I still use Linux as my daily desktop OS. We both have matured and have moved on from fighting the big fights with MS, drivers, multimedia codecs and kernel panics. Linux has won all those battles. The world is running on Linux whether people know it or not. Currently, I'm on Mint Debian but there are a million flavors of Deb and it lives on as the base of half the distros out there. Apt get released me from dependency hell in '99 and it still the rocks the package manager world.

Wrong. in the US, fake news manufacturers explicitly targeted right wingers. They found that Democrats immediately fact checked and shot down the stories, where Republicans ate them up, signed up for newsletters and shared them endlessly.

There is no equivalence between the right and left. One side chooses willful ignorance and has gone completely bat shit crazy and the other party still embrace fact and science while fighting for the same basic principles as they were a generation ago.

*Join a march for science near you on April 22!

I wish FB would have taken this stand before the US elections. But they didn't want to be accused of discriminating against the Republicans for filtering fake news stories, the vast majority aimed at right wing voters. It got so bad I quit FB a year ago and haven't been back since.

It amazes me that a party who never met a conspiracy about Obama or Hillary they didn't believe, can be so un-curious about the very real foreign interference and domestic treason during the election and probably still ongoing at the highest levels.

A deep voiced announcer on TV asking: "It's ten o'clock. Do you know where your children are?"

Maybe it's time to bring that one back.

Ideology without room for common sense is dangerous. Your extreme example cannot be used to justify one group with something to gain, minipulating a vulnerable group to commit violence. For example, I remember a few years ago there was a 15 year old suicide bomber at an Israel/Palestine checkpoint who didn't blow himself up. Either his bomb malfunctioned or he changed his mind, but either way he was caught and questioned. Turns out he was not very religious or political, just scared of getting in trouble because of bad grades at school. He was recruited by an older man who preyed on the young and vulnerable for his own political ends and convinced this boy that a bomb would fix his problems. Don't tell me this older man's free speech should be protected. He may not have strapped the bomb on himself, but he is an accessory to attempted murder nonetheless.

I say, thank you, Anonymous. They have the balls not to be paralyzed by self-righteous navel-gazing.

Excellent point. But it wont be popular because it implies there's not much that can be done except wait for this demographic bubble to pass. I distinctly remember a demographer in the 80's showing a similar chart of US population and crime statistics. He correctly predicted the high US crime rate would drop as the high risk population aged. But every political figure has claimed their 'tough on crime' policies were responsible for the drop in crime and no one mentions the simple demographics which were predicted very accurately decades ago.

"Corporations don't operate in a vacuum. They're run by and for people. The rights of the corporation are merely the rights of those people."

Wrong. Businesses file for incorporation so their owners are legally separate from that business and cannot be held liable for the actions of their corporations. Businesses exist for one purpose: to make a profit. They do not have families, get sick, love or sacrifice for each other. They don't care if their backyard is a toxic waste dump or if fish can live in the river. We don't get rid of people when then stop being profitable.

Corporations are not people and money is not speech. We are coming very close to fascism in the US and it should scare the hell out of everyone.

"...without the input of America's lawmakers..."

These very same lawmakers who have refused to pass any meaningful laws for over six years now? The same Congress which has set multiple records for the least productive in history as our country struggled to recover from a near depression? The same 'lawmakers' who get paid and perked very well to do nothing except engage in partisan squabbling and the never ending quest to make the President look bad?

Unfortunately, we have to let bureaucrats and the President make laws or nothing will be done. Perhaps next time we should elect 'lawmakers' who consider their job to be making laws instead of throwing sand into the gears and calling that leadership.

This topic struck me as a joke of sorts. Some guy trying to impersonate a computer voice, reading the summary and nothing else? Seemed rather silly to me. Sadly, it is as close to an April Fools joke I could find on /. this year. I liked the April Fools page and always made a point to spend some time here on that day. Some of the jokes were dumb, but the good ones had a feeling of truth to them and a few posters always took the bait.

Twenty years ago this was not as controversial a subject. There were politicians in both parties concerned, but the topic was too new and the public wasn't sure. Then one of the political parties decided that things like facts and science are more like suggestions to be taken or not. They bought their own research, called 98% of scientists liberal liars and spent millions of (Koch) dollars confusing the public.

How do we get politics out of this? Get rid of those politicians whom ignorance is considered a plus. Get off your couch, away from your computer and vote. Quit complaining about the damn system and do something about it. I'm so tired of listening to the whining of people who don't vote, don't participate and then are angry when the crazies (who go to the polls) dominate the conversation.

Where have all the idealists gone? Us old fogies who stood up a generation ago are dying off and there doesn't seem to be anyone replacing us. Get mad. Get loud. Make your voices heard above the crazy din. That's how we get politics out of this.

Paranoia or not, the NSA or its precursors have been aggresively working for years to get access to your data and break or bypass encryption. Sure, it could have been a hacker or bored student, but its just silly to think Linux users are immune to the attention of government prying eyes.

There are female geeks out there that you would probably enjoy knowing. But internet-driven fantasies only include 'hot' women, fantasy women who require nothing socially or emotionally. As a female geek, I can tell you that generally women are welcome in the tech world, as long as they are hot and don't mind standing there in a tight sweater, watching admiringly while some guy makes the decisions.

Why are so few women in IT? Possibly because the field in filled with young men who view women as either 'hot' or utterly invisible.

"... 95% of the mail was YOU ROCK, DUDE!!"

Agreed. In my experience other users will usually call out an obvious troll or offensive comment. It speaks higher of you to let your readers defend your position than jumping in to delete posts you consider offensive. Over time, your blog will lose credibility if your readers know your comments are censored. However, this is his personal blog and he certainly does not have to tolerate abuse. The haters are free to voice their opinions in their own blogs, where they will too be flamed.

Indeed! I would also add, aoaoow elfsdolmrhb aioe ed we bwss!

Personally, I have enjoyed April 1 on /. for many years. Sometimes the jokes hit the mark, sometimes not so much. The best ones have enough grains of truth to seem plausible and there are always a few posters who take the bait. Lighten up a bit. If you don't appreciate the humor, skip this site on 4/1. Your 'site with credibility' will be restored on 4/2.

I consider you both willful fools. The dissenting information was out there for those who wished to listen to it. The country, including the media and the vast majority of DC politicians were absolutely giddy to go to war and it took nerve and a love for facts to stand against it. A clear view at the time would have shown the Bush Administration was controlling the message with an iron fist. Painting anyone who spoke out as aiding terrorists and un-American. The whole mess spiraled out of contol into a bloody but predictable civil war which led to the great American shame of torture, spying and Gitmo. And yes, you are partially to blame, but you can resolve to stay informed and not to be used again.

I don't know if Twitter could have prevented it. They are often as subject to popular opinion as any other type of media. Who knows if the voices of reason would be heeded or shouted down in the mass hysteria of the times. What we need is to cultivate a healthy and fact based skeptisism of government propaganda and an informed public who is not afraid to speak up against a popular idea.