My dad has some Norwegian ancestry, and one day when my parents were visiting we were all watching "How to Train your Dragon" with the kids. My dad, being a bit of a know-it-all, kept bringing up that Vikings didn't really dress/act like that. Somehow he missed the part about it being a kids' cartoon where the Vikings fight dragons on a daily basis. It's not real life, dad!

It's not the open source that's a problem, it's the OEM customization. But I'm running the Cyanogenmod 12.1 ROM on my 1st gen Moto G, and all or most of these vulnerabilities were patched on my phone long ago. So to those who are technically inclined enough to load up custom ROMs (easier on some phones than others), the open source nature of Android does help.

Re: Lost (which I actually really liked, right to the very end, except for parts of seasons 2 & 3):

As I understand it, Abrams was really only involved with Lost at the very beginning. He took over development of the pilot from the guy who originally came up with the concept and added in the initial round of supernatural stuff. But it was Cuse and Lindelof that kept it going and added in everything after that, so you can blame them if you don't like the answers (or lack of answers).

Personally, I like the way the show dealt with most of the mysteries. I think having layer upon layer of mystery, with no sign of reaching the bottom made it more interesting. I think some of the attempts at resolving some of those mysteries actually detracted from the show (e.g., the broken statue, the whispers, etc.). Those aspects felt more like the midi-chlorians explanation from Phantom Menace. We don't need more of that crap.

I didn't watch Fringe, I don't remember disliking MI3, but I really liked Super 8, since it felt like the closest thing in recent memory to a Goonies-style adventure style movie with kids. I notice you didn't mention Cloverfield... I thought that one was alright, but not amazing or anything. I also enjoyed the Star Trek reboots, but I was never a big Trek fan... if I would have been I probably would have hated them.

Sickos!

Also, with more awareness, earlier diagnoses, and better therapies, autism/Asperger's isn't as crippling as it used to be for many cases.

I hope everything is going well for your son. My sister was diagnosed with Asperger's in the late 90's when she was in high school. Things were rough in our family for a lot of years, but I hope it's better for most families out there who are going through it now.

I liked how on the full-page had it said "Your article is loading", as if the ad was only there to fill in the time it takes to load and process the article... In an article about lies...

You know it's legit when TFA starts out like this:

Sounds very sciencey. I can't wait until I can get turned into a fish, essentially.

She was ridiculous. Adam's painful situation was just an excuse for her to publish her op/ed to promote her platform. He wrote some things to vent, and he was in the middle of a very very painful and emotional time. He should be excused if he says some things like that.

But since she is not in the middle of a similar personal crisis, there is little to no excuse for her publicly calling him out on those comments. A graceful, caring person would have thought "I disagree with his overall position and I understand that he's hurting. I shouldn't make a deal about this."

But instead, she has no qualms rushing to the presses to alert the world to what a hateful person she can make him out to be. Her whole article wasn't about the morality of euthanasia, it was about what a terrible person Scott Adams must be. Instead of interpreting his comments the sensible way: ("He wants everybody who disagrees with him to understand the pain of that type of situation"), she makes him out to be a Hitler-esque angry guy who literally wants to kill everyone who disagrees with him.

The part that absolutely floored me was this:

She called him?!?! She invaded his personal space in his darkest moments of grief to get all political on his ass? What a bitch. I'm sure she didn't do much to change his mind.

A lot of people are saying Redbox is a better replacement, but good luck with that if you want something that didn't just come out recently. And I love Netflix, but it takes a couple of days from the moment you decide what you want to watch before you can get the disc in the mail (assuming the previous rental hasn't already been lost in your house for weeks already), and by that time you might want to watch something else. If Netflix's streaming library can catch up to Blockbuster's in-store inventory, then that could be good.

I wish I could have those issues... I tried several times to install the update and every time it would install, reboot, start setting things up, then freeze. On rebooting, it would say it was restoring the previous version.

The error code it gives apparently has something to do with either a driver problem or an issue with a startup program (but I tried disabling all startup programs). Windows Update says I'm all up to date on everything, so there's nothing I can really do, unless there's some driver update in the next few weeks, or if MS releases an updated updater (not likely).

Also, this doesn't have much to do with the gripes I listed above, but since Windows Update has been the place to go for service packs and updates to Windows, why don't they just make the 8.1 update available there, instead of in the stupid Windows App store? Most of the time when I've gone to the app store, I can't find anything about the 8.1 update, so instead I have to go to the MS website, where I can click a link to the update in the app store. I get that OS X does their updates through the OS X app store, and MS is trying to gradually turn Windows into a touch-based iOS/Windows Phone-style interface, but it seems like the app store is a stupid place for an update to the entire OS, since other OS-level updates happen through Windows Update.

I'm sure it won't matter, since your carrier will pass on whatever call information and data used no matter what OS you're running on the phone. Also, any online services (Facebook, Google, etc.) are doing the same.

I love how on Slide 9, he points out the attention to detail... except that in the largest text in the screenshot there's a glaring typo.

Not so much a gripe about Ubuntu Phone (since it's not a released product) as it is about TFA,

Seriously? Do you not realize that people on either side do indeed support government "bullying of political speech so long as it isn't their speech?" As much as people like Glenn Beck like to say "I may not agree with what you say, but I'll defend to my death your right to say it," the truth is, those same people would (and do) hang their opposition by their words at the first opportunity. If they had the government on their side, they would be happy to do it more.

I always think it's funny when people on either side of the aisle pretend that their own side is the moral side, and would always stand up for values regardless of the situation. There are people on all sides who would do that. And then there are plenty on both sides who do the opposite.

You didn't read the last half of that sentence... It's not saying virtually all advocates agree that electric cars are better. It's saying that they all agree that the powerplant emissions should be included. In other words, the advocates all agree that electric cars need to be measured by the more rigid standard, which the skeptics already agree with.

That's exactly what I came here to post. Anti-Obama folks were really eager before January 16 to talk about how Obama was about to bypass Congress and implement gun control through executive order, and they never corrected themselves after the fact.

Most of the 23 items are about making existing background checks more effective by encouraging (not ordering) government entities to share information better. Many are clarifying what rights and authority different agencies or individuals (such as doctors) already have.

But who needs rational discussion at a time like this?