Oooh, I like car analogies. Difficulty: the car is three billion years old, nobody has seen the service manual, and the maintenance records for its first 2,999,990,000 years are missing.

Science is not a democracy. If I had a nickel for every time when "95% of scientists" believed something that was later proven wrong, I'd have at least 25 cents.

I don't see a moral problem with it, as long as it saves more innocents from murderers than the innocents we execute.

Big "Dexter" fan, I take it? Because what you're saying is that you approve of a justice system that's indistinguishable from vigilantism.

How about Giordano Bruno? What'd he do, give the Pope a wedgie in the locker room after basketball practice?

The only downside i've really seen to the process is how they keep executing people who eventually turned out to be innocent

If that's not a dealbreaker in your opinion, there's something very wrong with you.

That'd depend on what the professor meant by "distance."

Here's a few changes that would reduce the intrusion of government into your daily habits: Quite driving on roads; drinking clean water; breathing clean air; eating food inspected for its safety; quit using products inspected for safety; eliminate from your thought process that if something terrible goes wrong you can just call the: fire department, police department, or other emergency responders; quit taking medications that have been tested for safety; quit using the post office, the internet, tv, cable, satellite services. It takes an especially egregious asshat to be such a hypocrite as fuckwads who don't recognize that they use government resources and services EVERY SINGLE DAY OF THEIR LIFE. You want to live like a antisocial inbred dipshit in a cave somewhere, give Ted Kaczynski a call.... he might have some tips for you. Oh wait... even he used the Post Office. I guess he wasn't quit the fuckwad asshat you want to be.

I love these sorts of posts. Long on paternalistic indignation, short on reasons why all of those wonderful government benefits need to cost three trillion dollars a year.

When pressed, the person making the argument usually ends up spluttering something about how I should move to Somalia or someplace that otherwise embodies the only alternative to the modern megastate. So the bit about the Unabomber using the Post Office is at least original, I'll admit that much.

They held a public funeral for the iPhone, too. How'd that work out?

Also, there are plenty of other third-party de-Metrofication solutions for Windows 8. I'm not sure that ClassicShell is the most popular, but it's the one I use.

True, and most important, useless to most corporate users.

Microsoft under Ballmer has earned its place in business school case studies next to Edsel, Circuit City, and the inventor of the 110-volt rubber duck.

Win8 + ClassicShell is fine. No drawbacks versus Windows 7 that I've run across. I've never seen Metro since the initial installation, it just isn't there.

Clearly, you have never purchased or rented a house that was rewired by a doctor.

The thing is, fire alarms are more than just battery-powered smoke detectors. The alarm sensors are wired to a central control unit, and shielding the wiring is tricky. If you're unlucky enough to have problems, you end up needing to individually RFI-proof all of the sensors as well as the main box.

Either that, or downsize the Tesla coil, and that's no fun...

For what it's worth, fire alarms and large Tesla coils don't mix.

It doesn't matter if they used Triple Double-Dog Secret Patent Pending NSA-Certified ROT13, a large collection of four-digit PINs is about the best known plaintext short of the Pledge of Allegiance. If they aren't salted, it's open season on those cardholders.