This is how the conversation should've ended.

Actually, unregistered trademarks exist, too, and are in effect simply by using a particular mark of trade. The "R" symbol is used to denote a registered trademark, while the "TM" symbol denotes an unregistered trademark. However, in the U.S., unregistered trademarks have limited protection.

Pfft. There are other designs.

Didn't you know? If Apple did it, then they invented it, even if they invented it decades after others did it. That's just how it works.

The most open option out there seems to be the Kobo, which supports EPUB (open format), PDF, and MOBI, as well as TXT, HTML, and RTF, plus image files in JPEG, GIF, PNG, BMP, and TIFF, and also comic formats CBZ and CBR. Even the DRM books that I've bought are so unrestricted that I've never noticed the DRM at all, even though I have them on multiple devices.

Kobo's philosophy also seems to be the most "free" of the various options out there. A great many of the books sold at the Kobo store are DRM-free, and even the ones with DRM are easily shared between multiple devices (in my case, for some of my books, 2-3 laptops, a smartphone, and 2 Kobos). I also don't think (haven't confirmed this, though) that it's even possible for them to wipe a book the way Amazon already has with the Kindle.

A user interface is more than just what pixels are lit on the screen. You also have to factor in how you physically interact with it. So, if you're using a keyboard and mouse, as opposed to a touch screen, then it's not the same interface, no matter what it looks like on screen. And, what it looks like on screen will be, or at least should be, based on how you're going to interact with it.

English law is still a small, relatively recent subset of the much larger institution. You still want to pick and choose your own ideal of what this thing is and make everyone adhere to it.

The age-old problem of democracy is that it's two wolves and a sheep deciding what to have for dinner. That's why the U.S. has a Constitution and Bill of Rights in the first place. Because there are some things that should never, ever be decided by a vote. People voting on what other people are allowed to do within their own private lives is just pure evil. The only people who should ever have any say in the same-sex marriage issue are same-sex couples who want to marry. I'm sick of the world's religious thinking they get to dictate other people's lives.

Well, this is a global issue, not just a U.S. issue, but if you want to limit the discussion to the U.S., then I would point out that the state has had jurisdiction over marriage for as long as there has even been such a thing as the United States. There were state marriage laws before there was even a Federal Constitution.

Ultimately, this all comes back to my original point about arbitrarily imposing individual biases. You have taken a small, relatively recent subset of the much larger marriage institution, and want to force it on everyone. Unfortunately for you, your narrow view will die out eventually. You're going to lose this fight. A handful of countries have matured to the point of legalizing it, and the rest will, eventually. I expect the more theocratic countries like Iran and the U.S. to be some of the last countries to get with the program, but it will happen. Guaranteed.

Ah, but therein lies the real problem. Your understanding of history is seriously flawed, because marriage is not a religious device that government later got involved in. Marriage has existed in many forms throughout history all over the world, and religion has not always been involved. From a Christian perspective, it was bishop Ignatius of Antioch who decided that the church should get involved in marriages and "make them holy". From the perspective of other cultures, some marriages were religious, some civil, some purely personal. At one point all it took was for two people to declare their marriage intentions to each other, and they were married. The state wasn't involved. The church wasn't involved.

So, even your idea that marriage is religious is another arbitrary imposition of a particular individual bias. My marriage is not religious (I'm atheist). Nor is it about population growth (my wife and I have absolutely no intention of ever spawning children). So, even as a heterosexual male, I abhor the attempts that are constantly being made by the anti-same-sex-marriage crowd to cram all marriages into their own personal ideal of what it should be.

This is a fascinating quote. First, the religions can't "have back" what was never exclusively theirs. Second, it is not those who want same-sex marriage who are trying to impose anything on anyone, but those who oppose it who want to impose their personal biases on others. And third, if we keep the government's role in marriage, we allow the non-religious to have their marriages in their own manner, while still allowing the religions to create their own set of rules around it. If your church doesn't want to marry a same-sex couple, fine. But out here in the secular world, if a same-sex couple want to marry, your church and its members should have no authority to stop it.

You're exactly right that love is not a legal requirement for marriage because it is not necessarily even a part of it. Each individual couple has their own reason for marrying, and love may or may not be a part of it.

But that's pretty much exactly the point. If the law included a clause allowing marriage between "any two people who love each other", then that would be enforcing an arbitrary rule based on some individual's bias regarding what a marriage should, in their mind, be about. If there was a similar clause about "any two people of the same race", that would also be an arbitrary clause based on some individual's bias.

The thing is that the existing clause regarding "any two people of the opposite sex" is just as arbitrary, and is also based on some individual's bias. There is no basis for that clause. The fact that it has been that way for a long time is irrelevant. It's an arbitrary clause that simply doesn't fit today's reality.

Your entire argument seems to be "it should be the way it is because it is the way it is". I'm saying that the way it is is arbitrary and pointless. The only even vaguely decent attempt at defending the "opposite sex" clause that I've heard is that marriage is about creating children. But again, that's an attempt to apply an individual bias regarding what a marriage should be. In the same way that not every marriage is based on love, neither is every marriage about creating children. Plus, that argument falls flat when the fact is considered that there are infertile opposite sex couples allowed to marry.

Marriage is a personal thing, and people need to stop trying to define it for other people.

In the old days, everyone who was capable of making decisions for themselves had the right to marry a person of the same race if they were capable of the same and agreed to the marriage. I don't know why they needed to go and give people "extra rights" to marry across racial boundaries. Things were perfectly equal back then.

Let's phrase your statement in another way: "Right now, everyone who is capable of making decisions for themselves has the right to marry the person they love if they are capable of the same and agree to the marriage". Hmm, suddenly it's no longer accurate.

It's easy to phrase things in such a way so as to sound "equal". It doesn't make it so, however.

Oh but come on. Their engineers are super leet! To work at Facebook, you have to win a drunken speed-hacking contest just to be a PHP coder!

Really? Accessing RAM is faster than accessing a disk? What a novel discovery!

It seems to me that MySQL can also be run in memory. Apparently that's how the clustered database works (or used to work). I've never tried it, but let's see some benchmarks between MemSQL and an entirely memory-based MySQL.

After a certain point, higher salaries actually tend to be indicative of a greater likelihood of bribeability. Someone who is interested in the work first, and money only as a means to an end, is relatively unbribeable. Someone who is only willing to do the work if the price is right is willing to do anything if the price is right. And there's always someone who can offer more than the salary, no matter how high you set it.