These new online Ubunt ufeatures don't help me, but they do not harm me either.
I wish Ubuntu success. I am a loyal fan.

Its also funny to note that install base of Ubuntu has taken a nose dive in the last year(two?). with mint taking up the slack.

You say this based on what?
Out of all my colleagues using Linux, one uses Debian, one uses Fedora, and all the rest use Ubuntu.
What makes you think Ubuntu's install base has "taken a nose dive"? Distrowatch click rates? Those are just interesting numbers, with poor correlation with actual install base.

Okay, then "marriage is between one man and one woman" based on what? If you say the Bible, you're not only wrong, you're injecting your beliefs into law.

Based on moral philosophy.
Also, even if we have religion-based opinions on law, it does not remotely mean that we are "forcing our religion on others". By your logic, whenever a DEM politican makes a law enforcing an environmental rule, he is "forcing environmental progressivism on others". We have the same right to make judgements based on religion that other people have to make judgements based on progressivism, feminism, etc.

Good for you, not for gays. Just for you, not for gays. You should really practice the Golden Rule and visit someplace where you're denied your rights to see what oppression feels like.

You unilaterally decreed that "redefining marriage" is a human right.
If you support that false "human right" for homosexuals but not for the practicers of incest or group marriage, then you are enormously inconsistent.

> "Like I said, I don't have time to pursue this, but rest assured I will fight tooth and nail against people like you who think government is a tool for enforcing your religious beliefs on everyone."

This was simply an empty ad hominem attack. No one is forcing other people in America to follow a religion they don't want.

> "Marriage as a civil institution crosses religious boundaries and you are on the losing side of history."

Ridiculous. I don't care one bit about the "losing side of history". I fight for what is good and just, instead of cheerleading for whatever is popular and politically correct.

So the best you got is ad hominem, sarcasm, and no logical arguments?

Will you please stop ad hominem attacks and actually respect logic?

I repeat: equating normal couples with same-sex pairs because the normal couple MAY practice buggery is like equating cow meat with poison because the meat MAY be poisonous.

Another example: by your logic, we should allow children to have driver licenses, because some adults MAY behave like children.

Etc, etc.

> "When you deny someone something that would make them happy, and doesn't affect your life at all"
Wrong premise. See below.

> "for no reason except that you don't want them to have it for your own personal religious reasons"
It is not just about religion. It is also about natural law.

> "then yes, you are. It's disgustingly selfish."
Oh, the people who lost their jobs in California to defend traditional marriage are "selfish"?

> "There is incest and group marriage in the bible. At some point, someone (in "your tradition") decided to "redefine" marriage at least before."

Can you possibly be serious? The bible also features a man killing his brother, yet no one says that the Bible supports fratricide. Please learn the difference between "describe" and "command".

> "There is absolutely no evidence that same-sex marriages are any more or less damaging to "society" than opposite-sex ones"
It gives tax benefits without any good reason; therefore it makes other people pay more taxes.
It forces people (health insurance companies, bead&breakfast owners, etc.) to recognize the "marriage" and have their sheets stained with blood and feces (in the case of the bed&breakfast owners).
It promotes a behavior which is intrinsically disordered and is associated with mental problems and lower life expectancy.
It forces orphanages to give children to same-sex pairs.

> I don't have time to pursue the finer points of this argument, but I strongly recommend you read this book [archive.org]

Absolutely irrelevant. Very few people defend punishing people who practice buggery. It is _precisely the opposite_. We are simply asking the State to refrain from forcing same-sex "marriage" on us (see above).

> "This might come as a shock to you, but straight couples have anal sex too"

Because SOME straight couples do this thing, we should equante straight couples with same-sex pairs? By that logic, we should equate cow meat with poison, because SOME meat may be poisonous (if it is rotten, for example).

> "Why don't you actually "defend" marriage against its real threat: divorce? Jesus had a lot more to say against divorce than he did against homosexuality,"

Because divorce was imensely more common among Jews than homosexualism. By your logic, nuclear bombings are perfectly Christian, because Jesus said nothing about nuclear weapons.

I won't respond to everything because you are trying to perform a "war of attrition". I will respond to only two.

* Your tradition is more important than someone else's right to pursuit of happiness

No one is denying other people the right to pursue happiness. If redefining marriage was the "right to pursue happiness", then it would also apply to incestuous copules, to group marriage, etc.

* It's any of your business who marries anyone but you

Ridiculously wrong. Marriage has plently of legal cosnequences on society - tax benefits, forcing health insurance companies to treat the spouses as a family, allowing the spouses to adopt children together (and forcing orphanages to cooperate with it), etc. It also gives a state stamp of approval to the marriage. For this reason, we prohibit unhealthy and unnatural "marriages" such as group marriage, incestuous "marriage", bestiality and same-sex "marriage".

Forcing phtographers to take pictures of same-sex weddings.
Forcing elderly berad&breakfest owners to allow two men have buggery on their own house (making them wash sheets with blood and feces).
Making churches that rent their property for weddings accept same-sex weddings.
Making traditional marriage supporters lose their jobs (see for example the infamous persecution in California).

http://wdtprs.com/blog/2012/06/photographer-refuses-to-shoot-same-sex-thingy-bullying-ligation-ensues/
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/religion/8283651/Second-BandB-owner-sued-for-turning-gay-couple-away.htmld
http://www.lifesitenews.com/news/judge-rules-christian-facility-cannot-ban-same-sex-civil-union-ceremony-on

Funny that a social "liberal" often defends forcing people to cooperate with things they don't want to.
See FOCA, see authoritarian "anti-discrimination" laws that force people to cooperate with same-sex weddings.

What is loony about defending traditional marriage?

That's not me saying it, that's Robert H. Jackson - US Attorney General, Supreme Court Justice, and chief United States prosecutor at the Nuremberg trials and the quote is from one of his cases in the mid-40's. So the "modern" politicians have been around for nearly 100 years.

Or maybe he used the expression in a different sense than that of modern aggressive secularist politicians.

Say that to Robert Jackson

I honestly do not know him. Wikipedia does not help: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Robert_Jackson

The very purpose of a Bill of Rights was to withdraw certain subjects from the vicissitudes of political controversy, to place them beyond the reach of majorities and officials and to establish them as legal principles to be applied by the courts.

Makes sense.

One’s right to life, liberty, and property, to free speech, a free press, freedom of worship and assembly, and other fundamental rights may not be submitted to vote; they depend on the outcome of no elections.

Why do you still use the very limited concept of "freedom of worship"? Freedom of religion goes much farther then "freedom of worship". Freedom of religion means freedom of worship, _plus_ the right to express one's religious ideas in public, to proselitize, to change religion, to act according to one's religion/conscience (such as allowing conscientious objectors to refuse to kill, and allowing pro-life doctors to refuse to cooperate with abortion) as long as it does not gravely harm the common good (child sacrifices, honor killings, stonings, etc.).

The 1st Amendment says "free exercise of religion". Those modern politicians who promote the concept of "freedom of worship" are atempting to deconstruct the religious liberty protected by the 1st amendment. This is extremely dangerous and evil.

Steve Jobs was a seriously overrated salesman.
If you want to admire computer people, then admire people who advanced the state of the art, such as John Bardeen/William Shockley/Walter Houser Brattain, John von Neumann, Alan Turing, Alonzo Church, Edsger W. Dijkstra, Ken Thompson, Dennis Ritchie. Maybe Linus Torvalds.