Yes we are. After 5 generations of cheap oil the population lost the need to plan for hard winters. I'm sure you personally know quite a lot of people who are living from paycheck to paycheck and/or are living on welfare (which by the way is also only possible because of cheap oil). Those people just didn't exist back then because they could not survive the winters.

But don't worry. The oil will become very expensive again soon enough.

First rule of political correctness: If a protected class fails, it is always somebody else's fault.

Well, why did Apple gain over 30% last year - on the desktop, that means EXCLUDING tablets and phones? I don't know about chromebooks, but I guess those have also nice gains.

Sure, PC-sales would have not been stellar in any case, that is true. But the sharp drop on the PC-side combined with the upswing on the everything-except-Windows side was caused by Windows 8.

You are certainly wrong about that. Insults DO help their cause.

Up until 1998 (which is still the warmest year on record), the alarmists actually supported their views with data (even though the famous "hockeystick" was manipulated and distorted it was at least indirectly connected to real data). But since about 2000, the data is ignored (For example, this outdated nonsense is still on the Wikipedia "Global Warming" page: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/F... and in the main article (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Global_warming) right beside it is the sentence: "The Earth's average surface temperature rose by 0.74±0.18 C over the period 1906–2005" - hey, 2005 is already 9 years ago - what gives?) and the alarmists have stopped posting data and instead run almost completely on insults.

And yes, it does work. Nobody wants to be insulted.

On the other hand, of course the whole "climate science" needs alarmism as a reason for existence. They can't forecast "the climate will change slightly as it did numerous times before" - such a paper is boring, uninteresting and unlikely to get much interest for further funding. Also, successful climate scientists who pull the party-line can pump out paper after paper, literally swamping some dissident who writes a critical paper on his own time and dime.

So you have the carrot (grant money, good quasi-tenured jobs) and the stick (insults, social stigma). It is no wonder that you get >90% of approval that way, especially if you count papers (which can and are mass-produced).

But time is working against the alarmists. Every year that passes which is cooler than 1998 is yet another year they cannot explain. If we are living in an era of perpetually rising temperatures, one might think that the 1998 record should be broken by now.

Because the steambox is a plug-and-play device that works out of the box with couch-friendly controllers and remotes.

If that is the case why does Apple gain so many users (WITHIN the desktop market) while Windows is losing them?

Microsoft breaks things all the time, just look at Windows 8.

In fact they not only break things accidentally, they quite often do it on purpose to force upgrades. They already promised to delete all downloadable support software for Windows XP when support runs out. Why? Because the bandwidth costs so much?

At my workplace the IT department is already struggling for over 2 years with the transition from XP to 7 because there is just so much software and hardware that doesn't work with 7. The "solution" is to put the XP-machines, where no Win7-transition is possible on isolated non-internet-connected networks.

So yes, Microsoft breaks a lot on every update.

The 1300$ model is of course for those who want a status-symbol, i.e. the high price is a feature.

Basically the classic consoles are the printer/toner sales-model: You get the hardware relatively cheap, but you pay through the nose afterwards.

For an open platform that is impossible, so for the Steambox, you have to pay a little bit more for the hardware (i.e. about 500-700$), but you save money on the software.

Surely, there is a place for the printer/toner sales-model, therefore the PS3/XBone have their place - but not everybody likes it that way. (Of course for the brainwashed the fact that different products may use different sales-models is very, very hard to grasp.) So there is place for the open sales-model as well.

But the Steambox has some other advantage: It is also a PC, and you can use it for everything a PC can do:

For example if you use a tablet for EMail/Web and have only moderate PC-use (write Christmas cards once per year, etc.) - and your PC gets old, you may buy a Steambox instead of upgrading the PC. In that case you save money - and space because you can scrap that desk where the PC is sitting on.

So there is definitely a market for the Steambox.

Of course if you don't want to use it as a doorstop, you will need software for it:

XBox One: A handful of games at typically 50$

Steambox: Already over hundred games at typically 20$

And that is exactly why the Steambox will be a success.

If you take the sales figures from the US, assume that all non-Apple units are shipped with Windows, you get:

Apple: +28.5%

Windows: 15380497 down to 13627274 = -12.9%

Obviously it is NOT just the competition from tablets and smartphones. (if it were, Apple would see similar declines)

It is two things:

- Windows 8
- Microsofts reluctance to allow Windows 7 on new PCs

When Microsoft inflicted Vista, almost all PC-makers just ignored it and continued with XP, but now things are different, it is pretty hard to get a Windows-PC without Windows 8 today. You seem to need some special deal with Microsoft.

It looks like we are witnessing the beginning of the end of the Windows-hegemony. While Windows will hold the largest marketshare on the desktop for some time, the alternatives will grow into "too large to ignore" territory.

The whole point of affirmative action is to *NOT* hire the best candidate.

a "complete 180"? What are you talking about?

Obama was secretive right from the start in his campaign. He closed down all documentation from his supposed studies in university. (Which proves that he has pretty powerful forces behind him - not every candidate can get such kind of secrecy.) What does the public know about Obama? Not much. All his supposed friends he describes in his book turned out to be fictitious, nobody has ever seen him in the universities he supposedly went, nobody knows why he used two different social security numbers, etc.

His presidency is just a continuation of all that secrecy.

The only thing I know about him is that he turned up and the media told the American people to vote for him which they duly did.

I'm sure you can find a hundred non-controversial examples.

Yeah... We all know that evolution only applies to non-controversial things, i.e. everything except the brain.

The US government already directly controls more than 50 cents on every dollar. And this does not include several bookshelves of regulations and laws that gives the government indirect control over the rest.

How can anybody be so brainwashed to call this system "free-market hands-off ideology"?

Hmmm, maybe you should search on youtube for "knockout game" and/or "flash mob robbery".