Consumers are fine. The only benchmark that matters to a normal consumer is "How fast does it run my games?" and the answer for the 970 is "Extremely damn fast." It offers performance quite near the 980, for most games so fast that your monitor's refresh rate is the limit, and does so at half the cost. It is an extremely good buy, and I say this as someone who bought a 980 (because I always want the highest end toy).

Some people on forums are trying to make hay about this because they like to whine, but if you STFU and load up a game the thing is just great. While I agree companies need to keep their specs correct, the idea that this is some massive consumer issue is silly. The spec heads on forums are being outraged because they like to do that, regular consumers are playing their games happily, amazed at how much power $340 gets you these days.

They support two prior versions of OS-X and that's it. So OS-X 10.7, released 3 years ago, is unsupported as of October 2014. I guess that works if you have the attitude of just always updating to the latest OS, but it can be an issue for various enterprise setups that prefer to version freeze for longer times, or for 3rd party software/hardware that doesn't get updated. Also can screw you over if Apple decides to change hardware like with the PPC to Intel change.

How do I turn all this crap off? I do not want "charms" or active notifications or dancing paper clips.

Just run all my programs fast and don't make me notice your interface. Why is that so hard?

Sure there's always a few garage developers/wanna-be entrepreneurs/SOHO users, but they're a niche.

But certainly, you don't consider all the people who have PCs on their desks at work to be a "niche", do you?

Is it "pro-science" to want to keep the provenance of consumers' food a secret?

Yes retard.

The pro-GMO argument distilled to its essence.

"Safe" doesn't even have to be the issue. The issue is, why are these people so keen to make sure consumers don't know where their food comes from? Even more important, why are they so keen to make sure that consumers don't know where their food money is going?

When I buy a bag of rice or an ear of corn, I want to know whether or not my money is going to pay for a license fee for intellectual property covering a basic foodstuff. Because I would rather it did not. And for some strange reason, there is a group of people out there who believe I should not have that choice as a consumer, and they use "science" as their reason.

Ha! That's an old one. After you find the golden rivet you can hop in your F-35 for a little snipe hunting.

It's "anti-science" to be opposed to the application of intellectual property laws to basic foodstuffs? It's "anti-science" to be opposed to putting ownership of that IP in the hands of companies like Monsanto?

Is it "pro-science" to want to keep the provenance of consumers' food a secret?

The problem with you pro-GMO people is that for some reason, you appear desperate to promote something for which there is no benefit to consumers and that may cause serious harm to the economics and politics of our food supply.

PCs have 2 major remaining market niches:

1) Enterprise(/educational) workstations (Like, for doing WORK on.)
2) PC Gaming)

What does it say about us that we now consider "doing work" to be a niche?

But I'd argue that elections in the US are designed to give people no real choice.

It's kind of the same thing. People don't vote because they can see through the charade and figure they have more important things to do, like sort their sock drawers alphabetically according to color.

that magical wall is sometimes called a paywall

And corporations are paying the bills. Just look at the names on the fancy new buildings in every Ag department at every major university.

Please explain how universities churn out paper after paper after paper sounding the alarm on climate change in the face of the multi-trillion dollar oil/gas industry that lobbies hard against said research,

Why do you think climate change became so "controversial"? It's because it wasn't supposed to happen. That's why you have enormous butthurt on the part of the oligarchs. They just can't believe that all these scientists went off the reservation.

You know the pro-GMO people must be right, because there arguments always include copious insults. That's the sure sign of a winning argument.

As far as bitcoin being nonsense, the New York Stock Exchange and a large bank just invested in a bitcoin company:

"The New York Stock Exchange and a large bank..."

They'd invest in tulip bulbs is there were sufficient suckers. Which in the case of Bitcoin, there most certainly are.

Good luck with your GaltBucks, boyo.

Not all of us are idiots.

If you have to say that, it's probably not true.

Or my electricity is part of my rent, or people in the military who live in base housing, or I can come up with 10 other examples

This may come as a shock to you, but if your electricity is part of your rent, you are still paying for your electricity.

No matter where you live, somebody is paying for your electricity. There is no free lunch (unless Mom and Dad are paying for the electricity, in which case, have at it because your John Galt Bucks are totally going to revolutionize the world economy).

Is there some fundamental property of Bitcoin that makes proponents silly?: