Except the ones that do... And further, a majority, or significant minority, of Muslims kill non-believers? Really? There are more Muslims than pretty much anything else, you'd have thunk we'd all be dead by know...

All of them believe this? A majority of them? In every region of the world? Sources should be cited for such sweeping statements.

Christians also think the world would be a nifty place if everyone was one of them. Hell, some of the take glee in the fact the the world will soon end, and all of us non-believers will suffer eternal torment. I wouldn't hold that as a very moral stance either.

But then again there are a ton of Christians who manage to be decent people (perhaps even a majority of them), how can this not be true for those strange-alien Muslims as well?

Don't get me wrong, I'm not a fan the recent actions of our government (recent being, depressingly, the last 40 years or so), and I am in favor of transparency, whistle-blowing, and calling out our government on its bad behavior. I also think Manning did a good thing, though I also feel his actions should have consiquences since he did still break the law, laws that at least partially these days, exists for a very good reason (some secrecy will always be necessary, especially about military matters and intel).

That said; Manning didn't reveal any war crimes. Embarrassing information, sure. Even ethical breaches by soldiers, or perhaps even their commanders... but no war crimes. I'm pretty mixed in my feeling on him, to be honest. I support his actions, but they might not spring from noble goals, even if they met noble ends. It seems they sprung from his angst arrising from his conflicted sexuality, and the abuse and threat surrounding it in his environment (the DADT military), coupled with dealing with some unscrupulous characters (Assange)... Snowden is a better example of a noble leaker, further Snowden is very careful with his information.. Where Manning handed it over whole-hog. Again, I still support him. And I find that this sentence is a bit obscene, since nothing terribly dangerous got out, and there were no consiquences from his leak. No one got demonstrably hurt (not even, sadly, the government).

Me supporting consequences for him isn't me being against his actions, btw. The same went for other peaceful protesters of the civil rights era, and of followers of Ghandi when they were throwing off British colonialism. People participating in sit-ins and protests expected arrest and potential abuse. This is what made them noble. This gave their actions more meaning, than if there were no consequences for these actions.

For?

Having to deliver to every single person in the US, no matter how far in BFE they live, while still magically turning a profit despite the Government using dirty tricks to kill them? For being far more efficient than Fedex or UPS (by a couple of days, generally), while being cheaper?

Did a mailman punch your mom?

It seems that lately Fedex dumps some deliveries to the USPS too. About half of everything I've ordered recently has ended up in our mail box (the communal type, not house front). This is kind of annoying, since I hardly ever check the mail during the middle of a month, since all its going to be is junk. At the end/beginning I get a couple bills from people who don't understand technology, and 3-4 magazines, so I generally check the mail.

I just hope that the USPS gets something from this, and aren't being mandatorily shafted again.

So the question is; do they actually exist? Are there people who are "Liberal", and people who are "Conservative"... Or are there range of people who encompass various points within these blanket dogmas? I'm guessing there might be some who are purely one or the other, but I think we call these people the "lunatic fringe", or at very least the "vocal minority".

Case and point, I'm pretty far to the left socially, so far that I am a social libertarian (small "L", of course). I agree with Libertarians about everything, except the economy. Then again, I was for the war in Afghanistan, against banning guns (some flavor of control, perhaps, but not elimination, or much more than we have already... more enforcement of current laws than anything). I'm not a dove, and adhere to some level of neo-con inspired "realpolitik". My stances on abortion are muddled, and a bit contradictory, and definitely not along the liberal lines (even if the end result is, it isn't my place to tell anyone what to do, no matter my ethical or moral stance).

My dad is a lifelong union supporter, and subscribes to communist papers, but thinks we should force all illegal immigrants out at gun point, and is somewhat on the fence about social tolerance. My mom is much the same, but goes further and thinks we don't have enough capital punishment, and perhaps we shouldn't let gay people cook our food because of diseases. One of my friends is a capital L Libertarians, who with a couple drinks in him is in favor of gun control, and perhaps stronger welfare laws (more, not less).

Politics aren't binary. They aren't even the magical 2 axis thing Libertarians love. They are scattershot, various issues can be pigeonholed, but this has nothing to do with what people actually believe. We pick and choose, for the most part. Some things we get socially, some we are brought up with, some we muddle out on our own, and some are handed to us from churches, or Government propaganda.

...But not really.

Don't get me wrong, I'm happy that Linux (or at least Ubuntu) is gaining (har har) steam in the gaming arena, but they still have miles and miles to go before they even rank as mildly competitive with Windows. Looking through the games available from Steam on Linux, not a single game in my library is represented, and there aren't any that I really want to play. Of the games I'm currently playing, only one is available (might be available, will be available?) on Linux, Shadowrun Returns. It is nice that I can play Valve titles, but I really don't want to. I'm burnt out of TF2, and I really can't bring myself to play Half Life 2 yet again.

If I was still running Linux, I'd still want a Windows partition for gaming right now. This isn't going to change until more big devs and triple A titles show up on Linux. Right now, ignoring Source titles, there are none.

Yes, the race gets closer with Wine. But the reason I migrated AWAY from Linux in the first place was having to mess with janky, temperamental, arcane solutions to very simple problems that are quickly fixed in the big two OSs. I don't want to have to waste time getting one game working, reading forums full of trolls and idiots for one post that give one correct value, in one semi-hidden config files, just to do something that I can do in one click on Windows. For a lark, I poked around on getting the two games I play the most right now to work on Linux (Rift and Civ 5), and it is a very hit-or-miss affair from the looks of it.

Again, I'm not bashing Linux, or "shilling" for MS (god I hate that internet bullshit meme), go with what works for you. If you want your OS choice to be a political statement, good on ya. If you really just like Linux, fine. If you hate MS and Apple, fine. If you love them, equally fine. Don't care. But it is disingenuous to promote Linux as a Windows replacement in gaming. It isn't even close. Perhaps it will be, someday. Perhaps that day is coming sooner than later. But it isn't even close yet.

Also...

How? This news has nothing to do with Windows gaming, only with MS's own gaming for Windows. My games will all work fine after this. If not for Slashdot, I'd never of even noticed, so great is its effect on my being.

Further I haven't actually found myself saying "Man, I wish I was using Linux, this would be so much easier" on my day to day tasks. Actually Linux would hurt my workflow right now, since I would lose my number one tools (Lightroom/Photoshop). The only time I yearn for Linux is on my girlfriends crappy netbook running Win 7 Starter (she doesn't want Linux, so Windows it is), and on my weak HTPC. But sadly there isn't a media program that is easy enough for drunk friends to use, that can also handle 30k songs without dying (the objectively terrible and bloated iTunes can, for some reason even with Win 7's overhead). Linux isn't the be-all-end-all. Windows is fine for me. I actually like it, and prefer it to Linux. For now at least, perhaps things will change in the near future, one can never tell.

Also, Windows major advantage is its mediocrity. Its good enough. Its easy enough. Its powerful enough. Its ubiquity also helps, since EVERYTHING runs on Windows, and everything is compatible with it. You never really have to worry about it. I'm happy with this, since, as I age, I value being a "nerd" less and less. I don't really relish in having to dig around and tweak things. I want to click a button and have things happen. Sure, there is no glory in it, no /. cred, but I don't give a shit anymore. Life is too short to have to muck around with config files.

SciAm became a total waste of time. Its now written for the absolute bottom, and has pretty much embraced pushing an agenda (environmentalism and global warming) over what they used to do, digest new science for lay people without being condescending. Yes, I agree with their stance on their pet issues, but this doesn't mean I want to be preached at. If I did, I'd borrow my father's copies of The Nation. I hate media with an agenda. I don't want to be preached at, and I don't want to read something that I 100% agree with. They dumbed down the rest of the content, and decided to present it in a "For Dummies" style, with bullets pretty much summarizing the full article before you even read it, so you don't have to actually bother.

PopSci and Mechanics turned into gadget rags, and whorish ad platforms long ago.

Pulp magazines are dead. Or at least should be. I only get some photography magazines now (art focused, not gear focused), and McSweeny's The Believer for the lady friend. I also poach my father's copies of Mother Jones, since they can be pretty good and balanced for a liberal rag, from time to time. I used to get the Economist, but I couldn't keep up with weekly reading, and got sick of the Eurozone Collapsing RIGHT NOW, constantly, for three years. They also decided to not support Android, so I couldn't read it on either my phone or my tablet after upgrading to a Newer android version.

Ha?

The House isn't principled, it is inflexible, and dogmatic. I'm not going to defend Clinton, but I will fight any attempt to pain the current House in a good light.The House is where we send extremists that we don't trust with actual power (the Senate, or higher).

Big. Very big.

The scare was invalid, but the concern is valid. It, originally, wasn't about merely having asbestos sitting inertly in your walls, but about acts that would unwittingly disturb asbestos, leading to it being airborne as actual harmful particles. If you do work on, or demolish older structures, than asbestos can actually be a risk. I have a giant hunk of rock asbestos sitting on a shelf, and the odds of it ever harming anyone is pretty slim (unless I throw it at you, or such), but if I ground up a couple tons of it and exposed it to you over some time, it wouldn't be optimal. Same with lead paint, it isn't much of a risk, until it ages or until someone does work on a structure containing it.

The mercury scare still pisses me off. As a kid I loved it, I had some old mercury switches that mesmerized me, and occasionally I'd play with free mercury (I didn't swallow it, or rub it one me). My parents played with it constantly. But now its worse than ebola. In high school someone spilled a couple of grams of mercury, and it shut down half the school for a day... because mercury is scary.

Someone really needs to stand up to the power of heavy metal. Ahem...

That said, why does anyone actually care about the NRA anymore? They are about as valid as AARP, nothing more than a self-interested lobby group that really doesn't care about their members being using them to fun what their masters want to force on everyone. That isn't a screed against gun ownership, or owners, my feelings toward the NRA is irrelevant towards my stance on guns. The NRA should die, and be replaced with a better group that actually represents their members, and minimizes their actual bigger impact to only things that protect their members rights.

Oh no, someone doesn't have only negative things to say about an MS product... must be a shill!

Or someone with a different opinion than yours... but surely that is impossible.

Except you can buy mice and touchscreens... You can't buy a Leap Motion.

I was very excited to get my hands on one of these... But that interest has pretty much completely died now since they moved back an actual release indefinitely.

Sure, there are pre-orders, which are a terrible idea, and the brief window when I could have got a beta dev version (which is useless to people like me, actual users).

They are vaporware, until I can actually go to a store, hand someone $80, and take it home.

I really wish that either this, or the Kinect for Windows were real options. I don't see gestures replacing my mouse and keyboard, but they would be a nice augment. I'd love being able to sit back, and pause videos with a gesture, or browse the internet without my mouse... but... I have a feeling this day is still far away.

That one was absolute crap. It was horribly written, and only existed to be pretty and sentimental (which is Moffat's only thing)... Oh, and an excuse to have an unrealistic quirky-indie-drama girl character. But then again I couldn't get past the magical horse that only existed to end the episode, because he couldn't be bothered to actually find a way out of his own plot.

Blink was good in the sense that the Weeping Angels are next to Daleks in awesome Who monsters, but the I wanted to kill the girl after five seconds, because she was another cute, quirky, indie-movie character. I'm guessing Moffat loses sleep over Ellen Page not being British, since that is exactly who the new companion was.

I pretty much quit watching. New Doctor, good (not that I hate Smith, he just hasn't had anything to work from, and Moffat butchered the character). Getting rid of Amy Pond, awesome. But I really don't care until Moffat retires. The last season was unwatchable, it made the Silence arc look good, which must have taken some work.

I turned mine off after getting a slew of dust storm warnings... I live in Phoenix, these happen once a week from mid-July until the end of August. They aren't scary, they aren't alert worthy, they are a common thing. Why does my phone need to explode just to tell me that its going to be dusty?

A couple years back Verizon decided it was of utmost importance to tell me a rural wash, 10 miles from my house, might flood, once an hour for three days.

Perhaps the administrators of these alerts should read "The Boy Who Cried Wolf", since their utility is completely destroyed when everyone turns them off thanks to being deluged with trivial alerts. Probably whats happening though is that whoever runs these is just going "ooooh shiney" and wants to play with their new toys.