I made a normative statement about that particular piece of legislation. I believe it shouldn't exist.

Facebook should be allowed to require real names, just like a bank should be allowed to forbid people with ski-masks into their offices. If that's an inconvenience for you, then find an alternative service or create one yourself. There are plenty of places to be anonymous on the internet, and you have (and should have) the right to retain your anonymity by *not* registering on Facebook.

I gave up on Facebook many years ago, but I've got their back on this one. People may have the right to use nicknames on the internet, but they certainly don't have the right to be on Facebook. Follow the rules or get lost.

Whether their policy is sound is another issue.

What you're referring to is Ludwig von Mises' regression theorem. It attempts to explain why money is demanded in its own right, without getting into a circular argument (à la "money is valued because it has purchasing power -- money has purchasing power because people value it"). A thorough explanation can be found elsewhere, but to make it short: Bitcoin is perfectly compatible with this theorem.

The poster you replied to is firing tanks and rockets into residential areas?

The night is dark and full of terrors, indeed.

By installing Mint you'd get:

* mintUpdate: Mint's update manager which lets you categorize packages into different levels depending on how "dangerous"/unstable they are. Eg. level 5 packages ("dangerous packages") can be excluded from the update. Screenshot: http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/5/59/Mintupdate.png
* mintInstall: Mint's software manager which features a lot of crappy reviews written by users.
* MDM Display Manager: Themable and based on GDM 2.20
* Nemo: Mint's file manager, forked from Nautilus 3.4 because "Nautilus 3.6 is a catastrophe" according to the Mint/Nemo team.
* Some non-free packages (drivers, codecs) are included by default ... and some other stuff.

I switched directly from Fedora to Mint a couple of months ago and didn't see the need for Ubuntu.

I used to think like you until I quit listening to "most hip hop artists" and started paying attention to the ones who stayed in the lab like Niels Bohr, his son Aage, Edward Lorenz and Leo Szilard. The ones that lyrically took rap music and turned the knob, to the right full throttle and added panache.

Step one: Collect underpants. Step two: ? Step three: Profit