Hello? There is no way you can be sure of that even before it was trampled since we are not talking about Free systems anyway. In the real world you make your money on what people use. People use windows and mac. They get em hosed. They need them fixed, they usually have a ton of data and no backup. Even with good backups they want to avoid the lengthy restore process if at all possible and they are a lot more concerned about that than taking the absolutely sure route in most cases. If they arent they can get a format and restore instead. Very very few takers on that.

And, gee, guess what? If the system isnt too badly hosed to get the appropriate tools working (NOT scanners much simpler things) then yes, you can find and remove just about infestation manually a lot quicker than you can reformat the hard drive (let alone trying to backup any data.)

Well, maybe not you specifically, but someone that actually knows what he is talking about on this subject can.

I dont think you understand the words you are using.

Authoritarian != Authoritative

It is authoritarian, but sound, advice, in the sense that it falls into the category of things that people just dont naturally tend to do without some older and wiser person initially forcing it. Kind of like potty training.

Why would I want to use an interface designed for a 3 year old? Hmm? Come on.

Yes I use the command line and the function keys and I can fly around the thing when I have to. Doesnt change the fact it's just about the worst interface imaginable, and confuzzles the regular users to no end, resulting in them constantly calling me to figure out how to do the simplest of things. I am not saying previous windows interfaces were all that great, but in general people had gotten to the point of being accustomed to them at least. Breaking things for the sake of breaking things does not a good product make.

The metaphysical bank called - your check bounced.

If even a small percentage of the school staff had been carrying concealed weapons the death toll would have been lower. Most likely much lower.

The US has a very violent culture, and has a lot of deaths by firearm and otherwise as a result. Large areas of the country DO have the laws you want and those areas are generally the most dangerous ones. The density of firearm ownership is higher in rural areas which also coincidentally have far less crime. Other countries have higher rates of firearm ownership than the US yet far less crime. One example is Sweden. Why does Sweden have fewer shootings despite having more weapons per capita? The same reason they have fewer stabbings, and fewer bludgeonings. It's a less violent culture.

A 'well regulated militia' means a general population which is armed and practiced with their arms. The founders intention was to prevent us from ever entrusting our safety to a standing army, which they considered would be a grave mistake, and their alternative to provide defense was to ensure that the populace in general would remain armed and ready to resist.

Law is a giant hammer you want to perform as a scalpel. It doesnt work that way.

Being beaten to death with a heavy rock or just bludgeoned into a puddle of mush with a stick or with bare hands and feet - dead is still dead. The lower tech versions usually involve a lot more time in agony before the merciful end. Even if you had a magical button that could eliminate firearms entirely, the end result would be more, not less, pain and hurt in this world. In a world of melee weapons the larger, younger, and stronger individuals have an even larger edge. In a world with firearms, the small, older and weaker folks at least have an equalizer.

The only thing you are even partially right on is that it doesnt trick you into installing it. However fanboys like you sure try to. What the company actually tried to do was *coerce* me into installing it by holding products I already purchased from them hostage (technically just degrading them to the point where they were worthless,) which is similar but different.

Just because people to some degree "know" they are installing it doesnt disqualify it from being effectively a rootkit. I can install a rootkit on my own computer for testing that doesnt make it any less a rootkit just because I know what I am doing. In this case there appears to be some trickery and social engineering going on here as well - in the form of a rabid pack of fanbois resorting to name-calling and mod-swarming to try and silence anyone that criticises your beloved steam.

Firearms manufacturers certainly do have an incentive to make their products safer. Just not an incentive so powerful as to completely over-ride other concerns, as the poster would like. Everyone would like a safer firearm and most are even happy to pay extra for it - IF it still functions reliably, IF it isnt TOO MUCH more. Systems currently available tend to be very expensive and have serious drawbacks, which limits their sales. As those systems are refined and perfected people sales will improve. But the manufacturers have to actually provide a system that the customers are happy with, rather than rushing to break things that we rely on in order to make victim-disarmament advocates... well, celebrate and then go right back on the attack shortly after, I am sure.

This is what really eats him up. He doesnt like firearms manufacturers offering what firearms buyers want in the first place, and he'd like to see any law passed that would interfere.

Seriously, how could it possibly be a good idea to have a state so omnipresent and intrusive that it has to specifically "let" you do something before you are able to do it?

In the real world, technology and technological objects exist just as surely as the sun and moon do, and the legislature is no more able to uninvent the firearm than they are to forbid the sun from setting or the moon from rising.

Weapons exist and some people will have them regardless. Better for everyone to have them than for only criminals and thugs to have them.

Ultimately the problem is not the technology, it's human behaviour. It was the same problem when we had flintlocks and the same problem when we had swords and spears and the same problem when we were bashing each others heads in with rough rocks. That is the problem we need to solve and victim disarmament laws not only dont help they are actively counterproductive, because they increase the rewards and decrease the risks for those who indulge in the problem behaviour.

It's very funny to see you make the ridiculous assumption that I am removing malware from my own machines. My own machines havent been infected in decades, outside of deliberate testing. I clean machines for employers and paying customers. If I relied on scanners to do my job I would be unemployed tomorrow - scanners only work on old threats and my paycheck depends on handling new ones quickly and efficiently. You dont have the first clue what you are talking about.

It doesnt hide the fact it's installed. Neither does Reverton. That's not the point.

It hides what it is doing. Why do you think it has to have constant super-user status? It abuses that status to mess with things that dont belong to it and to obfuscate and hide what it is doing from the system. Just like every other rootkit out there.

And you can tell me it isnt doing anything bad and should be trusted all you want, it's hot air. You cannot demonstrate that this thing is safe. It's not just a binary it's a deliberately obfuscated binary. *If* the source code were available and *thoroughly* audited then perhaps the argument would have some merit, but as is anyone making it is a fool. Unless you work for valve and have access to the source yourself, very free access so you can spend many hours auditing it in detail, and unless you have the expertise to do so, and have in fact done so, you dont know anything. Any guesses you make are just that - blind guesses. And even if you were in that position, you would be appealing to evidence you arent allowed to share, so why would you expect anyone to believe you?

Yes, anyone that disagrees with you is clearly trolling.

I think the entire article is a troll.