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Get a reverse osmosis filter with an alkaline mineral stage. $2-300 @300L/day. Same as bottled water.

Like this. Nothing getting through that

That is actually a good kit. I have a very similar setup that I bought for making water for my salt water aquarium, and now use for brewing beer.

Get a reverse osmosis filter with an alkaline mineral stage. $2-300 @300L/day. Same as bottled water.

Like this. Nothing getting through that

If you want a better screen, get a different model? You do realize that there is more than one model don't you? This isn't Apple after all.

I like my UX501VW, it has a 4k display in a 15.4" package.

http://www.amazon.com/ZenBook-...

Isn't it heartwarming how quickly those Commies embraced Capitalism?

It wouldn't harm to do a bit of reading to better appreciate the Russian culture since after the collapse of the Soviet Union. You could start with a popular 1997 sci-fi novel.

Basically there was wild Capitalism since 1991, and it's not fun.

https://smile.amazon.com/NEC-E...

Get one of these while you still can. It can handle anything that uses IR, doesn't require any stupid apps or an internet connection, and can sometimes give you more features than the remotes included with your devices. Every button and menu is fully programmable with macro support. But just like everything good, it has been discontinued in favor of inferior and/or more expensive options.

Oh, it is FAR too late for that...

https://www.amazon.com/Intel-X...

Heptapentaconta-core!

Deca-core is the correct name, whether Intel calls it that or not. Everyone knows that deca means ten, and the strange stuff I see proposed in this thread (among bodybuilders it is slang for a certain anabolic...) is just not the reason they aren't going with it. They probably found that "ten core" markets better than "deca-core", and they may not even have a reason beyond that.

Google added drivers for the Raspberry Pi's SoC to Android Open Source Project (AOSP). That doesn't mean Android with Google Play, as Google Play is only officially available preinstalled on a device's soldered flash memory. So an AOSP user would have to obtain the app not through Google Play Store but instead through Amazon Appstore, and even then it may rely on digital restrictions management (DRM) components available only through Google Play services or Fire OS services.

HDMI1.4 spec only has bandwidth for 4k@30hz. And believe me, 30hz is noticeable when you move the mouse around (tested with an DVI-HDMI adapter on my ancient laptop)

You can pay more for an adapter from DP1.2 to HDMI2.0. Be sure it's one that really is using HDMI2.0 on the HDMI side. There are a lot out there that output 1.4 bandwidth and either cut the color signal to make the bandwidth work, or do 4k@30hz.

Once you've added in finding the right adapter and paying for it, how much have you saved?

--Dunno about a barge pole, but I found you a nice 10-footer:

http://www.amazon.com/Breeze-H...

;-)

How many people are buying a new $650 phone, but have a car so old it doesn't have Bluetooth?

*raises hand*

Actually, that's not true. My car has Bluetooth, but it is headset profile only (no A2DP), which means that I can't use it for playing music or anything else. But even if it did have proper Bluetooth A2DP, the experience would still suck horribly, from what I've seen.

As an experiment, I bought a Bluetooth receiver (JETech) to see if I could survive with Bluetooth if Apple decided to ditch the headphone jack. I'm about to switch back to using the headphone cable, because the experiment did not go well. Specifically:

• Unreliable detection of receivers: When iOS sees multiple Bluetooth devices come online at the same time, it ignores the A2DP receiver and continues to ignore it until I tell the Bluetooth dongle to re-pair by holding and pressing the button. After ten seconds, the A2DP receiver gives up, reannounces its availability, and iOS finds it and starts talking to it. But that means I can't just leave the Bluetooth device hidden in my console. It has to be in a place where I can get to the button. As a user experience, this seriously sucks. If it is as inconvenient to use Bluetooth as it is to fiddle with a cable, there's no benefit, only downside.
• Audio stack bricks itself: Every so often iOS's Bluetooth audio stack becomes completely bricked. When this happens, the audio is replaced by a loud buzzing noise, and I'm unable to get A2DP audio working again until I reboot the phone. This happens about every two weeks, give or take.
• Death by beep: If I make the mistake of hitting the pair button (and sometimes even if I don't) while the phone is in this bricked-BT-audio state, I get an ear-splitting beep that is orders of magnitude louder than the normal pairing beep—loud enough to cause hearing damage.

Before Apple makes Bluetooth be the only way of connecting headphones to their device, they need to dogfood their Bluetooth stack in the real world for about three more years and fix every problem that they encounter. I think they'll be unpleasantly surprised by the results, because it is not anywhere near being up to snuff.

why purchase $5.00 headphones to listen to highly compressed lossy music, when I can purchase the same headphones, at 10-20X the price, because of a proprietary connector.

No one is forcing you to use a proprietary connector at 10-20X the price. Bluetooth headphones start at about $11 shipped these days. Granted, they likely won't be decent, but neither will the $5 set you're worried you can't use. Alternatively, there are third-party Lightning -> 3.5mm audio jack adapters available for relatively cheap, allowing you to still use your $5 crappy headphones if you're dead-set on them.

But let's be honest: none of this is actually something that'll ever affect you since you have no interest in this product. You just wanted to complain about a product from a company other than the one you support so that you could feel better about your purchasing decisions, which explains why you conveniently chose to ignore the obvious. That's not something unique to one side or the other. Apple fanboys do it. Android fanboys do it. But none of that makes it right. You're doing a disservice to yourself when you exaggerate the situation unnecessarily.

So does the Amazon Underground app. Another violator is an app called Just 6 Weeks, which started pushing notification bar ads for some game that the developer recently released. This was in the paid version too. I have since removed both. It really looks like the only apps I can trust are F-Droid and stuff that comes from their repository.

With Microsoft closing in on the adware game with Windows 10, the future of technology is looking pretty bleak. Pretty soon all computers and electronic devices will be littered with ugly, resource hogging ads. They'll have to start making higher resolution screens just to fit the new "advertising bar" that will be present in everything but free open source software.

This may be a bit out of left field as a suggestion, but How to Lie With Statistics by Darrell Huff is short, funny, enlightening, and teaches a lot about the presentation of technical information. It's a painless introduction to the subjects that Edward Tufte goes into in far more depth.

It's worth keeping in mind that the original name for statistics was "Political Arithmetick". How to Lie With Statistics was a major part of the original purpose.

Of course we use if for a hell of a lot of other things now but have to take care that results are presented in meaningful ways.

This may be a bit out of left field as a suggestion, but How to Lie With Statistics by Darrell Huff is short, funny, enlightening, and teaches a lot about the presentation of technical information. It's a painless introduction to the subjects that Edward Tufte goes into in far more depth.

http://www.amazon.com/Pragmati...

"Startup: A Silicon Valley Adventure" by Jerry Kaplan.

http://www.amazon.com/Startup-Silicon-Adventure-Jerry-Kaplan/dp/0140257314/

"Showstopper!: The Breakneck Race to Create Windows NT and the Next Generation at Microsoft" by G. Pascal Zachary.

http://www.amazon.com/Showstopper-Breakneck-Windows-Generation-Microsoft/dp/1497638836/

"Startup: A Silicon Valley Adventure" by Jerry Kaplan.

http://www.amazon.com/Startup-Silicon-Adventure-Jerry-Kaplan/dp/0140257314/

"Showstopper!: The Breakneck Race to Create Windows NT and the Next Generation at Microsoft" by G. Pascal Zachary.

http://www.amazon.com/Showstopper-Breakneck-Windows-Generation-Microsoft/dp/1497638836/

Someone said that Alice in Wonderland is the best book on programming. "The Idea Factory" is about technology in the last century, and touches on computers, and is also quite readable. "The Art of Unix Programming" is worth a read, along with the jargon dictionary, and they're free. "Zero Bugs and Program Faster" has code examples from across half a century. This series was really great, but might be hard to find.

I would read books about stuff that interests you.

Reading a book about a new technology just because it is hot makes only sense: if it interests you.

Reading about e.g. angular.js just because it is hot, but you never really want to use JavaScript ... pointless.

Perhaps you find this interesting: http://www.amazon.com/History-...

I only have volume 2: http://www.amazon.com/History-...

It is a good read. A collection of articles about a few dozen programming languages. You can read one in 30 mins before going to bed e.g.

Regards

I would read books about stuff that interests you.

Reading a book about a new technology just because it is hot makes only sense: if it interests you.

Reading about e.g. angular.js just because it is hot, but you never really want to use JavaScript ... pointless.

Perhaps you find this interesting: http://www.amazon.com/History-...

I only have volume 2: http://www.amazon.com/History-...

It is a good read. A collection of articles about a few dozen programming languages. You can read one in 30 mins before going to bed e.g.

Regards

http://www.amazon.com/Coders-W... Read this one a while back. There's interviews with the (then) new kids on the block as well as some old unix greybeards, so there's a good amount of perspective in there. Another more historical book I can recommend is When Computers Were Human http://www.amazon.com/When-Com...

http://www.amazon.com/Coders-W... Read this one a while back. There's interviews with the (then) new kids on the block as well as some old unix greybeards, so there's a good amount of perspective in there. Another more historical book I can recommend is When Computers Were Human http://www.amazon.com/When-Com...

"To Engineer Is Human: The Role of Failure in Successful Design" by Henry Petrosky http://www.amazon.com/Engineer...
We learn much more from failure.

"The Design of Design, Essays from a Computer Scientist" by Frederick Brooks http://www.amazon.com/Design-E...
This isn't as well known or quite as easy to read as "Mythical Man-Month."

Both of these books should take you outside of 'pure coding' into thinking about the systems the code is part of, and how those systems interact with humans and with other systems.

"To Engineer Is Human: The Role of Failure in Successful Design" by Henry Petrosky http://www.amazon.com/Engineer...
We learn much more from failure.

"The Design of Design, Essays from a Computer Scientist" by Frederick Brooks http://www.amazon.com/Design-E...
This isn't as well known or quite as easy to read as "Mythical Man-Month."

Both of these books should take you outside of 'pure coding' into thinking about the systems the code is part of, and how those systems interact with humans and with other systems.

Amazon Link: http://www.amazon.com/Dreaming...

It's an old book (first published in 2008 with mixed popularity), but 8 years later I remember it being a nice story on "what it's like to code" and accurately described the state of software engineering of its time. This was before Big Data was a thing, so you may find a lot of it out of date, but I think it fits what you're looking for.

Good luck!

What books should an aspiring coder be reading?

First of all, this one.

If that's not your bag then, this one because that's the future of coding.

What books should an aspiring coder be reading?

First of all, this one.

If that's not your bag then, this one because that's the future of coding.

This thing is so old that Amazon even sells it.

Um, yes... this. New flash from April 2013! Stay tuned following this Public Service Announcement...

This thing is so old that Amazon even sells it.

Ok, you need to be a bit careful here. The first thing to remember is that Anonymous isn't an organization, it's a name applied to a bunch of people who don't have any connection to each other.

You should NEVER trust anything said by Anonymous. That's like trusting something posted by "Anonymous Coward", which is the same kind of entity. But likewise you should never automatically disbelieve it.

Secondly, even the most highly regarded analytics groups make mistakes. Sorry, but they do. So Anonymous Analytics making mistakes wouldn't be at all surprising.

Thirdly, many traditional "analytics" groups have a long history of falsehoods. Consider Gardner. You can't prove that it was lying, because they may have believed what they said. But I consider many of them less reliable than a magic 8-ball. (That, of course, is just my opinion. I've got nothing to back it up.)

Fourthly, read A Random Walk Down Wall Street http://www.amazon.com/Random-W... , or check out the elephant at the Chicago Zoo who used to make better than average stock predictions. There was also an ape, but I can't remember where, or whether it was a chimp or a gorilla.

There are herbal options for treating this, http://www.amazon.com/Herbal-A...

For me, it would be fine for it to be illegal, if they gave you a generous discount over the printed version. I mean they could tell you this book is $10 in the paper book form, part of which has to cover printing/distribution etc, and this book you will own completely and can do as you please with including selling or lending. Then, the same book is $2 in e-book form, but you don't actually outright own it, so you can't sell it.
Something like that would be fine with me. As it is now, they tell you the e-book is also $10, but at the same time try to restrict what you can do with it.

My wife and I buy most of our books as ebooks from Amazon (Kindle). My wife still buys a few hardcover or paperback books, but by volume, most are ebooks. If anyone wonders what the price difference is on ebook and paperback, here are a few price comparisons (I am not logged in to Amazon, these should be "generic" prices):

Ready Player One- paperback: $10.51, ebook: $9.99

Off to Be the Wizard- paperback: $6.99, ebook: $3.99

Press Start to Play- paperback: $13.00, ebook: $11.99

School for Sidekicks- paperback: $5.29, ebook: $9.99*

Art of the Deal- paperback: $10.11, ebook: $11.99*

Old Man's War- paperback: $12.08, ebook: $8.99

End of Watch- paperback: $15.30, ebook: $14.99

So buying on ebook is not that much cheaper than buying the standard paperback. (*And in two cases, the ebook is slightly more expensive. Not sure why.) The difference being that you can always sell the paperback to a used bookstore and get some of your money back.

Of course, Amazon's goal is to make it easy to buy a new ebook on Kindle. I can finish a book, and right there go browse my book list on Amazon and buy another book and read it almost immediately. Amazon is really selling convenience.

For me, it would be fine for it to be illegal, if they gave you a generous discount over the printed version. I mean they could tell you this book is $10 in the paper book form, part of which has to cover printing/distribution etc, and this book you will own completely and can do as you please with including selling or lending. Then, the same book is $2 in e-book form, but you don't actually outright own it, so you can't sell it.
Something like that would be fine with me. As it is now, they tell you the e-book is also $10, but at the same time try to restrict what you can do with it.

My wife and I buy most of our books as ebooks from Amazon (Kindle). My wife still buys a few hardcover or paperback books, but by volume, most are ebooks. If anyone wonders what the price difference is on ebook and paperback, here are a few price comparisons (I am not logged in to Amazon, these should be "generic" prices):

Ready Player One- paperback: $10.51, ebook: $9.99

Off to Be the Wizard- paperback: $6.99, ebook: $3.99

Press Start to Play- paperback: $13.00, ebook: $11.99

School for Sidekicks- paperback: $5.29, ebook: $9.99*

Art of the Deal- paperback: $10.11, ebook: $11.99*

Old Man's War- paperback: $12.08, ebook: $8.99

End of Watch- paperback: $15.30, ebook: $14.99

So buying on ebook is not that much cheaper than buying the standard paperback. (*And in two cases, the ebook is slightly more expensive. Not sure why.) The difference being that you can always sell the paperback to a used bookstore and get some of your money back.

Of course, Amazon's goal is to make it easy to buy a new ebook on Kindle. I can finish a book, and right there go browse my book list on Amazon and buy another book and read it almost immediately. Amazon is really selling convenience.

For me, it would be fine for it to be illegal, if they gave you a generous discount over the printed version. I mean they could tell you this book is $10 in the paper book form, part of which has to cover printing/distribution etc, and this book you will own completely and can do as you please with including selling or lending. Then, the same book is $2 in e-book form, but you don't actually outright own it, so you can't sell it.
Something like that would be fine with me. As it is now, they tell you the e-book is also $10, but at the same time try to restrict what you can do with it.

My wife and I buy most of our books as ebooks from Amazon (Kindle). My wife still buys a few hardcover or paperback books, but by volume, most are ebooks. If anyone wonders what the price difference is on ebook and paperback, here are a few price comparisons (I am not logged in to Amazon, these should be "generic" prices):

Ready Player One- paperback: $10.51, ebook: $9.99

Off to Be the Wizard- paperback: $6.99, ebook: $3.99

Press Start to Play- paperback: $13.00, ebook: $11.99

School for Sidekicks- paperback: $5.29, ebook: $9.99*

Art of the Deal- paperback: $10.11, ebook: $11.99*

Old Man's War- paperback: $12.08, ebook: $8.99

End of Watch- paperback: $15.30, ebook: $14.99

So buying on ebook is not that much cheaper than buying the standard paperback. (*And in two cases, the ebook is slightly more expensive. Not sure why.) The difference being that you can always sell the paperback to a used bookstore and get some of your money back.

Of course, Amazon's goal is to make it easy to buy a new ebook on Kindle. I can finish a book, and right there go browse my book list on Amazon and buy another book and read it almost immediately. Amazon is really selling convenience.

For me, it would be fine for it to be illegal, if they gave you a generous discount over the printed version. I mean they could tell you this book is $10 in the paper book form, part of which has to cover printing/distribution etc, and this book you will own completely and can do as you please with including selling or lending. Then, the same book is $2 in e-book form, but you don't actually outright own it, so you can't sell it.
Something like that would be fine with me. As it is now, they tell you the e-book is also $10, but at the same time try to restrict what you can do with it.

My wife and I buy most of our books as ebooks from Amazon (Kindle). My wife still buys a few hardcover or paperback books, but by volume, most are ebooks. If anyone wonders what the price difference is on ebook and paperback, here are a few price comparisons (I am not logged in to Amazon, these should be "generic" prices):

Ready Player One- paperback: $10.51, ebook: $9.99

Off to Be the Wizard- paperback: $6.99, ebook: $3.99

Press Start to Play- paperback: $13.00, ebook: $11.99

School for Sidekicks- paperback: $5.29, ebook: $9.99*

Art of the Deal- paperback: $10.11, ebook: $11.99*

Old Man's War- paperback: $12.08, ebook: $8.99

End of Watch- paperback: $15.30, ebook: $14.99

So buying on ebook is not that much cheaper than buying the standard paperback. (*And in two cases, the ebook is slightly more expensive. Not sure why.) The difference being that you can always sell the paperback to a used bookstore and get some of your money back.

Of course, Amazon's goal is to make it easy to buy a new ebook on Kindle. I can finish a book, and right there go browse my book list on Amazon and buy another book and read it almost immediately. Amazon is really selling convenience.

For me, it would be fine for it to be illegal, if they gave you a generous discount over the printed version. I mean they could tell you this book is $10 in the paper book form, part of which has to cover printing/distribution etc, and this book you will own completely and can do as you please with including selling or lending. Then, the same book is $2 in e-book form, but you don't actually outright own it, so you can't sell it.
Something like that would be fine with me. As it is now, they tell you the e-book is also $10, but at the same time try to restrict what you can do with it.

My wife and I buy most of our books as ebooks from Amazon (Kindle). My wife still buys a few hardcover or paperback books, but by volume, most are ebooks. If anyone wonders what the price difference is on ebook and paperback, here are a few price comparisons (I am not logged in to Amazon, these should be "generic" prices):

Ready Player One- paperback: $10.51, ebook: $9.99

Off to Be the Wizard- paperback: $6.99, ebook: $3.99

Press Start to Play- paperback: $13.00, ebook: $11.99

School for Sidekicks- paperback: $5.29, ebook: $9.99*

Art of the Deal- paperback: $10.11, ebook: $11.99*

Old Man's War- paperback: $12.08, ebook: $8.99

End of Watch- paperback: $15.30, ebook: $14.99

So buying on ebook is not that much cheaper than buying the standard paperback. (*And in two cases, the ebook is slightly more expensive. Not sure why.) The difference being that you can always sell the paperback to a used bookstore and get some of your money back.

Of course, Amazon's goal is to make it easy to buy a new ebook on Kindle. I can finish a book, and right there go browse my book list on Amazon and buy another book and read it almost immediately. Amazon is really selling convenience.

For me, it would be fine for it to be illegal, if they gave you a generous discount over the printed version. I mean they could tell you this book is $10 in the paper book form, part of which has to cover printing/distribution etc, and this book you will own completely and can do as you please with including selling or lending. Then, the same book is $2 in e-book form, but you don't actually outright own it, so you can't sell it.
Something like that would be fine with me. As it is now, they tell you the e-book is also $10, but at the same time try to restrict what you can do with it.

My wife and I buy most of our books as ebooks from Amazon (Kindle). My wife still buys a few hardcover or paperback books, but by volume, most are ebooks. If anyone wonders what the price difference is on ebook and paperback, here are a few price comparisons (I am not logged in to Amazon, these should be "generic" prices):

Ready Player One- paperback: $10.51, ebook: $9.99

Off to Be the Wizard- paperback: $6.99, ebook: $3.99

Press Start to Play- paperback: $13.00, ebook: $11.99

School for Sidekicks- paperback: $5.29, ebook: $9.99*

Art of the Deal- paperback: $10.11, ebook: $11.99*

Old Man's War- paperback: $12.08, ebook: $8.99

End of Watch- paperback: $15.30, ebook: $14.99

So buying on ebook is not that much cheaper than buying the standard paperback. (*And in two cases, the ebook is slightly more expensive. Not sure why.) The difference being that you can always sell the paperback to a used bookstore and get some of your money back.

Of course, Amazon's goal is to make it easy to buy a new ebook on Kindle. I can finish a book, and right there go browse my book list on Amazon and buy another book and read it almost immediately. Amazon is really selling convenience.

For me, it would be fine for it to be illegal, if they gave you a generous discount over the printed version. I mean they could tell you this book is $10 in the paper book form, part of which has to cover printing/distribution etc, and this book you will own completely and can do as you please with including selling or lending. Then, the same book is $2 in e-book form, but you don't actually outright own it, so you can't sell it.
Something like that would be fine with me. As it is now, they tell you the e-book is also $10, but at the same time try to restrict what you can do with it.

My wife and I buy most of our books as ebooks from Amazon (Kindle). My wife still buys a few hardcover or paperback books, but by volume, most are ebooks. If anyone wonders what the price difference is on ebook and paperback, here are a few price comparisons (I am not logged in to Amazon, these should be "generic" prices):

Ready Player One- paperback: $10.51, ebook: $9.99

Off to Be the Wizard- paperback: $6.99, ebook: $3.99

Press Start to Play- paperback: $13.00, ebook: $11.99

School for Sidekicks- paperback: $5.29, ebook: $9.99*

Art of the Deal- paperback: $10.11, ebook: $11.99*

Old Man's War- paperback: $12.08, ebook: $8.99

End of Watch- paperback: $15.30, ebook: $14.99

So buying on ebook is not that much cheaper than buying the standard paperback. (*And in two cases, the ebook is slightly more expensive. Not sure why.) The difference being that you can always sell the paperback to a used bookstore and get some of your money back.

Of course, Amazon's goal is to make it easy to buy a new ebook on Kindle. I can finish a book, and right there go browse my book list on Amazon and buy another book and read it almost immediately. Amazon is really selling convenience.

And I didn't even have a computer.

Meanwhile Trump has broken no federal laws,

That's not really knowable, as it's a bit of a challenge to prove a negative. It would be more accurate to say that Trump has not been convicted of committing any federal crimes. However, if you've read this fantastic book, you'll agree that it's exceedingly unlikely that Trump has broken no federal laws. Perhaps one might argue that I'm being pedantic, and that you meant "big deal" federal laws, but that's not what you said, and I'm just clarifying.

and has never started a war of any kind,

While Trump has never really been in a position to start a military war, you said "war of any kind". I'd be shocked if Trump hadn't started, for example, a bidding war over a piece of real estate. Again, perhaps I'm being pedantic, but you did say "of any kind".

and actually knows how to use things like Twitter.

This, of all your points, strikes me as the most comical. Donald Trump has his email printed out and handed to him in paper form. Donald Trump dictates his replies, for an assistant to transcribe to actual email. Donald Trump might not even know how to use a computer.

He is remembered for a famous exchange with a Ford executive when Ford was automating its production lines. Leading Reuther into a great hall filled with machines, with just one or two human workers programming them, an executive joked, "How do you plan to get these boys to pay your union dues, Walter?" Reuther looked around, shook his head, and said, "How do you plan to get them to buy your cars?"

Raw Deal: How the "Uber Economy" and Runaway Capitalism Are Screwing American Workersby Steven Hill (via Google Books) relates the same (doesn't allow copypasta, or I would have) story, so 30 seconds of Googling proves it almost certainly did happen.

is a size of battery, like AA, AAA, etc, not the amount of power it has. They say they have 3000 mAh, but the cheaper ones tend to exaggerate on the rating from what I understand. They only run at 3.7 v so there is some inefficiency in converting it over to the 5v required by the Raspberry Pi.

They sure do, my girlfriend and I both use my prime account, and we live in different parts of the Seattle area
In downtown Seattle, they'll even deliver you hot lunch from local restaurants.

https://primenow.amazon.com/
"View all cities" - it appears they have it in lots of metro areas.

In her new book, Arrianna Huffington says there is. http://www.amazon.com/Sleep-Revolution-Transforming-Your-Night/dp/1101904003

She's been doing the talk show circuit promoting the book and I thought you might find it interesting.

Weirdos Penis Halloween Mask Dick Head Funny Mask

http://www.amazon.com/Weirdos-...

WTF?

http://www.amazon.com/s/ref=nb_sb_noss_2?url=search-alias%3Daps&field-keywords=french+movies

"I came from China, I know how terrible fascism is, and unfortunately I am seeing the same thing happens here, more and more"

The U.S. government has killed an estimated 11,000,000 people since the end of the 2nd world war. Often contractor companies do the violence, or arrange more violence so that they can make more money and so the managers can get promotions. It's killing for profit.

Why the Vietnam war? The CIA and Vietnam. "... from June, 1954 to June, 1963, that is, until two years after Dulles left office (August, 1961) the CIA was absolutely and exclusively dominant in creating and carrying out the policies which led eventually to the Vietnam War."

"To the CIA too must go the credit for the creation of the secret police forces of Diemâ(TM)s brother Ngo Dinh Nhu which prevented dissent within Vietnam until it was too late to change things."

The intention of the U.S. financial community to profit from corrupt practices was well known long before the crash in 2008. In the Berkshire Hathaway 2002 Annual Report (PDF), Warren Buffett said this on page 14: "I can assure you that the marking errors in the derivatives business have not been symmetrical. Almost invariably, they have favored either the trader who was eyeing a multi-million dollar bonus or the CEO who wanted to report impressive 'earnings' (or both). The bonuses were paid, and the CEO profited from his options. Only much later did shareholders learn that the reported earnings were a sham."

The Iraq war made huge amounts of money for the Bush family and Dick Cheney: Cheney's Halliburton Made $39.5 Billion on Iraq War. That destruction will continue for decades: The End of Iraq: How American Incompetence Created a War Without End.

Desktop Linux is getting to a point where it is viable for day to day work tasks, and gaming is becoming not just a wish, but actually something coming around (slowly but surely).

If it was coming around any slower, it would be going backwards.

Steam Hardware & Software Survey: April 2016

Windows All 95% Down 0.3%
Windows 10 64 Bit 38% Up 1.4%

OSX 3.6% Up 0.3%

Linux 0.9% No change
Ubuntu All 0.4%

The "Steam Machine?" Doesn't seem to catching on:

Alienware Steam Machine ASM100-2980BLK Desktop Console #3,546 in Computers & Accessories, #172 in Computers & Accessories > Desktops > Towers [7:10 PM ET May 21]

The Mac Mini is hot right now at Amazon ---- well, as hot as it gets for a desktop these days ---- and there appear to be some good values in entry-level Win 10 gaming systems.

Linux has about 2% of the desktop market, Windows 10, 15%. Desktop Operating System Market Share - April 2016 A desktop market in decline is not healthy for Linux, which has always been starved of OEM support. Microsoft plays well with Linux if you are managing a server.

But it is also doing spectacularly well on the desktop side selling things like MS Office as a service.

totally irrelevant

Yet I don't "reject all Christians", in fact I've stated this at least twice in our thread here. The only group I have any issue with are the Evangelical / Dominionist Christians, and even then it's mostly because of the times I've been "preached to" inside of stores, in the street, etc. I'm actually a huge fan of Gnosticism, and feel that there is a huge part of the underlying mythology that has been erased that would "fill in" most of the "mismatches" and contradictions between the various Books of the current bible. Add in the horrendous translations such as the King James and the issues multiple; especially when the Evangicals claim the Bible is "absolute truth" even though their quoting from a translation of a translation. One of the more useful tools I've used is a book like this which is a direct translation from the original Hebrew; with copious footnotes for the words that don't actually exist in modern English like the "suffer a witch"; the actual word is MeKhashefah and is probably closer to "poisoner" (ie, someone who poisons rival villages wells) and not a witch. And then there is the "witch of Endor", who was actually a ba'al ob; or gastromancy. King James had a beef against witches, believing some had attempted to murder him, sink some of his ships, etc.