you can find that a Deity (should you subscribe to such beliefs) would have difficulty destroying.. That way it might last a few months vs a 4 year old...

"That potentially lethal force is legal because it is authorized by the Constitution which has been ratified by the people."

Oh really? I've been a US Citizen since birth and nobody's ever asked me to ratify it, and the same is true for every other living person born in this nation.

The reality is, a bunch of people who have long since died and been buried ratified the Constitution, and the consent of everybody who has come after them has simply been taken for granted by the state due to their peculiar geographic accidents of birth.

Not saying that the Constitution is a bad document, just saying that if the goal is to enfranchise citizenry, starting off with the assumption that a bunch of old guys who have long since become worm food were somehow "Magical Priests Guarding the Font of Wisdom" to such an extent that the Social Contract doesn't need to be renewed in subsequent generations is probably not the best way to go about it.

Damn.. looks like I have to boycott Amazon.com now... which is a shame, as I actually liked ordering things from them from time to time..

However, I still have my principles, and one of those is that I refuse to do business with companies that are involved with known Terrorist organizations..

I'm not a Linux expert by any means. I'd call myself "Noob+". Before switching to Linux about 7 years ago, I'd been what one might call a "Power User" of Windows since 3.1. XP Pro was my last Windows edition on my home system.

I'm not a coder. I'm not a "business professional". I'm just a guy who spends a lot of time puttering around on whatever strikes my fancy on my computer as a hobby. This last year I worked an office job for a construction company..Much of that time was spent on Windows 7.

I also am the local "computer nerd" who helps a bunch of people with their computer problems, and occasionally build systems for folks.. ranging from basic low end machines to some monster performance hardware.

My reason for switching was I got incredibly frustrated with Microsoft. I resented their "What do we want you to do today" approach to software... I got tired of having to install third party apps to get the basic functionality I wanted out of my system.. I got tired of the never-ending game of "whack the malware", got tired of the email spam.. (which decreased 70% within the first *week* of switching to Linux.. I don't know why exactly.)

So I snagged a copy of Ubuntu and took the plunge. I have not looked back. I've mucked around with a few distros, broken my installs with some ill-informed tinkering around "under the hood".. had problems getting various things to work, had to spend some time digging through forums for answers..

But even with the learning curve and my propensity for ill-informed tinkering... I've had probably 95% less problems with Linux. With Windows, I was having to reboot every time I installed a piece of software. With Linux, I basically reboot only when I wipe the drive and install a new distro to play with, or if we have a power failure. My system has uptime measure in months, whereas my Windows experiences needed a reboot about once a day.

Linux does what I need faster, lighter, and more efficiently than Windows ever has. My needs may not be the same as others.. but at present, there's only 1 reason I'd consider a Windows install.. (and I'd go 7 if I ever took that plunge again..) Games.

Games. That's it. Yes, I still have Linux problems.. audio in particular.. The learning curve is still a bit steep at times, especially when it comes to configuring.. But I run into *NONE* of the problems that all my Windows using friends are always calling me over to their houses to fix for them. I've even talked two of them into trying out Linux, and they're both committed Linux users now and loving it.

When I run Linux, once I get things working the way I like them... they do *just keep working* unless I fiddle with things I don't understand fully. Every once in a while and update breaks something.. 99% of the time it's something I "fiddled" with.. and I have to go re-fiddle to get it working again..

But what I love most.. absolutely most.. is that running Linux my system does what *I* tell it to. It doesn't tell me "you're not allowed to do that".. it doesn't try to set things up on its own, it doesn't phone home to some corporate babysitter.. It properly respects the user-OS relationship, and it just keeps plugging along doing its thing very reliably.

Metro, Much like Unity, fails on the desktop for one, blindingly simple reason..

I bought a desktop pc. I did not buy a tablet. I expect to be able to use my desktop pc like a desktop pc. If I had wanted a f**king tablet, I'd have bought one.

End of story.

"And did you exchange a walk on part in the war for a lead role in a cage?"