think the real problem is that all the kids that watched star wars when they were little grew up to be cynical assholes.

No, the the new trilogy was really that bad. The review was spot on. The story made no fucking sense at all, the characters were boring as hell, and the whole setup was so convoluted you didn't even WANT to follow what was going on. Maybe that was what Lucas was going for. It had you begging for the stupid, over-choreographed lightsaber battles.

1) The scientists have the data, so 2) they must know more about the data than we do, so 3) we should trust them implicitly in their interpretations of that data.

You're way off the mark here. First of all EVERYONE trusts authority figures for information. This is basic psychology and human development. It's not possible to know everything about everything. The more important thing is to trust the RIGHT authority figures. Some of us choose to trust the scientists because it is their job to look into these things, have their information peer reviewed, and find problems with other studies and data. We find this is the best way to ascertain information. I cannot possibly believe that any corporation or journalist or economic study group is more of an authority on this subject but maybe you can.

This does not follow, because it totally ignores that the scientists with the data may have intrinsic bias, or even that they could be wrong. This is exactly why when you get a diagnosis from a doctor that says "Operate!", you get a second opinion.

The fact that 95% of scientists agree that global warming is real and is being caused by industrial activity from humans should be good enough. That's like 95% of doctors agreeing with your original diagnosis.

You can't consider Mono a replacement when it leaves out a major reason to use the .NET framework. It will work OK for small, short lived ( as in short runtime ) apps, but when you start talking about services that run for long periods of time or ASP.NET applications, Mono sucks. Yes, it will 'work' when you are playing with it but you can't use it in production.

I never said it was a replacement. Not having a compacting GC isn't really an issue with feature parity as much as it is an issue with implementation parity. The point I made still stands. With careful coding you can write software that will run on both, regardless of the GC implementation. The Mono GC is definitely a bit of a sore spot but at least it is being worked on. Do you actually have issues with feature parity or are your complaints purely about the current implementation?

Nope, Mono's a buggy inferior clone of Microsoft .Net. Not exactly something I'd call an improvement, aside from the fact it's open source. (Well, open source until Microsoft decide it's outlived its welcome, anyway.)

Mono isn't a clone of .NET and it was never meant to be. Mono is C# + Libraries (like GTK-sharp) that are usable on Linux. There are some compatibility libraries to make it easier to port applications from a Windows environment to a Linux one but Mono has no need for things like WPF and other Windows-specific libraries. As for your "buggy and inferior" comments that couldn't be further from the truth. What bugs are talking about? I have had very few issues with Mono in general and Mono has outpaced Microsoft's own implementations in some areas.

Except that Microsoft actually tests their GUI usability on normal humans with focus groups for months. GNOME, OTOH, was using an outdated guideline plagiarized right out of Mac OS 8 and today just makes shit up.

Complete bullshit. SUN funded a usability study for GNOME years ago and the findings were formalized in GNOME's HIG.

Innovation would be okay if we could turn off the "innovations" we dislike. But the general pattern with Gnome (starting from version 2.0) is that such changes, especially the most undesirable ones, are usually mandatory, i.e., it is impossible to configure things back to the way we want them, impossible to get back basic functionality that we had in version 1.4.

What are the major features you are missing compared to 1.4? Most of the options just got shoved into gconf but they are still available. Sure you no longer have an ultra configurable lisp window manager but I don't think many people are still crying about that.

I have nothing against mono, I just can't afford to work in what amounts to a 4 year old version of the framework.

Bogus. Mono is very current with .NET and has even beaten MS to the punch on some features. The major missing features compared to .NET are the MS specific libraries and proper current Silverlight support. So unless you're developing Silverlight apps or Windows specific software (which would obviate the choice to use Mono anyway) I doubt you have even tried Mono.

It is also a colossal wast of time because .NET sux in the first place.

Good thing Mono isn't .NET then.

Fuck you're a nutjob! OK, listen up

HaHa! What an excellent way to get people to listen to you.

the reason I like to carry a gun is because a cop is too heavy. Have you heard that one before? How about this one? When seconds count, a cop is only minutes away.

Exactly how many times have you had to shoot someone? My guess is zero. So either you're completely paranoid or trying to rationalize your inferiority complex.

My original sentiment stands. I don't vote becaust things like ACORN happen and I don't matter anymore.

Huh? What ACORN thing? You sound like another conspiracy theorist. Just in case you haven't been paying attention (and you haven't been apparently) there was never any voter fraud associated with ACORN. It was never even in question.

Actually I did vote for the first time in my life this last election. It will be my last (see ACORN). See, what happened in my case was that my vote got disqualified. Why? Government agencies don't talk to each other perhaps? I registered with my license. Why would that happen? Fraud perhaps? If the system didn't work for me the first time, why should I trust it the next?

Your rambling incoherence just proves you are a conspiracy theorist. Why should anyone listen to you?

I win because the country and it's people win out in the long run because of the guns, not despite them. I'm rather glad that I angered you into incoherency. LOL, I win.

Exactly how did people win because of guns? You haven't made a single point, instead you insist on rambling on about your wild eyed conspiracy theories.