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.

It's a two-step process. The first is a chemical that dissolves the proteins (still in their "cooked" folding), and the second is some sort of centrifuge or similar (they don't go into details on the device in the article) that subjects the proteins to very high sheer strain, effectively mechanically unfolding them so that they can then relax back into their natural state.

Not exactly a spice you can sprinkle onto your steak, but still pretty neat. :)

In the news recently are rumors that Carter, Anderson and Duchovny will reunite for new X-Files episodes. Fox has sorta confirmed this.

I own all the DVDs, a couple years ago I rewatched them. I may come off as a rabid fan at times but the background music was atrociously horrid. Also the story arc plot became overly convoluted and impossible to explain at times. That said, one of the most convoluted characters (Krycek) was my favorite. Aside from several minor valid criticisms like that, I really think it's a great platform for modern storytelling.

I do have to ask myself, at times, if there is some level of insane conspiracy theory today that we owe at least in part to those people watching X-Files when younger. I have to admit that the 9/11 inside job truthers movement claims could have been ripped from the pages of an X-Files script.

My biggest concern, of course, is whether or not it could still be fresh. With recent high quality additions to television canon, we'd have to be prepared for Chris Carter coming back at us with a 90's angle when episodes like Home really aren't as shocking anymore. The bar has been raised (thankfully).

Right now, The X-Files is going to occupy a contextual place in television history like The Twilight Zone. A revival could very well tarnish that. On the other hand, I've never felt like I really received closure on the whole story arc ...

That just raises another issue - why are you services and utilities so unreliable in the US? Here in Iceland we get hurricane-force winds several times a year on average - I've had gusts over Cat 5 on my land. Winter isn't incredibly cold but is super wet (all precipitation forms), windy, and lasts a long time. Up at higher altitudes you get stuff like this (yes, those are guy wires... somewhere in that mass). I lived in the US for a long time and had an average of maybe two power outages a year from downed lines and such - sometimes lasting for long periods of time. I've never once had a power outage here that was anything more than a blown breaker in my place.

It's really amazing what you all put up with - your infrastructure standards are really low.

Yeah, here in freaking Iceland most people have 50 or 100 Mbps fiber for a lot cheaper than that. And not just in the capitol region, it even runs out to Vestfirðir now where the largest city is under 3k people.

It makes no sense whatsoever that a hunk of rock just under the arctic circle, 3 1/2 hours plane flight to the nearest land mass with any sort of half-decent manufacturing infrastructure, consisting often unstable ground constantly bombarded by intense winds, ice, landslides, avalanches, volcanoes, earthquakes, floods, etc, with the world's 2nd or 3rd lowest population density and heavy taxes on all imported goods, can do this while the US can't. What the heck, America? You've got half of the world's servers sitting right there, why the heck can't you manage to connect people to them?

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.

I'd fully support removing any barriers to that. They'll surely get charged out the nose, but it's a reasonable proposal. What's not reasonable is having regular drivers subsidize Uber drivers by letting Uber drivers do commercial work on non-commercial insurance.