If you're signing in for anal, you're doing it wrong.

"I consider that a man's brain originally is like a little empty attic, and you have to stock it with such furniture as you choose. A fool takes in all the lumber of every sort that he comes across, so that the knowledge which might be useful to him gets crowded out, or at best is jumbled up with a lot of other things, so that he has a difficulty in laying his hands upon it."

Top ranking NASA officials also used the phrase "mostly still standing" to describe the state of the U.S. space program.

Slashdot so badly needs a "+1, demonstrates the point perfectly" mod...

I read somewhere that this happens if you shut down your computer without first exiting steam. I had exactly the same problem you describe, and then I started closing steam manually before shutting down. Works for me, hopefully it will for you too.

I think you just answered your own question.

Yes.

What I meant was that in the first sentence of his post (and this is Slashdot, who reads beyond that?), "it" could equally well have referred to Macs themselves. Only later do we find that "it" meant the Mac-bashing.

Funny, it took a minute for me to realize you weren't talking about Macs.

Think about what that means though. You "generate money" by performing a service that has social utility; the paycheck you recieve is, effectively (and ideally) a reflection of how much society values your contribution. Regardless of whether your employer is the government, the money you generate is a function of the work you as an individual have done. Why do you think that being "outside the government" has any bearing at all on the value of the service that you provide to others, and by extension, your salary and pension?

The point of a debate is never to change the truth though. Anyone expecting that will be disappointed. Debates are instead about finding that truth. Strong ideas survive while weaker ideas falter and fall away. Eventually, after enough civilized and honest debate you approach something that closely resembles the truth to the extent that we can know it. True, it doesn't change what the "truth" of the matter is, but it's comforting and useful to try to figure it out, no?

Is truly the mother of invention.