Well, I grew up using Windows and got pretty savvy with it, but I switched to Macs during the OS 9 days, and have been using OS X mainly ever since, though I still use Windows occasionally and Ubuntu frequently. Even though I grew up with it, I find Windows a great deal more difficult to manage than unix-like OSes. The Windows filesystem is a damn mess, the permissions are even worse, the registry is... the registry, and I've found GNOME, XFCE, and a few other Linux desktop environments a LOT more intuitive than Windows, even though I had no previous experience with them. You would think that I'd find an OS I have many years of experience with easier to manage, but that simply isn't the case with Windows. I've never once managed to get OS X or Linux so FUBAR I had to reformat and reinstall, while I've had it happen at least a few times in Windows, usually in such a way that I have no idea what caused it. (I still have weird, unexplained issues in Windows, like how every once in a while when I boot it up, it won't receive any input from my keyboard.)

Um, what? I've been using OS X since it was released, and I have never once had to wipe and re-install it. I've installed new versions of it, and moved to new installs on better hardware, but I've never had a situation where I had to back my stuff up and reformat. The only time I've wiped and re-installed Ubuntu was when I was playing with an experimental build of it for a while, and decided to start over with a stable release of it instead.

They offer it for OS X, at least, or did back in beta. It's not a good idea, though, because in order to run 32 bit plugins (like Silverlight) they'd need to create an additional emulation layer like Safari has. The 64 bit version of FF4 is neat, but it not being able to watch Netflix streaming in it is kind of a bummer.

Why are you wary of Chrome? I used Firefox for years (before that I used Camino) and I caved in and tried Chrome a couple of months ago. Before long, I realized I was beginning to like Chrome an awful lot better. The UI is cleaner and more intuitive, the ability to see what resources each individual extension is using is awesome, and it rarely even shows up in the top 5 RAM users on my system. (iTunes! Argh!) I've found equivalent extensions to the ones I used in Firefox (AdBlock, NotScripts, RedditEnhancementSuite, etc.) that work just as well or better, and I don't have to install a fucking 3rd party extension (which the Firefox devs keep breaking; I think the guy who makes the extension may have given up at this point) to use my Keychain Access passwords in it! Also, it hasn't crashed a single time yet. Not once. Firefox would crash at least a couple of times a day, I'd just learned to get used to it.

My only complaints about Chrome are pretty minor. I miss the ability to turn bookmark folders into a bookmark that opens the folder's contents with a simple click (my Logitech Performance MX is a pain to middle click with) and I'm bummed that it's not FOSS, but I can live with proprietary software that's actually good.

And I'm pretty sure Google isn't secretly using Chrome to track people's every move. :P At worst, I think Chrome is a fiendish ploy to get people to like and trust Google by giving away something awesome, which is fine by me, because although Google isn't perfect (they're still a corporation, and do stupid shit for the bottom line from time to time) I generally like what they do.

Naw. I'm obese, and I drive a Jetta TDI. I fit in it fine, and actually have had worse luck fitting in American cars. This is Germany we're talking about. I got the propensity for obesity from my German grandfather. :P

If children can handle Roald Dahl's work, they can handle anything Doctor Who throws at them, and I feel sorry for any kid, British, American, or otherwise English-native speaking who didn't grow up on Roald Dahl's work.

I started using it a week or so ago, and have noticed a striking difference. I'd all but forgotten what it felt like to actually want to go to sleep because I spent so much time at night in front of a big LCD monitor. When I started using f.lux, I started actually feeling tired at night, and found myself going to bed earlier and earlier. It would usually take me a week or more to adjust to sleeping 3 hours earlier than I'm used to, and it would never stick. When I started using f.lux, I was going to bed hours earlier after a few days. Now it takes getting extremely absorbed in a conversation or work to keep me up late, and it's nice being able to wake up before the crack of noon without feeling like a bomb went off in my head. Even if it's the placebo effect, though, it's worth it to be able to turn on my monitor in the middle of the night without being blinded by it.

No. In fact, you couldn't be more wrong. The founders of the US thought democracy was a terrible idea that would lead to tyranny of the majority, so they specifically set out to create a republic with a system of checks and balances to make it more difficult for that scenario to play out. Thomas Jefferson himself is famed for stating, "A democracy is nothing more than mob rule, where fifty-one percent of the people may take away the rights of the other forty-nine."

Yeah! Just like what happened with operating systems back when PCs took off!

You probably haven't been to kindergarten, or you might have learned that two wrongs don't make a right.