You do realize that KDE, for example, also uses the same HTML component - KHTML - for both its standalone browser, and help system

There is a very big difference here you miss.
You're trying to compare the Linux security model with Microsoft's lack of any security model.

The act of compromising a Linux box in any way is a very difficult task, mostly impossible unless you have direct access to the thing.

Windoz on the other hand is the script kiddies wet dream.
Very few windoz users have the knowledge to secure the their boxs and this is clearly evident by the percentage of M$ boxes pwnd by the botnets and variety of worms/viruses/trojans/malware running rampant in the wild.

Give me a break. Pressing the F1 key will kill your system? WTF is going on in redmond? Are these losers all on crack?

New Hampshire believes in an environment where... property taxes pay for police and fire protection...

So if I'm visiting New Hampsire, and I get mugged or pickpocketed on the street, or my car bursts into flame on the highway, I should not expect to call any authorities and have them respond?

What kind of dumb response is this? Paying for police and fire with property taxes is normal for probably every state, and obviously these services aren't limited to residents.

I was not referring to monopoly as in exclusive right to control a technology (that's what the patent system is actually about). I meant monopoly in the sense of gaining control over a market (in this case the market of smartphones) that is actually larger than that single technology by locking in users (as illustrated with my steering wheel example).

The patent system was not designed to create the latter and applying patents in this way borders on anti-competitive practices.

In my opinion many user interface patents should not be granted in the first place as they lack the necessary degree of inventive ingenuity. They are just anti-competitive 'land grabs'.

"Many user interfaces have been patented, including one of the most enduring, the QWERTY keyboard."

I may be mistaken, but I don't think that the two are comparable.

The patent which includes the QWERTY key layout is focused on the engineering specifics of one particular implementation of a mechanical keyboard. Sholes, the inventor, wasn't trying to claim a patent on "pressing keys to apply ink to paper", or even "rapidly pressing multiple keys". That had all been done before.

This seems very different from today's "user interface" patents, most of which seem to be a thin layer of design laid atop someone else's actual invention. Which is not to user interfaces are unimportant, just that they should not be patentable.

I am not sure I agree. Anonymity on the internet is valuable and important. A domain is kinda formal though. Slashdot for instance is somewhat responsible for the content here. They don't need to really police it but if it were brought to Taco's attention people were arranging drug deals or something they would be obligated to help, the authorites.

All and all I think its a good point of balance; if you are going to have your own domain there should be a responsible part that can be easily determined and contacted when needed.

The DIY precautionary recipe against a hangover is: Boil one liter of water, add half a teaspoon of table salt, and six teaspoons of sugar. Let cool and drink before you go to bed. For increased efficiency also take vitamin C, either in the form of a pill or as a glass of orange juice. The scientific explanation is that alcohol affects the levels of a hormone called ADL, something which in its turn makes the kidnies less able to take up water and important minerals and vitamins. This leads to dehydration and lack of said minerals. Further, the process of breaking down the alcohol lowers your blood sugar level. Thus, the easiest non-fancy precaution against a hangover using only household ingredients is to compencate the deficits using the above recipe. In sweden it's also possible to buy more carefully balanced anti-hangover pills with a more advanced mix of minerals and vitamins. They too consist mainly of sugar and salt though. Examples of such pills are "Revigör" and "Bakis". Source of above is fraga doktorn, also as crappy google translation.

Corn doesn't want to be farmed, it wants to be hunted!

I think that if there was a billion dollars and nothing but a human baby standing between them and it, they'd smash it's skull in without even a second thought.

They don't WANT to kill humans in the sense that that would take time and energy away from their primary goal of profit and in the sense that humans might try to kill them in return. Otherwise, I doubt it matters much to them who lives or dies.

If you think thats how babies are made - we need to have a talk...

What? Of course CRTs have motion blur issues. Just because they have no fixed pixel grid, it does not look that bad.

And is the effect sufficiently noticeable to disqualify this tech? I highly doubt it, given how prized CRTs were amongst the gaming crowd, among others, until LCDs improved sufficiently to displace them.

"I've worked 15 years in climate research, acquiring hard data"

Case in point. You are stating you are an expert but you don't even know about the inaccuracies. So either you didn't bother to even evaluate the information from the film, or you just wrote if off the list as "right-wing" tripe. Ofc there is the possibility that while you are an expert, you still don't really know shit.

Yet I'm sure it still eludes you why people have a problem with the "trust me" mantra.

Or an awful lot that are currently going to college and serving in the military at the same time, and are becoming more educated.

Bullshit.
If they are in public then too bad. If they gave permission, either explicit or implicit, then too bad. If they where in a situation where it's to be expected by a reasonable person, then too bad.

Trying to hide or change history of ANY kind is a bad thing.

No one is under any obligation to change something just becasue someone doesn't like it. It's thinking like yours that holds things back.

Global cooling is real. It's the main reason why the global temperature graph is hockey stick shaped instead of a more gradual increase. Then scrubbers were installed on coal and oil furnaces to remove the sulfur from the exhaust gas.
Sulfur dioxide DOES cool the earth, and that is why it is considered as a potential tool for 'climate engineering.' We can use it to control the earth's temperature if things start going out of whack. But at the significant cost of acid rain.

What agenda is that? The wealthy first world nations want an excuse to transfer their wealth to poorer nations in a socialistic scheme?
Eh. Sorry. That was a bit dumb. Sonnejwo. If you do have a plausible agenda. I would like to hear it. But maybe it just makes sense to contribute 1% of the global GDP as an insurance policy against what could potentially be a disaster.

I will give you one thing. There is a lot of uncertainty in climate science. There isn't any regarding whether the world is warming or whether humans are causing some part of that warming. The debate is on how serious of a problem global warming is. Is the system dominated by positive or negative feedback? In the worst case scenario, are we looking at a world at +1C or at +6C? If the answer is the former, then there's no reason to worry about CO2 emissions at all. If it's the latter, then the future of our world looks like something out of a science fiction novel.

WOULD be, IF they weren't making it all up.
Opening the books would only be admitting to their bullshit.