Except that as long as a white dude who says, "what's up my niggahz!" is seen as an insensitive, racist asshole, you're actually NOT doing the above. If you want to dilute the word to where it has no power, I think that's great, and wish all involved the best of success. If you want to ensure you can still use that word as a weapon against someone of the wrong color who says it, then I begin to wonder about your motives, and who the real racist is.

How the hell do you reclaim that particular word, and what kind of use would the reclaimed word be put to? My helicopter might go "wop wop wop," there might be a "chink in my armor," and when my wife throws a cup of ice water at me, I might end up with a "wet back" but I sure as hell cannot conceive of a non-insulting everyday use of "nigger." Also, your suggestion that, say, hip hop artists are using that particular word in an attempt to mainstream it (again, to what purpose?) is just absurd and smacks of grasping at any straw imaginable to justify your position that it's ok for some people to use it, but not okay for others.

The word in question belongs in the dustbin of history. People who get bent out of shape when they hear it should probably put pressure on their own communities, because other than a few backwoods idiots running around in sheets, the only thing keeping that word alive is popular culture which originates from the very people who should be most offended by its use.

FWIW, I sympathize with your plight. The "I have rich parents, but they disowned me, so now I can't afford education" situation really does suck, and there appears to be no desire by anyone to fix it. I assume this is to prevent people who don't need aid from structuring their lives to get it anyway, but that's cold comfort to someone in your situation.

Have you considered trying somewhere like Western Governor's University? It's not a diploma mill, and if you can self educate on top of what you're learning, you can seriously cut your costs down by accelerating your program.

If your household income is lower than $80k (IIRC), tuition is waived. Live at home and go to a local school rather than going to UC Berkeley when you're from San Diego, and you can have minimal living expenses (unless your parents charge you rent).

I'm by no means claiming things are easy, or would be utopic, but if someone were to focus on how to go to school on a budget, then doing so is certainly achievable. You can absolutely argue that someone who has the academic potential to attend a top tier school but cannot do so due to financial reasons is a tragedy (and I would agree), but as someone else noted, life isn't always fair.

I'll agree that the majority of people lack well developed critical thinking and reasoning skills, but I do wonder why you equate "being more concerned with your own well being and daily issues [than with some nebulously defined future state]" with a lack of critical thought? All things being equal, I wish our species as a whole nothing but the best now, and tomorrow, but if you tell me that, say, putting a bullet in my head right now is going to make the world a better place for "future generations," my well developed critical thinking skills are most certainly going to be more concerned with my own well being.

None. At all. Typically, they will cheerfully wave you through the door (often offering you fresh baked cookies first, at one of the larger FBOs) to where the aircraft are waiting.

You beat me to it, dammit.

Congratulations: you've refuted part of my argument, but, by doing so, have made my point. The story you're linking to is about a centuries old argument against the practice. How is this not an example of a religion changing?

Take note of the above, folks.

The next time you scream about the NRA and claim that the 2nd amendment is some sort of "collective" right instead of an individual right, remember that this is what we've been arguing against for the last couple of decades. Becasue once you redefine "the people" in the 2nd amendment, the 1st, 4th, 9th, and 10th are next on the list.

Correlation is not causality.

I'm going to ignore the rest of your post (sorry, not jumping into THAT quagmire) and nitpick the above. The answer is "pretty much all of them." In fact, it's especially odd that you said this in a post about islam, which claims that their god is the same god ("of abraham and isaac") worshiped by both the christians and the jews. If that's not enough example of a change for you, when's the last time you saw a bunch of orthodox jews sacrifice an animal to yahweh? I won't even go into the changes that roman catholicism has seen over the last two millennia, but suffice to say that the current pope would probably be burned for heresy by his predecessors of just a century or two ago.

Religions, like everything, change over time. Changes can be small, or large, but they're always there.

You do raise an excellent point, but MS has never put "free" behind one of their upgrade efforts before, and Win 7 is already out of mainstream support. NOBODY wants to go through another migration at this point (XP-32 -> 7-64 was a massive effort, and many of us are still recovering from the hangover) but I think this is really a "get on the bus, or get left behind" moment.

People with the buying power will probably beat on Microsoft to give them more time and delay, but in the SMB space, it's going to happen.

Says the guy that won't even put a pseudonym behind what he has to say.

I've got some news for you, AC: just because someone expresses a viewpoint you happen to disagree with doesn't make them a shill. I've been a UNIX user since the 80s, a Linux user since 94 or so, a postfix and sendmail admin for over fifteen years, and helped run a dozen MMOs back when they had text interface and were called MUDs. GPL beats BSD, vi beats Emacs, and my windows desktop runs Xming so I can do real work from time to time.

What I said was not marketing, and is not even an endorsement. I was not claiming that win 10 is the best thing since sliced bread, but rather simply stating that the economics are impossible to ignore. Win 10 adoption is GOING to happen fast, and it's going to be driven by the "free upgrade, but only if you do it right now" bandwagon. That was my only point, and wishing it were otherwise isn't going to change what's going to happen.

Do you point your desktop Linux users (okay, so I'm kidding) toward the bleeding edge/preview yum repos? No? Then why harp on MS for aiming their previews at IT people rather than end users?

Who the hell was screaming to keep VB6 around? Even the VB programmers I know almost universally hate it.