This comment is so wrong in so many ways. True freedom includes all the privacy and security the citizen desires for himself, his family, and his community. Freedom and security are not opposite sides of a coin, they harmonize and reinforce the other.

There's a fundamental untruth being propagated by the U.S. government (by the left and right equally), that personal security can only be achieved by the gov't, and freedom and privacy of the citizens are the cost of that security. This is not only a lie, but also an abuse of power over the U.S. citizen. However, there are enough voters that have decided to believe this, and it is costing each and every person of this country their constitutionally guaranteed liberties.

How can you be free, if you don't have security? How can you be secure, if you aren't granted freedom (the definition of liberty)? Were the slaves of 18th and 19th century America "secure"? They certainly were not free, and they certainly did not have any security or privacy in their lives! However, freedom, security, and privacy all require action and personal responsibility, and the typical American today shuns those concepts. People would rather receive handouts and allow Supermom (the U.S. Gov't) to take care of them, protect them, control them, and make the decisions for them, because the alternative is "too hard" or "too expensive".

Sounds a lot like the "Prime Directive"...

Agree with most of your post, but you missed an important event. GM *forced* many of their dealerships to close, to reduce competition.

We had a very good GMC/Buick/Cadillac dealer here, and a crappy Chev/Pontiac dealer. GM told them that one of them was going to buy out the other, and gave them the opportunity to decide amongst themselves or GM would. As it turns out, the GMC dealer decided to sell out to the Chevy dealer (personal reasons: he was ageing, and none of his kids wanted to take over the dealership), and now prices have gone up, selection has gone down, and there's no "dealing" anymore: pay thier price or don't buy.

So, basically, GM removed the competition. At least, for it's own brands. So now there's a monopoly in this region and sticker price is where it's at.

Gotta agree with this...

In fact, many drivers don't "see" me on my 800+ pound Goldwing. They look right at me, make eye contact, and then still pull out in front of me (or into "my" lane, or enter the intersection, etc.). And it doesn't happen just in "cities" - small towns are just as bad. And it isn't a subset of the population - young, old, middle-aged, even professional drivers (ie: taxis, semis, etc.) do this.

Something is broken in certain humans minds, that they don't either recognize a cyclist (motorized or not) as a threat, or as a legitimate user of the same roadway as them. Until it's almost too late, after I have laid on my horn and cussed them out at a the top of my voice. Then they have a "Oh, sorry, I didn't see you", look on their face when they shotgun their brakes.

Ahh... Cultural and language barrier crash... :)

LOL... GLUEons! I see what you did there.

FTFY.

Really? I moved from a MacBook Pro to a T430S a couple of years ago, and I really like it. The trackpad isn't as good as the MBP, but it's pretty damn usable... I don't have any issues using it at all.

Not running M$ bloat OS tho, maybe that's why? Does Linux have a better trackpad driver than M$? And I still have the eraser mouse if needed.

I am extremely happy with the Lenovo and recommend it any time someone asks. I can get the proc I want, the amount of memory I want, and it's still reasonably priced (in my case, an I7 and 16g). When I got it the only other company that could match the specs I wanted was Alien, at twice the price and weight, and a 17" screen.

I was a little worried moving from a metal case (on the MBP) to a plastic case, but it has survived very well and the body is still very stiff with the metal (magnesium?) inner skeleton. No issues at all. And, I believe that the Fn key was swapped with the Ctrl key to make it easier to find in the dark, to turn on the backlighting... I know, kinda lame, how hard is it to find the SECOND button from the left in the dark, but I do appreciate it at those times.

And Lenovo's support is EXTREMELY good, the one time I needed it. Getting anything back the day after you send it in is unheard of in my neck of the woods... Normally the shippers aren't that good here.

Honestly, I prefer the Slashdot method: community voting based on popular perception.

Contrast that with site regulation, where a certain group of moderators determine the content of the "acceptable" posts: for instance, any anti-gun facebook group. The problem with this type of moderation is it completely destroys discussion, arguement, and discourse in favor of preening and ego stroking. There is no way to correct misinformation, or to have a meaningful debate about the subject at hand.

I am not in any way promoting extreme trolling (such as the example of posting rape porn on a rape victim support site), and I think any rational person would be able to easily pick out this type of abuse and would agree that it is not acceptable. But the act of disagreeing and stating an opposite viewpoint or opinion about a topic is *not* trolling, though it's called that on many, many discussion boards. And that is what I am against: the PC version of troll blasting, where it interferes with honest and even sometimes heated debate. The best that I have seen is the Slashdot type of voting, along with a point of no return, where there are so many negative votes that the comment is hidden but still available to the reader to view and decide on his/her own whether the post was properly modded down.

Totally agree. This should be done "For the People, By the People", not "For the People, By the Gubment". The Gov should NOT be in the business of censorship, and in the US that falls under the 1st Amendment. Even the whole child porn illegality to me feels like a slippery slope (even though, morally, I fully support the arrest, conviction, and forced rape by an angry silverback for those who produce that shit), because it could lead to other censorship based on precedence and someone's personal, moral judgement (just like me and the child porn example). I think there's a line that shouldn't be crossed, but the arguement always is, "Who determines the line?" It's always a good arguement to have, and I hope that type of arguement always continues to be had.

To be fair, though, a sentence is MUCH better than your dog's name or your birthdate... So, don't totally discount it as insecure. It's much more secure than my examples, simply because of the number of characters and punctuation involved.

I do like your interactive experience idea... A nice, big database of answers to pre-asked questions, chosen randomly during each "experience", so they aren't duplicated in an order. Not questions based on facts that are retrievable, like your mothers maiden name, your first car, or your 5th grade teacher, but questions based on an opinion or something. Good idea.

I have to completely agree with this. I've been using LastPass for the last 6 months, and it has totally changed the way I use passwords. Now, every password I have is a long, random generated string of characters, but I only need to remember one, very long and easy to remember password to access all of them. And since it's device and OS agnostic, it works everywhere. It's saved my ass a couple of times already.

It doesn't matter (to me) what manager you use, just use one. It completely changes the way you treat passwords.

If you kill off... I mean, the poor and minorities die out or leave, who's gonna: -Mow your lawn -Clean your pool -Cook your food -Clean your house -Make your Big Macs (or Whopper, or whatever your fast-food kick is) -Wash your car -Make your coffee -Clean your car windows (at traffic lights) and all the other menial chores that are below your station? Gotta think about the possible future negative impacts and keep a few around, even though it's distasteful...

Well done.

FTFY. There's no "probably" about this. The drunk yelling at you has not escalated the encounter to the point where you need to defend your life or anyone else's. You don't have the right to shoot someone unless there's a life in danger, and don't think there won't be repurcussions even if it was completely self-defense. There will be a court appearance if you shoot someone.

Fully agree with this.

That's what I thought at first as well, but then I realized it doesn't have to do with the OS but the hardware itself, which is what IOS vs Android is.

So, even though Android has 52% of the OS market share, it has that share based on many, many different models of phones by many manufacturers. Whereas the 41% that Apple has (funny, 41% of OS market share *and* 41% of hardware market share) is spread out among three or four models *total*, all made by Apple. The test had to do with hardware and battery longevity, not necessarily OS issues, though OS issues can indeed contribute, which makes my arguement even more pertinent.

So Anubis does have a good point, and it would have been a more stable test than the one that was done.