Does your TV have the necessary hardware and software to decode encrypted digital cable signals without having a piece of shit set top box that they charge you a rental fee for?

My HTPC does.

Oh, so they are finishing the job of destroying Media Center that they started with 8 by making Xbox 360 / One the only Media Center Extenders that work. Considering Time Warner's abuse of CCI / Broadcast flagging that results in me compulsively using Microsoft's ReadyPlay DRM in order for my CableCARD to actually be something other than an inert lump of metals, guess that's staying on Win7 for the forseeable future.

This is where I get off the bus.

Vista was fine only in this sense.

I found that argument to be completely false a couple weeks ago. I just built an Intel-X99 based system, with two SSDs inside - one for Ubuntu, one for Windows. I was able to download and create the Ubuntu USB installer on an iMac, install it, and be up and running in about 30 minutes.

You can't get the Windows 8.1 installer without already having Windows on something, because all of Microsoft's downloaders are EXEs. What the hell is that. It took me an hour to get it downloaded and the USB installer made, then plug it in and install (another 20 minutes), and then screw around with getting drivers and crap installed.

Ubuntu was way easier and faster than Windows.

Because in order to get a free upgrade, you have to already have a version of Windows with a valid license. There are people out there that don't.

Then do nothing?

Nobody uses multi-megaton weapons anymore (except for keeping around some old stock for bunker-buster type applications) because of the inverse-cube law of expanding spheres. It takes a shload more power to do the same damage as several smaller lighter warheads. Thus, MIRV was born. Less fallout (less fissile material being used in the bomb that blows itself to bits before the material can be fissioned), spread over less distance (cloud doesn't rise as high, injecting radioactive crap into the upper atmosphere), less weight to throw on the top of a rocket, etc.

In fact, the US [reportedly] uses "dial-a-yield" where they can actually electronically tune the warhead from somewhere in the Hiroshima range to 300kt depending on need. The big-dick 15 Mt thermonuclear weapons of the 1950s that required a booster capable of putting a Gemini capsule in orbit are no more.

Nope. It's asynchronous - less power comes back north when it's reversed in the winter. But it's definitely DC, thus the name "Pacific DC Intertie"

He's [mis]quoting (wildly out of context) the Bill of Rights, specifically the First Amendment:

So basically he's just an idiot.

Well, his speech writers had their hearts in the right place.

That's as far as I'll take it.

Really? I didn't know that not winning a single primary and having far less delegates at the convention to vote for your nomination was now called "changing the rules."

Obama wanted a VP who could play party hatchet man for him, where the biggest skeleton hiding in the closet is his unswerving capacity to say really dumb things in front of a microphone?

It might come as a galloping shock to you, but fissionable materials that are capable of making nuclear weapons don't remain the same materials forever, because they undergo fission.

While everyone hopes these things are never used again, one of the things that makes sure nobody uses them is the deterrent factor. And a decrepit warhead that has a percentage of it turned into plutonium daughter products which make the thing fizzle isn't a deterrent. And any nation with a nuclear arsenal of their own will know this.

Well, how about all the arms reduction treaties from the 1970s to the 1990s? Such as SALT, SALT II, START, START II (not enacted, but negotiated) and New START?

Sounds like they're doing what they agreed to - negotiating in good faith. Also, going past that, as they actually have eliminated all IRBMs, reduced MIRV count, reduced launcher count, banned all testing, etc.

The US current system of replacing nukes is consistent with all treaties because warhead and launcher count is what is specified in the different treaties. These things don't have a forever shelf life, you know - they are actively degrading while they sit there, and need to be "refurbished" in order to be the deterrent they are supposed to be.

A few conflicts where 20,000 people die is far better than a World War II sized event where 60 TO 85 MILLION die. And that total only includes ~130,000 from the use of primitive nuclear weapons.

Are small wars bad? Of course they are. But big honking all-in fuck-up-entire-continents wars are FAR worse.