Any coworker who said they couldn't do their job clearly just took the opportunity to slack off and blame in on the evil computer. If you can manage to click the big shiny "Desktop" button on the start screen, then you can use Windows 8 the same way you use every previous version of Windows.

I've been using both Windows 7 and Windows 8 since December and I still don't understand this "learning curve" is.

Step 1: start the computer (bonus: it doesn't even require as much patience as a Win7 boot)
Step 2: Look at the Metro start screen and start flinging your feces like your primate brethren ("I don't like change!")
Step 3: Click the big button that says "Desktop"--complete with a picture of your desktop--and everything's back to normal

I didn't even need to go out of the way to download MSE, since windows defender already includes in now. If anything, the start screen is just an extended start menu that can hold more than a dozen shortcuts.

I don't do it because I'm not interested in biology. Same reason I'm not a car mechanic or a plumber, which both also pay well. My lack of interest in studying for 7 years to inject morphine into patients says nothing about the ease of doing so.

And your thoughts had nothing to do with the reality that was presented to you afterwards. The US spends over twice the OECD average per capita on health care, yet ranks 37th in performance. 1/6 of the country doesn't even have any type of insurance, and even more have poor insurance, neither of which are magically negated by the fact that you're a doctor and therefore must know what you're talking about. A reasonable person sees when they're wrong, and stops doing the same mistake over and over again afterward (voting for the party ignores this and panders to social conservatives instead).

...followed by paragraphs in response to your other statements. But nice to hear your thoughts on that information.

Drawing any lines in a state is absurd. If 50% of the state votes for one party, then 50% of their representatives should be from that party, and same if it's 60% and so on. And 1st-grade math will show that Maryland's case (which is still wrong) is the exception, since the overall Congressional layout shows 201-234 in favor of Republicans, despite the voter turnout being 49.0% - 47.7% in favor of Democrats, so don't try to make a false equivalency out of it.

Blah blah blah, I'm not really interested in responding to more of your anecdotal experiences, or in humoring the delusions of an anesthesiologist who thinks his line of work requires any more intelligence than a kid with a calculator and formula sheet (but kudos to being smarter than someone who can't open their mouth correctly), so I'm just going to respond to the very last thing you said regarding health care: It's not as simple as just expanding Medicare. The US already spends more on public health care (i.e. Medicaid and Medicare) than most other OECD countries spend on both private AND public health care, so it should be pretty clear that there's more to do than simply expanding coverage. Pharmaceuticals need much stronger pricing regulations, as do hospitals (which I'm well aware means a lower salary for you); regular check-ups also need very low price ceilings, since there's a strong correlation between the cost of a country's average hospital visit and the frequency that that country's average citizen visits the hospital. Saying "I'm a doctor" doesn't automatically make up for you not knowing any of this.

You can disagree with this all you want, since I'm sure you've gotten used to making obscene amounts of money for monotonous work, but that doesn't change the fact that it's what every other -developed- country in the world does.

Also, what do you have against increased education and infrastructure spending? Lower college cost means less people needing government assistance, and more public transportation means billions of dollars saved in oil costs, GDP lost to unpredictable traffic jams, reduced suburban sprawl, and even less people needing government assistance.

Spoken like someone who doesn't understand that disagreeing with the constitution means that you don't understand the constitution. The only reason anyone would say we don't have a real democracy as though that's a good thing is because they're the minority group (Republicans) screwing over the majority (Democrats).

What about the poster's comments hinted that they didn't understand that part of the constitution? I understand it, I just fundamentally disagree with it because he's right; it's an outdated, inefficient way of governing that leaves room for disgusting levels of abuse via gerrymandering, which is why a majority of people in Pennsylvania voted Democrat, yet only 5 of their 18 representatives are actually Democrat. On a larger scale, it's why more people voted Democrat that Republican (49% to 47.7%), yet Democrats only won 201 House seats while Republicans won 234.

So when you say that Congress represents specific groups of people, it sounds like you don't understand basic math.

Can't say means-testing social security is on the table for many Democrats, but I can say that cutting our outrageous military spending is. There's also universal health care (which is the reason every other OECD country ranks much higher than us and pays half as much per capita), increasing education spending so less people need government assistance in the first place, investing in more reasonable infrastructure like high-speed rail and public transportation like the rest of the developed world, and actually doing something to minimize the effects of global warming rather than pretending it doesn't even exist simply because those politicians won't live long enough to deal with the consequences.

Also, generalizations regarding which states get the most retirees are hardly the strongest argument for why certain states receive more tax dollars, since most retirees stay right where they are. Those states are welfare states because they have terrible/nonexistent public service planning, even by US standards.

There are your reasons to stop voting for the same party that panders to Jesus freaks (and also tries their best to obstruct everything in the first paragraph).

I replaced an old 27" monitor with a 21.5" Samsung, to the dismay of my whole family. It's a huge improvement. Larger screens just become hard to look at after a while.

Maybe you should try sitting down with the marketers, artists and executives all at the same table and have them all come to an agreement right there instead of being antagonistic and letting basic things drag out for months. If any business really gets this bad, that's a failing of ALL involved employees.

It's worth noting that the massive earthquake needed to disable that nuclear plant also caused several oil refineries to outright explode. And the nuclear "disaster" was also largely overblown; none of the cleanup crew working INSIDE the plant has shown any sign of health issues, and the evacuation was a safety precaution that American "news" networks squawked at and circled like vultures and sensationalized into the start of the zombie apocalypse (4 days away, btw).

Even if nuclear energy WAS as terrible and evil as some people (i.e. oil companies and the people they fool) like to say, no amount of nuclear radiation in a few concentrated waste areas would be anywhere near as ecologically disastrous as the worldwide effect that CO2 emissions given off by oil and gas.

So I seriously hope the LDP restarts Japan's nuclear program. Closing it in favor of importing oil was one of the biggest environmental crimes in history.

What is there to even complain about productivity-wise with Windows 8? It's EXACTLY the same after you press the Start button. And it boots up significantly faster than 7. Most importantly, only Windows 8 supports development of Metro programs, which should be reason enough for you to upgrade if you're only using a computer for work.

Isn't hacking a hate-spreading website also an act of speech? If "donating" money to politicians is now an act of speech, I fail to see how telling the WBC to go screw themselves isn't an act of speech. Shame on you for acting like everyone should be all hugs and kisses with these kinds of hatemongers.

Seeing as how half the prison population is in there for drug charges, I'd say the government has a history of focusing on the users.

Like the puzzles on the back of my cereal boxes?