You seem to forget that Facebook and Microsoft are in bed together. I wouldn't really consider them to be an innovator, though. Facebook's like the internet's Windows '95 -- and they're buying up companies in a fashion similar to how Microsoft did in the 90s.

I disagree. I think kids should be given a good Linux distro and an internet connection. Why do they need Visual Studio and books?

There are tons of crappy open source GUIs but there's also XFCE and LXDE.

Anyway, the guy you're responding to never mentioned open source. A fair Apples to Apples comparison is OS X, which Microsoft hasn't been able to catch up to for almost fifteen years. It's pretty sad that there are open source GUIs like XFCE that are drastically better than XP, Vista, 7, and especially 8.

The church doesn't have a monopoly on marriage. The courtroom does. I know someone who was married in a church and then they never got around to filing the legal paperwork. Technically, they're not married (which was a good thing as it made 'divorce' that much easier).

Hate? I didn't read anything hateful in that comment. Incorrectly reframing an argument is one of the biggest problems with this issue.

"I don't believe in gay marriage," for example, often gets reframed into "gays don't deserve rights."

Fifteen years ago no one would have believed that gay marriage would ever become a reality. It was a weird and foreign idea. Now it's legal in a bunch of states and will probably be a national thing before long. Things aren't just the way they are. Things change and that change starts by people talking about it.

Unfortunately, the actual marriage related problems haven't be framed in the proper context and hence the solutions -- gay marriage -- is completely wrong. The problem is marriage as a legal status for individuals. It shouldn't exist and no benefits for it should exist either. Extending it to homosexuals does nothing to solve the actual problems presented by legal marriage.

I completely agree. Legal marriage should be opposed whether it's for gay or straight couples. Why is it the government's business who I've devoted my life to? Why should I be taxed differently because my significant other and I decided to sign a piece of paper? It's an archaic social custom that should have no place in modern society.

Those that modded you troll kind of proved your point. Although I think you exaggerated quite a bit, I agree with what you're saying. When an employer can dictate your politics, what's the point of democracy?

This is pretty spot on. The whole issue appears to be the tendency of some people to try and condense the truth into a general statement, such as, "fleas on rats spread the bubonic plague." Of course the truth is more complex and may not be fully understood, but I don't think serious scholars ever asserted that fleas on rats were the only mechanism by which the disease was spread. The important part of the theory was that fleas on rats on boats brought the bacteria from China to Europe and then facilitated its spread.

Several of those may not currently be on Netflix, but they have been in the past and may be in the future. The selection rotates. I watched Sideways on Netflix, I'm pretty sure I've seen several of those titles on there before. If you want to have Hollywood's entire back catalog available to you then there is simply no service that offers it -- not your local rental store (if you even still have one), not any streaming service, and not traditional cable/satellite TV.

As the guy who doesn't know that the Academy Award is an Oscar, I think you're being disingenuous when you pretend to care about it. So what, Netflix isn't for you, but to argue that it's a substandard service is just asinine. If you go to a video rental store, for the cost of a couple movies you could cover a whole month of Netflix. Furthermore, for me, if I go to the local rental store, I've already seen almost everything they have that's not a new release (which cost more). Netflix has tons of foreign and indie films that interest me. They're producing original content and some of it is superb (House of Cards).

I don't like to buy movies because I don't usually watch a movie more than once. That's why Netflix is a great deal for me. It's not the greatest service if you're looking for something specific -- but all those things I've seen in theaters or in the past. Sometimes I cancel the service for a while (usually football season) but I've always started it back up again.

House of Cards: Present.

Netflix provides more quality entertainment for your money than any other service. If it weren't for sports I wouldn't even have regular TV.

Also, you won't find any of the top 200 movies on IMDB on regular TV, either, nor would you care to. When's the last time you watched Citizen Kane? Wizard of Oz? Also, being the huge movie buff that you apparently are, you should know that the Academy Awards and the Oscars are the same thing.

Btw, #5 and #6, on the IMDB top 200 are on Netflix: Pulp Fiction and The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly. That's just from taking a quick look at the list. In fact, I see several others on that list that I recall seeing on Netflix.

Yeah, this is basically how I feel. I use Ubuntu with XFCE. I don't even have Unity installed so it doesn't bother me any. The main reason I use Ubuntu is that I can easily find answers with a quick Google search when I run into problems. I just don't have time to spend hours dealing with minor driver issues or finding out why my OS isn't playing nice. As much as the idealistic "fragmentation leads to competition which leads to more and better options" sounds nice, I think it's good that Ubuntu provides a more accessible option for people who want to use Linux without devoting their life to it. That's not to say that I think all the other distros should just go away and Ubuntu should be the one Linux to rule them all -- I just think the community's recent hostility toward Ubuntu and Shuttleworth is a case of cutting off its nose to spite its face. It's almost as if these members of the community don't want Linux to be successful outside of the server space.

Maybe CentOS will succeed in getting the community behind it while simultaneously extending Linux's popularity beyond its current niche, but I fear that if Red Hat succeeds in making CentOS more popular and accessible then the community will just turn on them the minute they try something new.

While your snark does a great job of insulting the anti-dodgeball crowd, it does little to argue against "liberal" education policy as a whole and tells nothing about your own position. It's easy to attack a strawman, especially when you don't explain your own beliefs to open yourself up to criticism.

Your attacks are weak, also. If you believe that selective pressure has caused certain human populations to become more or less bright, as a group, than others, then you know jack shit about evolution and the human brain. Homo sapiens haven't even been a species long enough for such selective pressure to have any meaningful effect on our various populations. We are, inherently, no more intelligent than cavemen. The difference is the environment we're brought up in. Is there variation within our populations? Sure. But when it comes to cognition that variation is extremely acute - right handed or left handed, for example.

I'm no fan of certain liberal hysterics your post attacks (see my sig -- it was too long and the author's name is cut off; it's Stephen Jay Gould), but I'm even less of a fan of bullshit. Your post stinks of bullshit.

I was steered into "gifted" classes as a child but math never came as second nature to me. I don't have Asperger's syndrome or anything -- I never read particularly fast or could effortlessly absorb patterns. What landed me into the gifted program was the fact that I came from a family of educated individuals. People who spoke English, not some broken dialect that violates basic grammatical rules. They also imposed high expectations, taught me much through travel, and made a point to buy me books rather than toy guns.

Excluding those very rare individuals who have some disorder like Asperger's, children generally have approximately the same academic potential. They're like seeds from a tree. Minor genetic variation exists among them and some really are more predisposed to success than others, but much more important than predisposition is the environment in which they're grown. "Gifted" children in the United States aren't neglected because the vast majority of those who will test as gifted will have one common factor: they come from educated families. Having opportunity doesn't make one gifted.

Sticking around hasn't helped Manning any.

I think you're looking at "consequences" as a very black and white thing. Snowden is facing the consequences for his actions -- he's exiled from his country and may never be able to return. He's already sacrificed so much to do the right thing. Sticking around to be persecuted wouldn't help out any. He took the risk of being tortured, imprisoned, and even executed. Isn't that enough? That's the most we ask of our soldiers and then we declare them heroes -- we ask that they risk their lives. We ask that they risk sacrifice, not that they do sacrifice. Kamikaze pilots and suicide bombers have no place in the defense of our country. Why should the whistleblower be so self-sacrificial? Why is he not a hero for risking his life when that's the standard of valor we place upon ourselves?

It's not just a tax write off. By keeping his money in the foundation and the investments of the foundation, its a tax shelter.