Proponents of the Linux desktop can't use the marketing excuse anymore: Ubuntu is commercially backed with plenty of advertising money, but it has not taken the desktop by storm. Why? Usability. The Linux ecosystem was designed by programmers for programmers, so Linux apps are built with a command line interface that works perfectly and a GUI that's tacked on as an afterthought.

Sure, you and I don't have a problem with messing ifconfig if the Wicd GUI crashes, but what about your grandma? Forget that, what about your non-programmer cousin? And let's not ignore the fact that the Wicd GUI, despite being a GUI, is still pretty complicated compared to the Windows network manager. If you want to connect to a network in Windows, you go to Networks and Sharing, click on the network you want, enter the password, and boom, you're done. With Wicd, the first option you see when you select a WPA network is "WPA Supplicant Driver" and below that you see "Use dBm to measure signal strength." When you enter the password, there is a box to "Use these settings for all networks sharing this essid." That's an awful lot of jargon, and it scares laypeople away.

Linux excels where usability for the layperson is not an issue. That's why it dominates the server market: sysadmins feel most at home on the terminal.

The gospel has changed because the world has changed. In the 70s and 80s, India, China, Indonesia, Thailand, etc. had only a fraction of the industry that they do now, so they were responsible for much less pollution. Back then the US was the worlds biggest polluter, followed by most of Western Europe. Over the past 30 years, things changed. This has very little to do with media bias.

J. Philippe Rushton jokes aside, if by "strawmaning and handwaving" you mean thoroughly rebutting your arguments, then yes, I've done plenty of "strawmaning and handwaving," and unless you can tell my why the patterns observed in the Netherlands and Virginia are inconclusive or why the papers I linked to are inaccurate, I think that brings this debate to a close.

Let me get this straight: IQ scores of populations rise without changes to the ethnic composition of said populations, and this somehow proves that race is the main determiner of IQ? Sorry, buddy, but the Netherlands did not "whiten" between 1952 and 1982. Quite the opposite: immigrants began to flood in from Indonesia, Aruba and the Antilles, and Suriname. And yet IQ went up drastically. And if you look at 1960s Virginia, an unchanged population of a single race saw a dramatic changed by thirty points in just five years. 30 points is supposedly the difference between average (100) and mentally retarded (70). Do you want me to believe that as soon as the Virginia public schools shut down, radioactive spiders bit all the black students (and only the black students) to alter their DNA and turn them into retards over the span of five years? Or is it more likely that five years without schooling left their academic abilities rusty and atrophied?

Binet (but you call that genetic fallacy, fine). But also Flynn and several professors of psychology. How? With scientific studies, but you'll probably just write them off as "PC."

Nice try, but the modern day IQ tests are exactly the ones that were debunked in those two articles I linked to. The Cell article I linked to specifically mentions Wechsler. They conclude that most general IQ tests are useless, but concede specific tests, such as the subtest component of Wechsler may still have some value (since they did not analyze the efficacy of subtests in this paper). But another paper that did analyze subtest scores concludes that they, too are entirely useless. Just Say No to Subtest Analysis: A Critique on Wechsler Theory and Practice.

You sound a lot like J. Philippe Rushton, who for years claimed that Africans were intellectually inferior to other races on a biological level. It almost sounded believable until he started claiming that there was an inverse relation between penis size and intelligence. My best guess is that you, like Rushton, are only engaged in this racial superiority pissing contest to because you want to lessen your insecurities about the size of certain appendages for which you are markedly below average.

Classic racist argument. Present half-facts out of context and then attack the other person as "PC." Well here are the full-facts to your half-facts:

If anything, the Flynn effect proves that IQ is mostly determined by factors other than genetics. In the post-war Netherlands, the average IQ went up 21 points in 30 years. Unless they had a top secret Eugeneics program that no-one has managed to discover, there is no way the Dutch gene pool could have changed so dramatically in such a short period. Or, for even better evidence, you can look at the case of post Brown v. Board of Education Virginia:

During the 1960s, when some Virginia counties closed their public schools to avoid racial integration, compensatory private schooling was available only for Caucasian children. On average, the scores of African-American children who did not receive formal education during that period decreased at a rate of about six IQ points per year.

These are the same children that were being tested year after year. There is simply no way genetics could have played a role.

It's long been established that IQ tests are a terrible measure of innate intelligence. Actually, it's been established literally from the very beginning: Alfred Binet, who created the first IQ test, wanted to identify children in a particular public school who had learning disabilities. He designed the IQ test to determine which children were learning more slowly, and he explicitly said that the test did not measure innate intelligence:

The scale, properly speaking, does not permit the measure of the intelligence, because intellectual qualities are not superposable, and therefore cannot be measured as linear surfaces are measured.

The important thing is that all of the students Binet studied went to the same school. That isn't true in studies that are comparing intelligence amongst difference races. Guess what? If you take a test that is measuring how much you got out of school and you attended a crappy school, then you obviously aren't going to do well on said test as kids who went to good schools, and in the US, whites and Asians attend (on average) much better schools than African Americans and Latinos.

Reread my post. I was making two points. First, if al-Awlaki received a fair trial his "illegal speech" probably would have effectively earned him a death sentence (i.e. he would be in prison for the rest of his life). Second, ethically, someone who helped plan the deaths of hundred probably deserved death, and let's not forget that al-Awlaki held onto his American citizenship even as he preached "death to America" so that he could hide behind it like a coward. I'm not claiming that it was right for the Whitehouse/Pentagon/DOJ to come together and figure out how they could circumvent the Constitution. That was undeniably wrong. Am I happy that the Whitehouse killed al-Awlaki? No. Am I happy that he is dead? Yes.

Reading comprehension, my friend. I'm talking about the ethics of the situation, not his legal rights (which were obviously and blatantly ignored).

Maybe "a bit unsettling" is an understatement, but what I meant was that while his legal treatment was unquestionably wrong, ethically, the man got what he deserved.

Being an accessory to murder as often as Anwar al-Awlaki was would earn you enough 20 year sentences to fill a hundred lifetimes. The man got what he deserved. Yes, the legal precedent that the Whitehouse set is a bit unsettling, but you can't argue that al-Awlaki didn't get what he deserved.

Yes, some of these quotes are evidence that hindsight is 20/20, but that still counters your claims in your previous post that the Japanese would have continued to fight on. And then there are the quotes like these:

When I asked General MacArthur about the decision to drop the bomb, I was surprised to learn he had not even been consulted. What, I asked, would his advice have been? He replied that he saw no military justification for the dropping of the bomb.

That's right, MacArthur said that if he was asked his opinion at that time he would not have seen a reason to use the bomb.

the Secretary, upon giving me the news of the successful bomb test in New Mexico, and of the plan for using it, asked for my reaction, apparently expecting a vigorous assent. During his recitation of the relevant facts, I had been conscious of a feeling of depression and so I voiced to him my grave misgivings, first on the basis of my belief that Japan was already defeated and that dropping the bomb was completely unnecessary

In this one Eisenhower said that he thought the dropping of the bomb was completely unnecessary as soon as he heard the news.

While the Emperor's safety and symbolic position was permitted to continue after occupation it was done so **after** an investigation into whether the Emperor was responsible for war crimes. We could not have determined the Emperor's status with respect to being a war criminal until after boots on the ground, i.e. after surrender.

The actual instrument of surrender said nothing about an investigation into war crimes. In fact, there was no mention of crimes at all. Regarding the Emperor, it said

We hereby undertake for the Emperor, the Japanese Government, and their successors to carry out the provisions of the Potsdam Declaration in good faith, and to issue whatever orders and take whatever action may be required by the Supreme Commander for the Allied Powers or by any other designated representative of the Allied Powers for the purpose of giving effect to that declaration.

There was also a tacit agreement along with the final surrender that the Emperor would not under any circumstances be investigated for war crimes:
http://www.pacificwar.org.au/J...
http://www.japanfocus.org/-her...

Your reference suggests no such thing, unless you are making a very strange interpretation of Halsey's flippant comment about scientists and their toys. While the value of deterring possible Russian aggression was a consideration it was secondary, and as history shows not necessarily an unfounded fear.

No, this reference does not suggest it, but it is widely known that Hiroshima was spared conventional bombing so that if it was attacked with a nuclear device, it would be easier to analyze the effects. Since several generals from the previous source said was of limited strategic value, this seems to be the only reason for the bombing Hiroshima over a more militarily significant target, or (if demoralizing the Japanese was the only objective) an unpopulated area.

You've gone from strange interpretations to just plain making up nonsense. In the future you may want to restate your irrational belief that Truman considered them experimental subjects into perhaps something like Truman wanted revenge.

I'll admit that this part was my own rant, but thanks for stuffing words into my mouth. I made no claims about Truman. But it is well established that the average American of the 1940s viewed the Japanese as subhuman, and odds are that many of the people involved with atomic bomb policy held such views. There is no direct evidence that this factored into the decision to bomb Hiroshima, but I suspect that it was a contributing factor. I don't think revenge was a factor.

Classic. Shift the blame on the country that got bombed. I'm sorry, but there are no circumstances in which the intentional killing of tens of thousands of civilians is justified. In this case, a simple show of force would have sufficed. Drop the bomb in a rural area or off the coast of Japan, far enough from urban centers to prevent damage, but close enough that it can be observed. Then spread reels of the event.

This is completely false. As for why Japan didn't initiate dialogue with the US immediately after Hiroshima, don't forget that the US bombed Nagasaki only three days later. They simply didn't have enough time between the two to formulate a response, especially since they had to deal with the Soviet invasion that began within that interval.

Read this page: The REAL Reason America Used Nuclear Weapons Against Japan

General Eisenhower, Admiral Leahy, General MacArthur, General LeMay, and several other high ranking US officers said that the dropping of the US bomb was completely unnecessary. If the US simply allowed the institution of the emperor to stand (which we ended up doing in the end anyway), the Japanese would have agreed to surrender far before Hiroshima and Nagasaki. Perhaps even before Okinawa. There were two main reasons for dropping the bomb: 1.) To gather data on how to maximize the damage that a nuclear weapon could cause on an urban environment. This would be useful in a hypothetical future war with the USSR. 2.) Racism. Many Americans of the time saw the Japanese as subhuman. We use lab rats in experiments. Why not Japanese?

Also, read this: The REAL Reason America Used Nuclear Weapons Against Japan

Several members of US command, including Eisenhower said that dropping the bombs was not necessary for a surrender, contrary to your well-documented evidence. Historical revisionism is a real thing. Even in the US.

They could have achieved the same effect by dropping a bomb off the shore from Tokyo. Close enough that the extreme power of the weapon would be clearly evident to any Japanese observers, but far enough that the blast would not kill a single civilian. Let alone tens of thousands. But several US generals were afraid that the US would never again have the chance to see the effects of an atomic weapon on an urban area (something that could be vital in planning the use of nuclear weapons in a future war), so the decision was made to drop the bombs on major cities. This too is well documented.

I agree that it would be best if Japan removed those items from the shrine, but let's not be so quick to judge other nations. Jacob H. Smith, an American officer who ordered his troops to kill "everyone over ten" in a Filipino village is buried at Arlington. Where are the protests over that? David Cameron refused to apologize for the Amritsar massacre in India, and many modern British historians claim that the actions of the British commanding officer at the scene was justified because there was a danger of a riot. (Even though Winston Churchill admitted at the time that "the crowd was neither armed nor attacking.") Where are the protests over that? Chinese textbooks don't mention the Tungchow Mutiny, where Chinese soldiers in Japanese service defected and proceeded to slaughter and gang rape hundreds of Japanese civilians. Where are the protests over that? Don't be so quick to point fingers.

Why is this modded +4 insightful? Even though the Chinese government is a bigger fan of Realpolitik than most other nations and, they are also big fans of minimal risk.

While China would win a prolonged war with Japan, Japan is no pushover. It's an industrial powerhouse on a fairly defensible set of islands. Any full-scale conventional war against Japan would lead to hundreds of thousands of casualties at least. And while Japan is unlikely to use nuclear weapons over something as trivial as the Senkaku islands, they probably would not hesitate to use everything at their disposal if the home islands where ever in immediate danger.

The generation of Mao might have been willing to give their lives en-mass in Korea in the name of communism and for "Chinese values", but the modern Chinese population are not a rural stock who want to see land reform and the death of the bourgeois. They are increasingly middle-class families who want to be able to buy the latest American iPhones and European designer handbags. The modern Chinese people are much less receptive to the idea of giving their lives for the Party, and the modern CPC leadership is accordingly risk averse. They are opportunists who aren't afraid to unleash the military when they see low hanging fruit (as Mao did in Tibet in the 1950s and India in the 1960s), but they are also realists who also do not want to see a long, drawn out war (much less a retaliatory nuclear strike) in the name of empty ideals. The modern CPC is all for posturing as they have done recently in the Senkaku Islands and Arunchal Pradesh, but not so big on the actual fighting.