In the case of the other two who switched, one was because they were fed up with their anti-virus slowing their machine to a crawl, and the other was work-related (Windows doesn't provide the same ease o software management that a good package manager does).

Everyone else, while they complained about Windows shortcomings, Linux shortcomings were even worse, from their point of view (program incompatibility being #1, of course).

If you don't try it, how are you going to know it isn't right for you? I tried an iMac, can't stand it ... for others, they love it. To each their own. I tried gnome and fedora ages ago, found suse to be much better ... until the recent spate of bad updates - gave the latest fedora a try, using the downgraded (old-style buttons go where they belong instead of the new "we know better than the rest of the industry") display in Gnome 3 (not the regular Gnome 3), and I'm liking it enough to make it my default, even over LXDE.

Of course, if I *had* to use the regular Gnome3, I'd dump it ... but I don't. There are still LOTS of memory leaks (easy enough to track when you have swap turned off), but a day or two of regular use and there's still plenty of free ram - and I can always log out and back in to free up most of the leaked memory.

But this brings up another point - why do applications leak 50% of their ram on a daily basis? That's really poor programming. When I compiled the BSD ports collection, it was a real eye-opener at how many programs we run every day give so many warnings and errors that it's amazing anything runs.

As I pointed out, the studies are there to back up that men are, for the most part, slobs. Don't blame me if the facts disagree with you. It's not MY fault.

Again, the facts from those studies:

1. unemployed men do less housework than their full-time-employed wives. (plenty of studies to back this one up)

1. sexist attitudes in the workplace (where ~70% of women reported being sexually harassed) aren't isolated to the workplace - it also comes in the home space, where cleaning the toilets and doing the laundry is "women's work"

2. In everything from food prep to caring for children and relatives, women spend more hours than men.

All this is fact, borne out by study after study. If you don't like the facts, that's irrelevant. The facts don't care either way - they're just facts. They don't apply to everyone, obviously, and I have never said that they did. Nor do the studies. But they do apply, on average. The average guy is a slob, and too many guys think it's okay to try to cop a feel or worse. When's the last time you were groped?

While unemployment is an ordeal for anyone, it still appears to be more traumatic for men. Men without jobs are more likely to commit crimes and go to prison. They are less likely to wed, more likely to divorce, and more likely to father a child out of wedlock. Ironically, unemployed men tend to do even less housework than men with jobs and often retreat from family life, says W. Bradford Wilcox, director of the National Marriage Project at the University of Virginia.

Or http://books.google.ca/books?id=YNB14HvzcnUC&pg=PA212&lpg=PA212&dq=unemployed+men+do+less+housework+than+their+working+wives&source=bl&ots=Vyxd4vG2-2&sig=R6mtEy0XA8-wbRKgnyw_TSdYpTk&hl=en&sa=X&ei=JmtCT7jYGsTt0gG-rJzoBw&ved=0CCgQ6AEwAQ#v=onepage&q=unemployed%20men%20do%20less%20housework%20than%20their%20working%20wives&f=false

How do you account for that? The fact is, men do less of the housework, even when both partners work outside the home an equal amount.

#2 - what does a study of lesbians have to do with how men and women interact? Really?

#3 - No, it's not a "fair summary". A "fair summary" would be that a dirty car is a possible indicator or poor overall hygiene, and a clean car is a possible indicator of good overall hygiene. Given ONLY that variable, women would conclude that the guy with the slob car is probably a slob. Or would you conclude otherwise - that the guy with the clean car is more likely to be a slob?

#4 - that is not a "control group" - it didn't control for the variable that was being tested - the car itself. It put the same guy in a dirty car and a clean car. The dirty car was cheap, the clean car was expensive. To conclude that women were more attracted to the guy in the clean car because it was more expensive is not supported, since they didn't properly control for filth. If they had, they would have run the same test with an expensive dirty car and a clean cheap car.

Or they could have had two clean cars, one expensive, and one cheap. And two dirty cars, one expensive and one cheap. To conclude that "women care about cars while men don't" is not supported by the study, which is fatally flawed. It's "junk science." Then again, the NEJM did a study of double-blind studies, and found 1/3 of them to be fatally flawed (and this wasn't even a double-blind study).

So no, they did not have proper controls in the study. Saying that they did because they had men in the study is ridiculous.

#5 - You're the one who made a lot of assumptions. And nowhere does the study ask about difficulty in obtaining orgasm, contrary to what you just wrote. Did you actually READ the questions? Obviously not. It DID look at things like "opportunity lost" factors because they were relevant. Your attempt to misrepresent the results is just as bad as the original article, which was not supported by the research, and was just page hit bait.

#6 - No, it's not misdirection - the original point was that to classify women as gold-diggers is unfair, and not supported by the evidence, which shows women do more of the housework even when everything else is kept equal, and that maybe women are a bit more fed up because guys are basically slobs - as the studies prove (the second study above shows they don't even do enough housework to offset their own messes).

You can't get around that fact. To try to do so is what's intellectually dishonest. Just like it's also intellectually dishonest to avoid the second point I made - which is that women are getting tired of sexism, both in the workforce and at home.

And the studies also showed that unemployed men did less housework than their working wives ...

I only used rape as an example because you questioned my statement about women being the victims more often when it comes to violence. My exact words were "As for gender and violence, it IS pretty cut-and-dried." The facts agree with my statement. Now, as to relationships, my original point was that one of the factors might be that women get tired of verbal or physical abuse - there's no denying it happens.

Worse, there's no denying it happens in the workplace as well. 71% of women experience gender-based harassment at work in hospital settings. It's only slightly lower - 69% - in IT. It's the #1 reason women drop out of IT.

Now, if that happens in the workplace, how likely is it that the same happens in the home?

As for the car, don't put words in my mouth. The study could have been done with proper controls - a clean car and a beater of the same make and model, a clean Fiesta and a beat-up Bentley, and not just the beat-up Fiesta and the sparkling clean Bentley.

Of course, such a study wouldn't have proven what the "researchers" wanted to prove. The study, lacking any control data, is bogus and shows the biases of the "researchers".

As for female orgasms - as I pointed out (and you missed ... perhaps because it's not important to you, as long as you get yours??? ;-) the real problem is that the majority of women in the relationships studied are not "getting as good as they give" - they either don't orgasm, or rarely. That would tend to indicate a factor other than money money money. And when you write "you are implying that there's no such thing as someone who simply makes less than someone else", that's ridiculous - there is no such implication. Obviously, unless everyone is making the exact same, people will have different income levels.

When you have almost 50 million people on food stamps, and almost 50 million people with questionable health care, that's going to affect "performance" and libido. Throw in another bunch (maybe another 50 million) who are struggling to make ends meet or dealing with other issues. Not having financial worries being paramount is not "wealthy", but it will surely affect family life, including in the bedroom.

Please don't equate that with "women have more orgasms with wealthy men", because, again, it fails to control for these factors.

Also, if you bothered to read the survey, a few things might have made a difference, since it was about mainland China. One of the questions was how often a child slept with the parents. That has to put a damper on things. So, more money == more opportunity to have sex that isn't just a quicky. That's why question # 85 was "How seriously do your living conditions affect your sex life."

So, unless they controlled for the # of rooms, # of children, etc (and they did not), to draw the conclusion they did was, again, bogus. Even in North America, the opportunity to send kids to the movies or summer camp can make a big difference.

There are more women than men in the workforce (though Canada beat the US by several years). And after re-reading my post, I still don't see what you are referring to when you write that "the link points out a correction for this."

There are other studies that show that men don't do their fair share ...

As for gender and violence, it IS pretty cut-and-dried.

91% of United States rape victims were female and 9% were male, with 99% of the offenders being male and 1% of the offenders being female.

So, rapists are men 99% of the time, and the victims were women more than 90% of the time. I honestly don't know how you can't get much more cut-and-dried than that.

Also - the car study - a dirty old Ford Fiesta to a clean new car??? (not the same as todays' version, btw). You might as well say that women are more attracted to men who take a bath once in a while.

For the female orgasm study, I think the real point was missed. Here's the salient quote:

From the analysis, they found that 121 of these women always had orgasms during sex, while 408 more had them "often". Another 762 "sometimes" orgasmed while 243 had them rarely or never. Such figures are similar to those for western countries.

The majority of women with partners didn't have orgasms often. It's known that financial stress causes "performance stress" for men ... so it would also explain why couples where there is more $$$ == better sex. Also, more $$$ == better health, and more likelihood to be able to see a doctor to get help for things like problems attaining orgasm - for both sexes. It's not as simple as the headline makes it out to be. And let's be honest - it's also a lot harder for people to get in the mood when there are job problems, money problems, and/or health problems.

Which brings me back to my main point - labeling women as gold-diggers is superficial, to say the least. It would be like me saying almost all men are rapists just because almost all rapists are men.

Financial, job, and in-the-home equality are part of the solution. Another part of the solution is better jobs, period! A sour economy brings out the worst in people, eroding their self-confidence, their resiliency, their willingness to see things as other than "us vs them."

Seriously? - well done!

When I wrote that the majority of perps in domestic violence are men, that's a cold, hard fact. It's not "anti-male" any more than pointing out that most victims of domestic violence are women and children.

As for domestic chores (including changing the roll of toilet paper, laundry, vacuuming, etc), the link I provided points out the fact that even when both spouses work, time spent on domestic chores is lopsided - women do a lot more. Again, a fact ... should we ignore the facts because they're inconvenient?

Also, you might want to re-read the last line - "Nobody's perfect - but to imply that "a good amount of women" divorce because they are gold-diggers ignores some serious problems." This is not "anti-male"; it's pointing out that we all have our flaws, and that saying women are gold-diggers (without any stats to back it up) doesn't do anything to advance the debate, or address the underlying issues.

I'm sorry if you see these facts as being "anti-male", and I'm certainly ready to listen to any reasonable points, backed up by citations, etc (which is what I did). - not "they're just gold-diggers".

If you want to look at gold-digger behavior by men, there's certainly enough. Take Jon McCain or John Kerry, for example.

However, by making marriage either a renewable contract, or eliminating it, one aspect of the fighting is removed.

Unlike all other assets, which she gets... technical assets go to the one who can manage them, which is usually you.

Sexist much?

Compared to that, really, who cares about a crummy freemail account?