Personally, I think Microsoft is doing you a favor by asking you to remove iTunes and Google Toolbar.
 
And note, they're not forcing you to replace them with Zune and Live Toolbar, so don't go all "evil empire" on us over this.

This is called "Social Engineering." Our Government wants heterosexual couples to marry and have kids, and they want the Mother to stay home to raise the kids while the Father goes to work. That's the way it always has been and always shall be, damnit, and our tax laws will encourage this until the end of time.
 
Which makes me wonder why they don't want gays in the military, where they're more likely to die. Indeed, you'd think they'd ban heterosexuals from the military, in order to protect our gene pool. I swear the RRR just doesn't think these things through.

You may want to read the petition first, then, because it's supporting a referendum to REPEAL civil unions in Washington.

Not exactly. First, it's not civil union. The legislature passed a law to give committed homosexual couples the same legal rights as married heterosexual couples (you know, the right to be in the hospital room with them, etc.) -- but without a civil ceremony. Some people objected, so they turned this law into a referendum (distinct from an initiative), which means the public now votes on whether we want this law. This referendum does not repeal civil unions, it grants equal legal rights to homosexual couples.

Perhaps its providence that we're faced with sustainable energy productions and conservation here on Earth. Our efforts might reveal a means of space propulsion using energy captured during flight. Otherwise, a portable power source capable of inter-stellar travel could be a hot piece of technology to the other civilization. If such a probe were to "darken our doorstep", it could easily start a war, or worse, i.e. Voyager episode Friendship One.

So put the floppy image on a USB stick (instead of a floppy disk) and boot from that. Sheesh, do we have to hold your hand, or do you need us to type the commands for you, or what?

generally speaking you should be able to configure just about everything you need to in pavucontrol.

Yes, and that is the problem. I don't want to configure anything, I just want sound to come out of my speakers. I don't want to have to try out 2^40 different combinations of buttons and switches scattered over a dozen different tabs in order to make that happen.

<sarcasm>It patents the idea of putting a memory buffer on the network card. Who would have thought of that?</sarcasm>

Or make mandatory aerodynamic figures, or mandatory hybrid powertrains, or mandatory fuel types... bzzzzzzzzzzzz...

Wrong.

Those sort of solutions are short-sighted and idiotic. Make the law favor more efficient cars. Don't make the law favor a particular implementation. $20 says that someone with a coating patent bought someone with bureaucratic oversight a nice dinner. When the law selects a particular implementation, it runs a significant risk of becoming outdated.

As someone who's other home is Chicago, I can say that sun heating in the winter makes a difference to me (lower latitude, to be fair), and cell phone reception is *already* a problem there.

Dude, they'll just google for one.

Correcting someone is not being a prick. Correcting someone to subtly make them feel smaller under the _guise_ of helpfulness, or to score points while changing the subject, is being a prick. People often try to establish their value by comparison, which leads to a vested interest in seeing others brought down, since that's easier than the hastle of achieving admirable qualities, and achieving admirable qualities doesn't necessarily lead to people admiring you.

Nobody likes a person who takes shots at others, including the person doing it. Since we're surrounded by such people all the time that can make us extremely touchy toward interpreting things as put-downs. But you know if you are really being a prick or not. If you tell yourself "I'm just trying to be helpful" ask yourself if that's really how you feel about it, or whether, deep down, you were being an ass. You'll know.

What happens when you bounce that thing off a Michigan pothole at 55mph? I'm guessing damned expensive repair job.

And that is why the Abortion debate is so heated. It gets lost in an emotional hissy fit about 'murder' and 'choice.' Nobody seems to bring up the amount of sentience in a fetus at different stages of a pregnancy and where to draw the line between a bunch of cells (not worth protecting in law) and a sentient being (possibly worth protecting in law). As for the US media's constant use of loaded terms such as 'pro life' and 'pro choice,' don't get me started on that.

Similarly, the US government in the past 8 years has spent at a greater (inflation adjusted) rate than any time since WWII.

If its not adjusted for population as well as inflation, I'm not sure that number means much of anything, much less what you are trying to use it to mean.

That's a significant portion of the economy dominated by the federal Government borrowing money.

Perhaps, but that would be shown by the deficit:GDP ratio, not the inflation-adjusted total expenditures.

It may not be the intended effect, but this has the effect of "gaming" the system in that increases in federal spending and borrowing offset a private-sector recession.

How, compared to the government not acting to mitigate the effects of a recession? What happens when a government doesn't act in this way, historically?

Since this isn't Soviet Russia, the public sector can't simply offset the private sector like that.

While Soviet Russia jokes are cute, I'd be interested in seeing support for this contention with factual evidence, or at least some kind of coherent, credible reasoning, rather than simple ideological grandstanding.

Nausea at the concept of marriage has a very different root cause from nausea at the concept of sex. Your confusion between the two terms is not particularly natural.