Yeah, you're right, you can't really fix stupid.

Yes. Because these tests are pure FUD generation. These "tests" are designed specifically to give high marks to AV kit that has its heuristics engine to produce as many false positives as possible and low marks to AV kit that has a reasonable heuristics engine that looks for realistic threats and doesn't spam user with "this is a potential threat, upgrade for 9.99 now to fix" advertisements.

Nevermind that most heuristics engines will at one point or another detect a standard (Microsoft-signed) required Windows file as a virus and promptly "quarantine" it for you. Which just means Windows will either bluescreen or render your system unusable.

And that's a problem - because now AV is interfering with your computer - and if it isn't a Windows binary that gets hosed, it's a file one of your programs you use.

No, MSE will not catch a 0 day. No antivirus can. So they use heuristics to bridge the time between it's in the wild and when they push an update that will detect it. But there's a tradeoff - too aggressive and there will be a TON of false positives. More conservative (Like MSE) and you'll be more likely to miss a threat, but less likely that you'll clobber a file you really need. And for most people, that's more than acceptable tradeoff.

Especially when you combine it with safe surfing that blocks questionable URLs - available on every browser now (either powered by Google or Microsoft) that prevent you from grabbing questionable files.

Do you know what a "Dixiecrat" is?

Doesn't sound like it. None of you "Lincoln was a Republican!!!1!1" idiots do. Well, either that, or your cynicism knows no bounds.

Or you can refuse to get into the hash table.

I always found it quite amusing that it's much easier to immigrate to US as a relative (and I don't mean someone really close like a spouse or a child, but e.g. parents?) than it is as a skilled worker. Of all the countries that I've looked into, US is the only one like that. All others (of interest to me) had shorter immigration tracks through work than through family.

Hi, another libertarian-turned-liberal through life experience here. Well, not liberal, in truth, I prefer the term "left libertarian" as well - but hardly anyone in US knows what it is, and many people think it's like hot snow.

And the philosophy you describe is pretty much exactly what I came to espouse, as well. Freedom and minimum intervention as a foundation, but I've come to recognize that the degree of intervention that's necessary for a functioning society in practice is way more than most traditionalist libertarians consider their limit.

Also 100% in agreement on GOP needing to go libertarian if we are to see any true inter-party competition moving the society in the right direction. And I think this will happen sooner rather than later. They can try to cheat the demographic shifts for a while (with gerrymandering, voter ID laws and such), but those still give only a brief respite, and the clock is ticking. They'll have to go libertarian or yield the system to Democrats in its entirety. In fact, barring any tectonic changes in GOP platform, 2004 shall remain the last year this country had a Republican president for a long, long time.

And you can already see signs of the coming fracturing in the party. Sure, GOP "libertarians" are still insanely conservative, but the difference between a guy like Bush or Romney, and Rubio or Paul, is quite impressive. A few more electoral cycles and they will grudgingly accept that their "small government" platform contradicts their messaging on social issues - if only pragmatically, just to get more votes.

Or maybe we'll actually make electoral reform happen first, and then there will be more parties. I can't really call any specific one my own, but of all the small parties out there, the Modern Whigs approach and platform appeals to me most.

You can, if the benefits aren't instant, but rather kick in gradually as you work and pay taxes (possibly the faster, the more taxes you pay - hell, why not even let people dial their own rate above the certain required minimum).

In fact, it would probably make all the social programs solvent again, at least so long as the rest of the world still has people left in it (who have enough money for a ticket, but you could hand out loans for that, too). ~

I think he is referring to all immigrants, not just H1-B.

The only catch is that if you also have a sponsored green card application with the original employer, you have to start from scratch if you switch.

And the queue for green cards is, what, about 5 years currently?

This is very messy code.

It could have been a lot shorter, too, with something like bottle.

Sadly, this seems to be the case for many recent sexual harassment cases, which is bad firstly because it turns innocent (not necessarily morally good, but criminally innocent) people into victims of the system and secondly because it muddies the water when it comes to real cases. Too many of these "angry ex-lover" cases, and people will tend to believe that actual cases are of the same kind.

You can feel very trapped in relationships, ask any of your married friends. ;-)

Seriously, over the Internet, when it's not really an actual relationship - yes, she does have attachment issues.

Psych problem or not, when you're sending nude pictures to someone who's not your significant other, and you're not in the sex industry, then you should realize that something is not as it should be.

Well, if you walked up to a smoker and vaccinated them like this ... they would still be addicted, and have no way of alleviating that.

As an ex-smoker, had someone done that to me, I might have had to kill them

Quitting smoking is hard, is sucks, and it takes months if not years for the craving to go away. The smallest thing can make you go back to wanting one.

The ability to get nicotine from an alternate source than smoking is not something to be underestimated, and for many of us is the only way we can really quit.

I rank this about as good as locking someone in a room and waiting for the screaming to stop. It's simply doing nothing at all about the fact that your brain and body are still going "where is it? how about now? can we have some? what about now? Why isn't there any? How do we get some? WHY can't we have any?"

A smoker on forced cold turkey quitting is NOT a person you want to be around.

I was really hoping they could throw away the cruft and start fresh, like Android and iOS did.

The way forward isn't slavishly doing the same thing you've been doing for 25+ years.

To me, this just entrenches that we're stuck with every bit of crap baggage Microsoft has been carting around, and that they will essentially keep doing the exact same thing.

So, I like them for a desktop or a server ... but I think they're going to fail miserably for mobile devices.

Essentially they're just going to ram through the iceberg instead of doing anything innovative. I honestly question if Microsoft could write an OS from scratch like Android.