No Western leader ever lost an election by failing to appease China.

We'll harrumph a lot and wag the finger at them, but in the long term, we'll just roll over and let China do whatever the hell it wants to, partly because no one ove here really gives a shit what happens to a bunch of poor Chinese people, and mostly because Western corporations are lining up to cash in on their misery. We're all complicit to an extent, being addicted to the teat of cheap goods, and then washing our consciences by telling our leaders "Go get those dirty bastards! They're taking our jaaaaawbs!"

Whatever war we might have pretended to have against Communist China is over and we lost. We rolled over, showed our belly, and now we're lined up to let China run a train on our economy.

And I just recently got all my software updated to Intel, too.

I think they're doing in concert with the software manufacturers so they gouge us for replacement software to run on the new processors.

> so what does that say about Verizon's hiring standards for technically-minded people? Seriously?

Not a lot. Technical ability doesn't have anything to do with moral reasoning or empathy.

Arguably, you could make one of those pick-any-two triangles from that collection.

The DHS is the worst idea to come out of Washington and that's a town that's pretty much only ever generated bad ideas. I'd rather be waterboarded than lift a finger to suport that particular government agency.

> Right. Which is exactly the sort of thing that engenders ill-will towards modders.

But what is the purpose of modding your console? If it's to allow them to cheat at online games, then I would argue that any ill-will is definitely earned.

I'm having a little trouble coming up with any other legitimate reason for modding.

Except we'll be forced to resort to Drudge for news.

Have those games been updated to run on 10.8?

IIR, Apple got rid of some legacy graphics support that those games needed to run (256-color mode, Rosetta support). I'd hate to blow $32 and have a bunch of games that were unplayable and eating up drive space.

If the Universe is a simulation, then it may be possible within our Universe to do the same thing.

Do we then owe it to our creations not to do some of the horrible things being done to us? War, Death, Famine, Disease, etc. If we do simulate those things and the beings we create are just as intelligent as us, it would seem that creating those same things in their Universe would make us as bad as the beings who are running the simulation for us.

We may not be able to influence our creator(s), but it seems like we could damn well make our own simulations far better than what we've been given.

These days the Libertarians sound less crazy than the Republicans, thanks to the Teabaggers.

It hasn't always been that way.

Depends on whether or not you want to further the mainstream adoption of Linux on the desktop by non-technical users.

Were I a corporation, this would be the point where I would determine that my development efforts for Linux have gone far enough until there is a high-enough percentage of usage to warrant further development.

Sure, but why should users put up with bad design? And why do we keep foisting it off on them?

The Windows 8 UI is good for touch devices, but is so completely the wrong metaphor for desktop that it's nigh unusable. The Windows 7 UI was good for desktops, but conversely, would be mostly wrong for touch devices.

Yet Microsoft insists on making everyone use the same UI for all devices, touch-enabled or not. It's a mistake that I think will teach them a very painful lesson - there is no One True User Interface.

Even Apple hasn't made that mistake and they've got the closest thing to a cross-platform unified UI that's available.

Why in the name of Oppenheimer did they fire the one guy who actually did his job, when everyone above and around him appeared to fail pretty seriously at theirs?

Admittedly, he didn't shoot anyone, which he was apparently entitled to do, but at the same time, he actually stopped any further mischief and was the only person (aside from the protesters) who didn't embarrass the whole nation.

It's a pity Joseph Heller isn't around to write his life story or something.

It's also your job to punish failure and merely "not re-electing" them is a pretty weak gesture, honestly.

These people ignored the law, destroyed the man's business, and handed the assets over to a foreign government who will never return them. How about I kick in your door in the middle of the night, steal all your assets and hand them over to the Chinese government and say it's punishment for all the slave labor that goes into producing half the goods you and your family use to survive?

Sorry, but I think it's time some people were very publicly named, shamed and imprisoned for not only their failure to follow the law, but the misinterpretation of it in the first place.

Public service is a privilege and the failure to properly exercise that privilege should, by definition, come with a higher punishment than standard crimes.

Awesome. Thanks.

Now, how about handing out some punishments to the people responsible, so they don't try this sort of bullshit again?

I think Kang and Kodos had more definite plans than these jokers.

It's like the Romney campaign read The Complete Opposite Of Getting Elected. They're politicians, I get that - a politician who doesn't leave himself room to maneuver gets eaten alive when the wind changes. But these guys are bringing new meaning to the word "vague".