...Oregon's gas tax is high and their 'job saving' requirement that all gas is full service also raises the price...
BS. Gas here in Oregon is cheaper than in California is though we do have full-service gas stations for everybody. By contrast, in California they have self-service everywhere. Sometimes, at some Oregon stations, they will even clean the windshield for you, like they used to do everywhere before they had self-service gas pumps. We even still have a real honest-to-goodness service station, where you can have your car fixed and maintained
In Oregon, gas taxes go to transportation related costs, primarily roads, although rapid transit and the highway your patrol get some gas tax money. Eventually, as electric cars become more common, they will have to be taxed in some way to pay for the highways and streets. An the odometer and address based taxing system would be simple and easy to enforce. To collect adequate taxes, there would be no need to track where every car goes every mile day and night. They could still vary the taxes by car size/weight, address where it is used and other appropriate factors. Taxing systems ought to be a simple and straightforward, not convoluted and obtuse, such as Federal income tax.
....I thought the purpose of taxes nowadays is to have money to funnel into something beneficial.....
What planet have you been living on? Is there still a government left on earth that hasn't caught the socialist flu? When the idea of taxing people and then redistributing their taxes to other people first arose, it was mostly used to tax the rich to give to the poor. Obama has turned that around and taxed the poor and then give them the money to rich corporations and bankers, so they could pay themselves big bonuses. The founding fathers of the United States would spin in their graves, if they knew what people are being taxed for it has nothing to do with running the government.
If all government wanted to do is tax the mileage the automobile travels, they could do that with an odometer reading once a year. The odometer could be sealed, sort of like the electric meter on your house, to prevent tampering. Eventually, electric cars would become more common and they will have to find a way to tax them to pay for roads. The tax on gasoline will obviously not work for them. It is amazing the harebrained ideas that some politicians and others in government will come up with, but this is about the most stupidest plan I ever heard of.
.....The parallel with the modern issue of climate change is uncanny.....
Except the climate science, if it can be called that, is not as directly observable as the motions of the planets. There are lot more unknown variables in climate science that are a matter of dispute because we don't really know for sure about the past or the future. We make certain assumptions and then based upon these assumptions we make projections, which may or may not be right. In the late 1800s, many scientists thought we were going to have another ice age which of course never happened. Then in the 30s we thought it was going to get rather hot again and that didn't happen either. The truth about climate is that it is a long-term, very long-term effect compared to human lifetime not centuries but millennia. If there is one thing that humans in general are singularly bad at, it's accurately predicting the future. Also, many scientists conveniently overlook data that does not fit their preconceived notions. For example, there are measurements of solar output in recent years that have shown a distinct increase. This of course would have a much greater effect on any slight warming than anything that man could do. Observed global warming of the tropical oceans for example is negligible compared to other effects such as El Niño. Most of the warming, which is of course real, has been observed in the arctic areas of Earth. Elsewhere, the temperature has not really changed in a measurable way.
Greenland for example is called Greenland because it was once a Greenland with the climate very similar to the East Coast of North America. Ice core samples of pollen and remains of plants very similar to those found on the East Coast of the United States and Canada. There is evidence from historical records, that the Northwest passages were once ice free.
So in conclusion, the global warming issue is not nearly as cut and dried and observable as the orbits of the planets in real time.
...OS X isn't free, Windows isn't free.. Of course, Linux is not free either, unless the only cost you consider his original purchase price. If your time is truly valuable, so that you can do other things besides futzing with your computer, get yourself a Mac. On the other hand, if you enjoy surfing the web for hours, trying to find that driver that will work under Linux, for that new really nice scanner with all those bells and whistles, then that is another story isn't it? Linux is probably the best operating system there is for use by those people who like to tinker with their computers for enjoyment and gratification.
...Science and all the higher arts won't be popular again until people learn to value them....
Most People used to believe at one time that they were a special creation of God, personally created for his glory and purposes. That gave people value, purpose and a hope for the future. The early scientists, whose discoveries we still use every day were mostly Christians who believed in a rational, transcendent God who created an orderly, discoverable universe.
Science, especially evolution teaches that you are nothing more than a blob that crawled out of the primordial ooze millions of years ago, an accidental probabilistic happenstance. Only a small minority of people still believes in their accountability to an eternal God, who will someday reward them for good behavior and punish them for evil. Morality and ethics have become flexible relative concepts, rather than handed down divine absolute law, no different from the laws of physics.
For example, when people hear the word "nuclear", they see a mushroom cloud in their minds eye and maybe think of something like Chernobyl. What hope does science give for the future? It used to be that people believed in the hope of heaven and a life hereafter therein, but that belief has largely melted away. Many people today live by the philosophy: "eat drink and be merry, for tomorrow we die". How do you expect people to value science and education when they are so empty and void.
So what? 99% of all scientists in Galileo's day believed the earth was the center of the universe. Since when has the majority or a consensus ever been right? In ancient times everybody KNEW the earth was obviously flat. Arguing that any majority in any subject believes something, does not make it so. Nature doesn't now have, nature hasn't ever cared what people believed. Truth, scientific and otherwise his independent of peoples beliefs.
....science teachers... in the USA especially, are rewarded financially and socially much less than they should be.
Of all professions requiring considerable education, teachers are near the bottom if not at the bottom of the list. This has always been so and still is. For other societies, teachers are rewarded socially and financially to a higher degree than in the United States. Somebody who is really educated in top-notch science, usually does not enter the teaching profession.
Who was a follower of Jesus Christ, as were most of the early scientists, when science begun to blossom. Early scientists believed that the universe was created by God with orderly laws which could be discovered and bring honor to him, as well as being used to man's advantage.
People are disappointed with science because it does not meet the deepest needs nor does it solve the most important problems. The problem of sin and death remain with humanity as a crushing burden that has not been lifted. Jesus was the only religious founder that dealt with these fundamental problems on the cross and in the resurrection. The reason he could do this, was that he was actually God who functioned as a man fully given over to God whom he called his father.
Jesus Christ gives his salvation and peace only to those who believe and trust in his word and person. Others need not apply because they will not receive anything from God because of unbelief. Our culture has lost its way because we have rejected God and people instinctively reject science because it is no savior. On the contrary, science and technology have brought us terrible weapons, that, as the Bible predicts will destroy a large fraction of human life someday.
...Because, all things being equal in a fatal accident, they actually kill you 1/3 of the time?... which of course means that two thirds of the time you are more likely to stay alive. I look at seat belts kind of like insurance. Society has to pay to scrape you off the highway in a serious crash and if you're still alive and you have no insurance, the hospital has to eat the cost to treat you as well, which makes my medical insurance or medical costs higher. If you through carelessness or just plain bad luck cause damage to someone, you should be held responsible.
Having seatbelts and insurance is just a normal expense and operating a motor vehicle, no different than putting gasoline in the tank once in a while when it gets empty.
I generally do not like government interfering with individual rights either, but for society as a whole, that is government, incurs substantial costs because of some peoples irresponsibility, laziness or an obstinate streak, society must take steps to mitigate the problem.
...What do you think when you run into a website that requires Internet Explorer?....
Increasingly, most websites these days are browser gnostic, although there are a few that still put up a message that their website only works with Internet Explorer. The first thing I do then is tell my Mac to lie to that website by telling it that Safari is now Internet Explorer under Windows, and 90% of the time it works just fine after that. Apparently, the website looks at the browser and OS string and then no longer complains that Internet Explorer and Windows isn't at the other end.
....They do, however, take steps to discourage that, up to and including DRM....
If you were better informed, you would know that it is not DRM, but the booting system differences. The PCs still uses the almost 30-year-old BIOS booting system, whereas the Mac users enjoy a much more modern contemporary system for booting. It is possible and is being done all the time, to boot OSX on non-Apple hardware. I am sure you can find the necessary instructions and boot loaders as well as the appropriate hardware if you really want to. (...OK for the iPod to be Mac-only...) the iPod is indeed an integrated device, which for a while was Mac only, but Apple also writes iTunes to run under Windows. However you still need iTunes in order to work properly with an iPod and the iTunes store. (...what does this have to do with the fact that Apple supports an organization...) The Blu-ray organization was formed before video downloads from the Internet became popular and of good enough quality. Like so many technologies, the disc technology, CDs, DVDs, Blu-Ray are becoming dinosaurs, courtesy of the Internet. It is convenience that people will pay for, not marginal increases in quality. Why bother buying a disc or renting one when you can just download the same entertainment material from the Internet? If Apple knew then what they know now, they might never have joined the organization. (...why can't I buy music from the iTunes Music Store, without using iTunes?...) Your argument might hold water, if iTunes were an expensive program you had to buy, but it is totally free. If there were a single Linux variety, rather than the sad mishmash of incompatible of versions, Apple might have made a version of iTunes for that by now. You also seem to be forgetting that Apple is not a charity or nonprofit but a profit-making American corporation looking out for the interests of their stockholders. There are plenty of other places besides the iTunes store, where you can buy music on the Internet.
.....I get so tired of the extra effort it takes to keep her system running....
One way to fix this problem is to not have the Windows machine connected to the Internet if at all possible. I have some Windows only software which I run in a virtual machine (under OSX) which has no network connection. Only the Mac faces any kind of network. Of course, this does not work, if the software she is using on Windows requires the Internet for some reason. The Windows portion is never patched and has no kind of antivirus software on it whatsoever because it does not need it.
...Ouch for all those who are de facto family computer technical support.. Although I have done Windows support for friends and family for a long time, I do so no longer. I tell people that if they want to have a mostly trouble-free computer, pay a little extra and get a Mac. They "just work".... at least most of the time.
Fix this kind of thing once and for all by buying a computer with Linux or OSX on it. The file structure of a Mac does not have as many obscure hiding places where such garbage can hang out and not be removed easily. Many so-called experts argue that Macs are no more secure, or even less so than Windows, but at least currently, Macs are safer. This may be true because there are fewer Macs, but so what, Macs are indeed much safer, by at least a factor of 1000 or more. There are tens of thousands of nasty programs in the wilds of the Internet for Windows, but the number of such malware for Macs can be counted on your fingers.
....If my kid doesn't like it, let him/her pay the insurance...
It seems like nobody, especially a kid, should drive without paying their share of the cost of operating a vehicle. That includes not only the insurance but also gas and maintenance.
....the right not to say something that may incriminate me...
Nobody is forcing you to do anything or say anything. If you never say or do anything wrong, then all of the recordings in the world won't incriminate you because you're not a criminal.
Can you imagine, some time in the far future we may have the God like ability to read thoughts? Not only the government and those in authority, but everybody knows everybody's thoughts anytime they want to know them. In times past, many people were more law-abiding and generally better behaved, because many believed in a God who knew their thoughts and saw their actions and will someday judge them on it. Even today, anybody who still believes this, has a higher probability of being a better behaved citizen than somebody who doesn't believe there is a God. People will not commit a crime, no matter how small, if they know for sure that they WILL be caught is 100% and that there will be consequences immediately.
...or do adventurous people choose exciting red cars....
Insurance companies keep statistics, lots of statistics on almost everything you can imagine. They have simply found that red cars get into more crashes than many other colors. It doesn't matter what the reasons are why that is so, it's just statistics and insurance is a statistical game just like gambling. The insurance industry is betting against you and they like any gambling house will always win in the long term.
...Why exactly should the state have the power to force me to wear one?..
Why exactly would you not want to wear one? Are seat belts really that uncomfortable or are you just opposed to being forced to do something you do not want to do? Most of the time, seat belts do save lives. Do you object to that?
...and those were never intended to be general-purpose application platforms....
Neither was the iPhone. It was intended to and is intended to be primarily a phone which can also run computer applications. The iTouch is an iPod which can do almost everything the iPhone can do, except be a phone. Neither one of these devices was ever intended to be a general purpose computing platform, such as a Mac or Windows machine.
The Mac is an integrated machine in the same way that my Toyota Prius is a whole integrated car even though it is run by software that boots like and has a power button like my computer. I have never heard of somebody wanting to run Linux, Windows or OS X or some other software on their Toyota in order to control the car differently or give it other functions. That is why Apple discourages but not totally prevents people from running their software on other hardware, but only get upset if someone is trying to make money at it. Even if you want to build a Hackintosh, Apple does not use sophisticated DRM to prevent you. The same goes for an iPhone. It can be and has been hacked, in order to accept other applications not from the iTunes store and of course viruses and Trojans too.
The Blu-ray Disk has been a sales disappointment and is likely to wither the way because it does not really offer anything besides a better picture. This especially true, because downloaded videos are pretty good and very convenient. It appears that most people much rather pay for greater convenience than a marginally clearer picture, especially if there is a marked cost differential between good enough and the best. What has happened to CD sales will eventually happen to the DVD and even more so to the much more expensive Blu-ray players and discs. Apple with its iTunes video store, where movies and TV shows can be both rented and purchased is actively trying to destroy the market for the Blu-ray Disk because there is no future in it. In 10 years it is unlikely you will be able to walk into the average department store and buy either a CD or a regular DVD. Also, eventually, the movie and TV companies will get around to realizing, just as the music industry has, that DRM is unnecessary and reduces sales.
....And we can stop right there, in the first sentence...
I quoted to you merely what the dictionary says in that matter. In geometry, mathematics, physics, everywhere in life, we make assumptions that we cannot prove one way or the other. My assumption is that there is a God who controls everything and you insist that there is not. In less than 100 years from now we will both know who was right.
....i believe they do core samples of the root systems and check rings...
The underlying assumption here of course is that each ring corresponds to one year. How about a correspondence to a wet and dry cycle instead? These could occur more often or less often than annually? If these wet and dry cycles occur semiannually for example, then the measurement would be off by a factor of two. There are places in the world today where there are two wet and dry cycles each year. We could try to extrapolate the present to the ancient past, but we have to be careful of the assumptions we make.
An assumption is accepting something as true without proof. The underlying assumption here is that the various clocks that are used have always run at the same rate throughout the measurement. If that assumption, and that is an assumption is true, then the conclusions will be true according to that assumption. However, the assumption itself is a belief that something is true without proof. No matter how much extra evidence we have, if the underlying assumptions are wrong, I am not saying they are, but they could be, then the conclusions will be wrong as well.
We assume that the clock rates of for example radioactive processes have always been what we observe them to be today, but that may not necessarily be the case. Nothing in nature is as constant is change, so, the rates may not be the same today as they were ages ago. A human lifetime is like a nanosecond compared to the millions and billions of years of the Earth's history. There is evidence in fact, that some of the so-called constants in nature are not really all that constant, but are drifting slowly over time. Because our time here on this earth is only so short and we have been measuring things scientifically only for a couple hundred years or so, we cannot be totally certain of our interpretation of present data pertaining to the past. We hope we are right, but there is no way we can say for certainty whether an object is x number of billions or millions or thousands of years old. The truth is, that we hope we are right, but we don't really know for sure.
....which first sprouted nearly 50,000 years ago....
How do they know this? How do they know that their clock has been running accurately for that length of time? That is always one of the assumptions that is taken for granted when someone gives an age of thousands, millions or even billions of years. The assumptions may be valid, but the're still beliefs, because nobody knows for sure.
....Chances are, you're posting this on just such a device.....
I have not yet heard of Apple doing such a thing on their Macs, but I have heard of Amazon deleting files. Apple has and is still working hard to eliminate all DRM, with its remote tracking and deleting ability, but they still have to play ball with the content providers who insist on it. Just because the ability exists to track and delete, does not mean it should be done, especially by force of law. Ultimately, a lot of this is built on trust and it appears that some companies are more trustworthy than others. Amazon has demonstrated that they cannot be trusted, at least in regards to their Kindle. They are more on the side of the content providers than their customers.
Slashdot Mirror
...Oregon's gas tax is high and their 'job saving' requirement that all gas is full service also raises the price...
BS. Gas here in Oregon is cheaper than in California is though we do have full-service gas stations for everybody. By contrast, in California they have self-service everywhere. Sometimes, at some Oregon stations, they will even clean the windshield for you, like they used to do everywhere before they had self-service gas pumps. We even still have a real honest-to-goodness service station, where you can have your car fixed and maintained
In Oregon, gas taxes go to transportation related costs, primarily roads, although rapid transit and the highway your patrol get some gas tax money. Eventually, as electric cars become more common, they will have to be taxed in some way to pay for the highways and streets. An the odometer and address based taxing system would be simple and easy to enforce. To collect adequate taxes, there would be no need to track where every car goes every mile day and night. They could still vary the taxes by car size/weight, address where it is used and other appropriate factors. Taxing systems ought to be a simple and straightforward, not convoluted and obtuse, such as Federal income tax.
....I thought the purpose of taxes nowadays is to have money to funnel into something beneficial.....
What planet have you been living on? Is there still a government left on earth that hasn't caught the socialist flu? When the idea of taxing people and then redistributing their taxes to other people first arose, it was mostly used to tax the rich to give to the poor. Obama has turned that around and taxed the poor and then give them the money to rich corporations and bankers, so they could pay themselves big bonuses. The founding fathers of the United States would spin in their graves, if they knew what people are being taxed for it has nothing to do with running the government.
If all government wanted to do is tax the mileage the automobile travels, they could do that with an odometer reading once a year. The odometer could be sealed, sort of like the electric meter on your house, to prevent tampering. Eventually, electric cars would become more common and they will have to find a way to tax them to pay for roads. The tax on gasoline will obviously not work for them. It is amazing the harebrained ideas that some politicians and others in government will come up with, but this is about the most stupidest plan I ever heard of.
.....The parallel with the modern issue of climate change is uncanny.....
Except the climate science, if it can be called that, is not as directly observable as the motions of the planets. There are lot more unknown variables in climate science that are a matter of dispute because we don't really know for sure about the past or the future. We make certain assumptions and then based upon these assumptions we make projections, which may or may not be right. In the late 1800s, many scientists thought we were going to have another ice age which of course never happened. Then in the 30s we thought it was going to get rather hot again and that didn't happen either. The truth about climate is that it is a long-term, very long-term effect compared to human lifetime not centuries but millennia. If there is one thing that humans in general are singularly bad at, it's accurately predicting the future. Also, many scientists conveniently overlook data that does not fit their preconceived notions. For example, there are measurements of solar output in recent years that have shown a distinct increase. This of course would have a much greater effect on any slight warming than anything that man could do. Observed global warming of the tropical oceans for example is negligible compared to other effects such as El Niño. Most of the warming, which is of course real, has been observed in the arctic areas of Earth. Elsewhere, the temperature has not really changed in a measurable way.
Greenland for example is called Greenland because it was once a Greenland with the climate very similar to the East Coast of North America. Ice core samples of pollen and remains of plants very similar to those found on the East Coast of the United States and Canada. There is evidence from historical records, that the Northwest passages were once ice free.
So in conclusion, the global warming issue is not nearly as cut and dried and observable as the orbits of the planets in real time.
...OS X isn't free, Windows isn't free..
Of course, Linux is not free either, unless the only cost you consider his original purchase price. If your time is truly valuable, so that you can do other things besides futzing with your computer, get yourself a Mac. On the other hand, if you enjoy surfing the web for hours, trying to find that driver that will work under Linux, for that new really nice scanner with all those bells and whistles, then that is another story isn't it? Linux is probably the best operating system there is for use by those people who like to tinker with their computers for enjoyment and gratification.
...Science and all the higher arts won't be popular again until people learn to value them....
Most People used to believe at one time that they were a special creation of God, personally created for his glory and purposes. That gave people value, purpose and a hope for the future. The early scientists, whose discoveries we still use every day were mostly Christians who believed in a rational, transcendent God who created an orderly, discoverable universe.
Science, especially evolution teaches that you are nothing more than a blob that crawled out of the primordial ooze millions of years ago, an accidental probabilistic happenstance. Only a small minority of people still believes in their accountability to an eternal God, who will someday reward them for good behavior and punish them for evil. Morality and ethics have become flexible relative concepts, rather than handed down divine absolute law, no different from the laws of physics.
For example, when people hear the word "nuclear", they see a mushroom cloud in their minds eye and maybe think of something like Chernobyl. What hope does science give for the future? It used to be that people believed in the hope of heaven and a life hereafter therein, but that belief has largely melted away. Many people today live by the philosophy: "eat drink and be merry, for tomorrow we die". How do you expect people to value science and education when they are so empty and void.
...what 90% of all scientists agree with....
So what? 99% of all scientists in Galileo's day believed the earth was the center of the universe. Since when has the majority or a consensus ever been right? In ancient times everybody KNEW the earth was obviously flat. Arguing that any majority in any subject believes something, does not make it so. Nature doesn't now have, nature hasn't ever cared what people believed. Truth, scientific and otherwise his independent of peoples beliefs.
....science teachers...
in the USA especially, are rewarded financially and socially much less than they should be.
Of all professions requiring considerable education, teachers are near the bottom if not at the bottom of the list. This has always been so and still is. For other societies, teachers are rewarded socially and financially to a higher degree than in the United States. Somebody who is really educated in top-notch science, usually does not enter the teaching profession.
...Saint Thomas Aquinas....
Who was a follower of Jesus Christ, as were most of the early scientists, when science begun to blossom. Early scientists believed that the universe was created by God with orderly laws which could be discovered and bring honor to him, as well as being used to man's advantage.
People are disappointed with science because it does not meet the deepest needs nor does it solve the most important problems. The problem of sin and death remain with humanity as a crushing burden that has not been lifted. Jesus was the only religious founder that dealt with these fundamental problems on the cross and in the resurrection. The reason he could do this, was that he was actually God who functioned as a man fully given over to God whom he called his father.
Jesus Christ gives his salvation and peace only to those who believe and trust in his word and person. Others need not apply because they will not receive anything from God because of unbelief. Our culture has lost its way because we have rejected God and people instinctively reject science because it is no savior. On the contrary, science and technology have brought us terrible weapons, that, as the Bible predicts will destroy a large fraction of human life someday.
...Because, all things being equal in a fatal accident, they actually kill you 1/3 of the time?...
which of course means that two thirds of the time you are more likely to stay alive. I look at seat belts kind of like insurance. Society has to pay to scrape you off the highway in a serious crash and if you're still alive and you have no insurance, the hospital has to eat the cost to treat you as well, which makes my medical insurance or medical costs higher. If you through carelessness or just plain bad luck cause damage to someone, you should be held responsible.
Having seatbelts and insurance is just a normal expense and operating a motor vehicle, no different than putting gasoline in the tank once in a while when it gets empty.
I generally do not like government interfering with individual rights either, but for society as a whole, that is government, incurs substantial costs because of some peoples irresponsibility, laziness or an obstinate streak, society must take steps to mitigate the problem.
...What do you think when you run into a website that requires Internet Explorer?....
Increasingly, most websites these days are browser gnostic, although there are a few that still put up a message that their website only works with Internet Explorer. The first thing I do then is tell my Mac to lie to that website by telling it that Safari is now Internet Explorer under Windows, and 90% of the time it works just fine after that. Apparently, the website looks at the browser and OS string and then no longer complains that Internet Explorer and Windows isn't at the other end.
....They do, however, take steps to discourage that, up to and including DRM....
If you were better informed, you would know that it is not DRM, but the booting system differences. The PCs still uses the almost 30-year-old BIOS booting system, whereas the Mac users enjoy a much more modern contemporary system for booting. It is possible and is being done all the time, to boot OSX on non-Apple hardware. I am sure you can find the necessary instructions and boot loaders as well as the appropriate hardware if you really want to.
(...OK for the iPod to be Mac-only...)
the iPod is indeed an integrated device, which for a while was Mac only, but Apple also writes iTunes to run under Windows. However you still need iTunes in order to work properly with an iPod and the iTunes store.
(...what does this have to do with the fact that Apple supports an organization...)
The Blu-ray organization was formed before video downloads from the Internet became popular and of good enough quality. Like so many technologies, the disc technology, CDs, DVDs, Blu-Ray are becoming dinosaurs, courtesy of the Internet. It is convenience that people will pay for, not marginal increases in quality. Why bother buying a disc or renting one when you can just download the same entertainment material from the Internet? If Apple knew then what they know now, they might never have joined the organization.
(...why can't I buy music from the iTunes Music Store, without using iTunes?...)
Your argument might hold water, if iTunes were an expensive program you had to buy, but it is totally free. If there were a single Linux variety, rather than the sad mishmash of incompatible of versions, Apple might have made a version of iTunes for that by now. You also seem to be forgetting that Apple is not a charity or nonprofit but a profit-making American corporation looking out for the interests of their stockholders. There are plenty of other places besides the iTunes store, where you can buy music on the Internet.
.....I get so tired of the extra effort it takes to keep her system running....
One way to fix this problem is to not have the Windows machine connected to the Internet if at all possible. I have some Windows only software which I run in a virtual machine (under OSX) which has no network connection. Only the Mac faces any kind of network. Of course, this does not work, if the software she is using on Windows requires the Internet for some reason. The Windows portion is never patched and has no kind of antivirus software on it whatsoever because it does not need it.
...Ouch for all those who are de facto family computer technical support..
Although I have done Windows support for friends and family for a long time, I do so no longer. I tell people that if they want to have a mostly trouble-free computer, pay a little extra and get a Mac. They "just work".... at least most of the time.
....Best to bite the bullet, and.....
Fix this kind of thing once and for all by buying a computer with Linux or OSX on it. The file structure of a Mac does not have as many obscure hiding places where such garbage can hang out and not be removed easily. Many so-called experts argue that Macs are no more secure, or even less so than Windows, but at least currently, Macs are safer. This may be true because there are fewer Macs, but so what, Macs are indeed much safer, by at least a factor of 1000 or more. There are tens of thousands of nasty programs in the wilds of the Internet for Windows, but the number of such malware for Macs can be counted on your fingers.
....If my kid doesn't like it, let him/her pay the insurance...
It seems like nobody, especially a kid, should drive without paying their share of the cost of operating a vehicle. That includes not only the insurance but also gas and maintenance.
....the right not to say something that may incriminate me...
Nobody is forcing you to do anything or say anything. If you never say or do anything wrong, then all of the recordings in the world won't incriminate you because you're not a criminal.
Can you imagine, some time in the far future we may have the God like ability to read thoughts? Not only the government and those in authority, but everybody knows everybody's thoughts anytime they want to know them. In times past, many people were more law-abiding and generally better behaved, because many believed in a God who knew their thoughts and saw their actions and will someday judge them on it. Even today, anybody who still believes this, has a higher probability of being a better behaved citizen than somebody who doesn't believe there is a God. People will not commit a crime, no matter how small, if they know for sure that they WILL be caught is 100% and that there will be consequences immediately.
...or do adventurous people choose exciting red cars....
Insurance companies keep statistics, lots of statistics on almost everything you can imagine. They have simply found that red cars get into more crashes than many other colors. It doesn't matter what the reasons are why that is so, it's just statistics and insurance is a statistical game just like gambling. The insurance industry is betting against you and they like any gambling house will always win in the long term.
...Why exactly should the state have the power to force me to wear one?..
Why exactly would you not want to wear one? Are seat belts really that uncomfortable or are you just opposed to being forced to do something you do not want to do? Most of the time, seat belts do save lives. Do you object to that?
...and those were never intended to be general-purpose application platforms....
Neither was the iPhone. It was intended to and is intended to be primarily a phone which can also run computer applications. The iTouch is an iPod which can do almost everything the iPhone can do, except be a phone. Neither one of these devices was ever intended to be a general purpose computing platform, such as a Mac or Windows machine.
The Mac is an integrated machine in the same way that my Toyota Prius is a whole integrated car even though it is run by software that boots like and has a power button like my computer. I have never heard of somebody wanting to run Linux, Windows or OS X or some other software on their Toyota in order to control the car differently or give it other functions. That is why Apple discourages but not totally prevents people from running their software on other hardware, but only get upset if someone is trying to make money at it. Even if you want to build a Hackintosh, Apple does not use sophisticated DRM to prevent you. The same goes for an iPhone. It can be and has been hacked, in order to accept other applications not from the iTunes store and of course viruses and Trojans too.
The Blu-ray Disk has been a sales disappointment and is likely to wither the way because it does not really offer anything besides a better picture. This especially true, because downloaded videos are pretty good and very convenient. It appears that most people much rather pay for greater convenience than a marginally clearer picture, especially if there is a marked cost differential between good enough and the best. What has happened to CD sales will eventually happen to the DVD and even more so to the much more expensive Blu-ray players and discs. Apple with its iTunes video store, where movies and TV shows can be both rented and purchased is actively trying to destroy the market for the Blu-ray Disk because there is no future in it. In 10 years it is unlikely you will be able to walk into the average department store and buy either a CD or a regular DVD. Also, eventually, the movie and TV companies will get around to realizing, just as the music industry has, that DRM is unnecessary and reduces sales.
Anybody who resorts to profanity has already lost the debate and is a loser all-around.
....And we can stop right there, in the first sentence...
I quoted to you merely what the dictionary says in that matter. In geometry, mathematics, physics, everywhere in life, we make assumptions that we cannot prove one way or the other. My assumption is that there is a God who controls everything and you insist that there is not. In less than 100 years from now we will both know who was right.
....i believe they do core samples of the root systems and check rings...
The underlying assumption here of course is that each ring corresponds to one year. How about a correspondence to a wet and dry cycle instead? These could occur more often or less often than annually? If these wet and dry cycles occur semiannually for example, then the measurement would be off by a factor of two. There are places in the world today where there are two wet and dry cycles each year. We could try to extrapolate the present to the ancient past, but we have to be careful of the assumptions we make.
..If an assumption's validity was not KNOWN...
An assumption is accepting something as true without proof. The underlying assumption here is that the various clocks that are used have always run at the same rate throughout the measurement. If that assumption, and that is an assumption is true, then the conclusions will be true according to that assumption. However, the assumption itself is a belief that something is true without proof. No matter how much extra evidence we have, if the underlying assumptions are wrong, I am not saying they are, but they could be, then the conclusions will be wrong as well.
We assume that the clock rates of for example radioactive processes have always been what we observe them to be today, but that may not necessarily be the case. Nothing in nature is as constant is change, so, the rates may not be the same today as they were ages ago. A human lifetime is like a nanosecond compared to the millions and billions of years of the Earth's history. There is evidence in fact, that some of the so-called constants in nature are not really all that constant, but are drifting slowly over time. Because our time here on this earth is only so short and we have been measuring things scientifically only for a couple hundred years or so, we cannot be totally certain of our interpretation of present data pertaining to the past. We hope we are right, but there is no way we can say for certainty whether an object is x number of billions or millions or thousands of years old. The truth is, that we hope we are right, but we don't really know for sure.
....which first sprouted nearly 50,000 years ago....
How do they know this? How do they know that their clock has been running accurately for that length of time? That is always one of the assumptions that is taken for granted when someone gives an age of thousands, millions or even billions of years. The assumptions may be valid, but the're still beliefs, because nobody knows for sure.
....Chances are, you're posting this on just such a device.....
I have not yet heard of Apple doing such a thing on their Macs, but I have heard of Amazon deleting files. Apple has and is still working hard to eliminate all DRM, with its remote tracking and deleting ability, but they still have to play ball with the content providers who insist on it. Just because the ability exists to track and delete, does not mean it should be done, especially by force of law. Ultimately, a lot of this is built on trust and it appears that some companies are more trustworthy than others. Amazon has demonstrated that they cannot be trusted, at least in regards to their Kindle. They are more on the side of the content providers than their customers.