>> Funny you should say that. Also how is that any different from registered mail or any other method where it's guaranteed that a message was sent.

> There's no proof that they were communicated with by merely posting to f.b.

With registered mail, there is proof. That proof is physical and is mailed back to you and is suitable for 3rd party verification. You can actually verify that the person that signed for it is the individual in question.

NONE of that exists for Facebook.

Posting something on Facebook is only vaguely like publishing it in the local newspaper (also bogus).

SystemD and Upstart are both more complex and easier to screw up. That right there is enough good reason to stay well enough away.

if you want to redo the plumbing under the foundation, you first need to give good reason why the foundation needs ripped up. You don't get to do random nonsense and then explain yourself later.

This is just pretty basic change control.

No. It means that the spirit of Teddy Rosevelt needs to come along and whack them with a really big stick so that they can't abuse everyone and distort the market.

Bragging that your pet brand can act like an abusive monopoly is nothing to be proud of. It's blatantly anti-social.

> While iTunes could stand improvement, of course, it is still oly about a million times better than anything else. At least a million.

You're so funny.

Quit swimming in the kool-aid.

Say what?

Dude, either you haven't been paying attention, or you don't know how to use teh intertubes. Every movie is available as a torrent in full 1080p pretty much the day the blueray disks hit the store shelves. Many are available even earlier.

If by "race" you mean that the various release groups are tripping over each other in order to see which one can get theirs up in the shortest amount of time, then yes. "X-Men Days of Future Past" won't be available for purchase for another 3 weeks, but there's already a 720p blueray rip available on the torrent sites, and the 1080p version should follow in the next few days.

Got you one better: in this day and age it's pretty much inconceivable that they would disable bleutooth functionality. If you can pair your fancy unpiratable player to a PC rigged to copy the incoming audio stream to disk, you've got yourself a digital copy with essentially no quality loss.

I keep hearing this complaint - that there are devices out there which are "designed to be harder to repair" - but, at least in my experience, that's incredibly rare. More often devices are designed to be difficult to open due to concerns about warranty claims on modified items, and even THAT is pretty rare. Every electronic gizmo which I currently own can be opened with relative ease. Most of them I would be able to perform SOME repairs on, as long as it doesn't involve having to replace chips or capacitors.

There are some things that bug me - such as my Nexus 5 not having a (easily) replaceable battery. However, while I may not be happy about them, they're all design choices which the manufacturer made for reasons that have nothing to do with repairability. And, for the most part, they're things that don't really effect me (eg. it is highly unlikely that I will keep my Nexus 5 long enough to actually need a battery replacement).

If it were well supported by the data I wouldn't have said that it keeps being repeated without any good evidence. In reality, all of these claims are only supported by the "research" of S.A. Marshall, and there's no evidence that the guy ever actually did the research that he claims he did. There's certainly no replication of his results. But there is evidence that he had a habit of making up data to support his narratives.

This is like saying that the reason professional basketball teams are so good is because they actually try to score points. Silly, at best.

The actual reason veteran units are so dangerous is because:

1. They're experienced.
2. They're a (literal) example of the survivor bias; most of their crappy soldiers die off, shifting the bell-curve to the right.

> I suspect they just want to know how many customers they have, not specifically who they are.

Nonsense.

I am sure that Netflix is more than willing to BRAG about how many Canadian customers it has, or how many customers it has in ANY country.

Way different kettle of fish than actual subscriber info.

...and both of those look like they need to be broken out into a number of distinct questions. Every comma and "or" muddles the resulting data.

Although I've been part of the phone survey racket. So I know all about how these things can be distorted to suit the agenda of the company paying for the study.

No. It's a recurring problem in these discussions because radical feminists will redefine terms. So it's hard to know at any one time whose definition you are dealing with. Are you dealing with something sane or are you dealing with something that's been "trumped up" in order to push an agenda?

You can't trust any random study to be free from such biases.

Then you end up with the basic magnitude problems that occur when dire claims fail to meet basic sanity with respect to numeracy.

If you're actually numerate, some of these claims are just incredible on their face.

I don't think most of the people pushing them fully understand the implications.

Yes. That was Dawkins that rightfully noted that you lot are complaining about 1st world non-problems.

You will take a situation that's not the least bit sinister and distort it until seems to be something entirely else.

That's why no one can trust any stories like these.

Radical feminists have hijacked the debate and the language.

Women are more likely to be the subject of a sexual advance because men are expected to initiate courtship. Differing social expectations and indoctrination will dictate that women find any advances more objectionable then would men regardless of the level of genuine menace the represent.

There was some feminazi that went on a tear because some guy had the audacity to hit on her. Then she whined when the corresponding community luminaries pointed out that she was being a hysterical idiot. The whole situation was portrayed as proof that "X community is mysoginistic".

It was all a load of mindless victimology.

There can be a wide gap between how a bunch of extremist crusaders define a term and how the rest of us define it.

These DRM laden video formats aren't any less crapulent on Windows. Unfortunately they aren't just used for video but also for basic site navigation. So you get a pervasive level of crapulence even with Windows.

It's not just a Linux problem.

Windows users perhaps just suffer from a certain level of "muggle numbness".