So I guess they'll be rallying to the family's coat of arms...? http://www.irishgathering.ie/clan_info.asp?clanID=843 Or did you mean MORONS?

Effect is also a transitive verb, meaning to make or do, or to cause to come into being. The word affect -- also both a noun or verb -- is entirely unrelated.

Wrong. Absolutely nothing incorrect about "commenter."

"The more open platform won?" Really?! Certainly not for all values of "winning." Not even for the most obvious ones.

Since your analysis seems to be lacking an actual connection with the facts, I'm guessing you would be surprised to learn that, using Reported Income as the most telling metric of success, Apple is blowing MS away.

For example, http://www.asymco.com/2011/09/29/comparing-revenues-apple-and-microsoft/ provides the following tidbits:

-- The Mac business generates more Revenue than Windows

-- iOS powered devices generate more revenue than all of Microsoft’s products put together

-- Apple’s revenues grew 413% since Q2 2007 while Microsoft’s grew 26%

So it seems if Apple is to be, as you claim, "a fading memory," it may be due to some diminishing capacity on your part, and not a true measure of Apple's continued success.

Even more than drawing the sword in close formation, it was the Roman fighting tactics that dictated the design. Used in tight quarters, a long sword is more likely to cut friend as well as foe.

Really?!? And just how do you recommend each individual go about this "digging"?

Are we supposed to hop on a plane ourselves and head for Iraq to find (or not find) WMDs? (Imagine the flight delays, TSA questions, etc.)

Are we supposed to go to Hawaii and hold the President's birth certificate in our own two hands before we believe he was born there? (Hmm, Hawaii.)

And what about Bush continuing to read "My Pet Goat" instead of excusing himself to deal with a national emergency? (I am pretty sure he wanted to know how the story ended.)

Sorry what you're describing is so impractical as to be utter nonsense.

I have to agree that the genius was never in. Evaluating Out's SIG reveals a tragically flawed syllogism.

The opposite of "ignorance" is "knowledge" (or its equivalent). After all, a genius can be ignorant of many things and still be counted a genius in his or her fields of expertise. Similarly, "madness" and "bliss" are much closer to synonyms than antonyms.

Liddy was less a patriot than he was a macho cowboy spook. In fact CREEP pretty well describes who he was (and remains), as well as who Nixon and his inner circle were. Creeps.

You mean 'rogue' don't you? I think red cars are no more evil than black ones.

Actually, I've been depositing checks this way to my bank, USAA, for years.

Though I'm not sure other institutions have been following what used to be the PRIMARY rule in banking: "Know Your Customer," USAA requires an existing trust relationship with the customer. Otherwise, the potential for fraud becomes too great to support the method.

Actually, x, you're the dumb ass. Yes, the Republican party of the mid-1800s worked to end slavery. But the political philosophy espoused by those enlightened souls morphed into the Democratic party of TODAY. If you want proof, consider that Strom Thurmond, Jessi Helms and the other 'Dixiecrats' switched parties in their fight against integration in the 1960s and 70s. Their bigotry still informs the Repugs. Dumb ass.

I think you'll find most people are using DVRs to keep from being tethered to the TV, watching whatever is on at any given time. It doesn't mean that there is something especially 'important' about TV. But interesting? Perhaps. (Since it's so easy to do, I'll record it and find out.) So your humble opinion notwithstanding, there is nothing 'flimsy' about the TiVo premise.

Sports and other live events, feature films, certain series programming -- all fit nicely into my HD-DVR (free from DirecTV) -- allowing me to view what interests me, on a schedule that suits me. It's not exactly a time machine, but it allows me to control my TV, instead of the other way around. A very robust use for recording technology, in my opinion.

Thank you, sir! Avatar has been taking a lot of heat, much of it undeserved. However, as cogent as your analysis is, it probably won't sway the thinking of the person who wrote the parent to this thread. He/she actually thought Pitch Black and Chronicles of Riddick deserved plaudits as scientifically accurate, socially aware SciFi. Woof.

People are afraid of YOUR GOD! More specifically, the tendency of religious fanatics to declare their god "One and True," and defame all the others.

By your proposal, schools would have to give all competing theories equal weight, no matter how foolish or unsubstantiated they might be. Problem is, for hundreds of years, evolution (the theory itself, as well as the slow advance of human thought) has been slowly beating back the darkness of faith-based ignorance. What person in their right mind would want to relinquish our small, but hard-won, progress?

Say what you will about Mac v. Windows, but I have seen the evidence for myself.

I often had occasion to visit the Redmond campus when I was doing interface designs for CitibankOnline, and we were co-branding a Bill Payment service with MS. PCs of all brands were everywhere in abundance -- except for one location -- the Design Graphics Lab (or whatever it was called). Twenty seats for the "creative types" and thirty or more workstations, all but two were Macs. One of the two PCs blue-screened while I was there. Chuckling a bit, the lab director admitted, "now you know why we use Apple."