This is the one day we can trust the media. Granted the thing we are trusting is that they are full of crap, but that's better than not knowing whether or not they are serious or full of crap.
Either your university has a very good liberal arts program, very skewed statistics, or it is located in an area where most grads end up somewhere with a high cost of living (like California). Or you really suck at reading statistics. Here are the nationwide numbers. Political science is the only one over 40 grand, everything else is in the mid 30's or lower, with an average starting salary for liberal arts majors of $33,258. Meanwhile CS grads make $56,921 on average. So please, save yourself the embarrassment and give up this ridiculous claim.
And human resources is a business degree, not liberal arts.
"Forgive me if I have zero belief that there is any "patriotic concern" among companies. They want cheaper labor than they can get now; that's their sole motivation."
They are getting cheaper labor, from India and China. They aren't going to just hire spoiled Americans who think they are entitled to starting salaries right out of college of what, 70 grand?
"but there are plenty of liberal-artsy jobs that start at $40-50k"
Ha! Like what? According to my old university's post-graduation report, the average salary of a liberal arts grad is $35 grand. And the only major in there that is at or over $40 grand is International Studies. But thank you for confirming that your view of the job market is completely out of touch with reality.
Also, even if your numbers were right, most people consider 20% a pretty significant differential.
"Tech companies don't want to do the capitalist thing to entice new employees into the field (if supply is low at a given price, the price is too low)"
Oh no, supply is not low at all. There is a huge population in India and China who are willing to take those jobs. The concern tech companies have is not a business concern, but a patriotic concern. They understand that if Americans continue at this rate, we will not remain a tech leader for very long.
"so instead they whine to Congress about H-1Bs."
Most of the people I hear whining about H-1Bs are not companies but engineers worried about having increased competition for their jobs. Of course I know you are not among those, since you have already stated your support for doing "the capitalist thing" (and of course having the government artificially cut the supply to increase the price is antithetical to the principles of capitalism).
What exactly do you consider a good salary? Entry level software engineering jobs typically pay much more than most entry level positions. $50-60 grand right out of college? Most people consider that pretty good.
Yes, those jobs often involve a lot of boring work, but so do most jobs. Thats why you get paid for it. I think you've spent too much time watching TV where characters always seem to have fun exciting jobs. But in real life, work almost always involves, well, work.
"The first step would be to understand why women have babies. "
I know this was probably an attempt at a flamewar, but I can't resist.
As a general rule, for every woman who has a baby, there is also a man who... contributed to the process. Actually, scratch that "As a general rule" part. Its always the case. Get your mommy and daddy to explain it to you, its not my place to do it for them.
"In my own research, I was able to find many examples of women having babies when it was definitely not good for the man, for the society, or even for the woman."
You are not the arbiter of when it is good and when it is not good to have a baby. In fact, there is no such arbiter. Hence why eugenics does not work.
You seem to be one of those people who saw a news report on "Octomom" and now think every woman in the world is just like her.
Well now wait a second. As a fairly recent grad (its been a little over 4 years now since I graduated), I did well in college and as a result I have done well in the workplace. No, I did not approach it thinking that because I had a good education I was entitled to success, but rather that because of my education I was capable of earning success in the workplace. If you got the idea that you could just go to school and then sit on your ass for the rest of your life bringing in the big bucks, then you completely missed the point of what your parents and teachers were trying to tell you.
They did make a plugin for that, the fork was actually more in response to the fact that this kind of thing is fairly common with the pidgin/gaim developers. They don't particularly value the comments made by users who don't contribute to the project, which is fine for a small open source project but not so great for something that is distributed as the default im client for many desktops. In this light, a fork makes perfect sense.
Most Windows users don't make that choice, they just use the software that is supplied to them (with the possible exception of im clients, then downloading AIM is a common option). Don't mistake the users you personally know (who are more likely to be power users who know about and use applications like Firefox and Thunderbird) with typical users who more often than not think that IE icon on their desktop is a link to "The Internet".
"McCain publicly calls them his "spiritual guides"."
No, he called Parsley "a spiritual guide". No "his". McCain himself is not part of that church, in fact he really can't be as he lives in Arizona, which is a pretty long drive from Ohio. And he clearly is a spiritual guide for many people. And he never made any sort of "spiritual guide" comment about Hagee.
Well first of all, there is a big difference between a random supporter and your friend, mentor, and pastor. The better analog to Hagee would be Farrakhan's endorsement of Obama, which frankly I didn't think he had to renounce (or reject, for the Hillary Clintons of the world). While it can be slightly embarrassing, the fact that someone likes your politics does not mean you like their politics. In fact, it can be a testament to the broad appeal of your politics. Casting away everyone who disagrees with you is not generally considered a noble trait.
The main problem I had with the whole Wright controversy (not that I was inclined to vote Obama anyway) wasn't that it made me doubt Obama's judgment or values. It made me doubt his effectiveness. Much of his campaign is based on his supposed ability to bring people together, whether they be of different political parties or they are of different races (I guess he thinks he is a uniter, not a divider, though that sounds a bit familiar...). Well if his community back home has the opinions expressed during Wright's sermons, clearly he hasn't succeeded at that so far in his life.
I heard about it a while back as well. Though the problem they were worrying about wasn't what happened should you break one, but what happens a few years from now when all those bulbs people are now buying so they can pretend they care about the environment burn out Sure, some people will properly dispose of them, but my bet is that most will just throw them away like any other light bulb. Then when all those millions of discarded bulbs start leaking into the environment, we could have issues.
Oh no, tagging certainly wasn't big back in 2000, 2001. And no, early adopters don't count, as we are talking about popular trends when discussing cycles.
It does seem like we are in a cycle. Way back in the days when dinosaurs like Lycos and Hotbot ruled the search engine world, information on the net was categorized by tagging. Those of you over the age of 17 remember it, back then if you did a search for "American Revolution" half your results would end up being porn sites that put meta tags containing the phrase "American Revolution" on their page (although I can say those were great days to be a teenager). Then Google came about with their new "Page Rank" system which was much harder (though still not impossible, look up Google-bombing or the church of scientology's use of Google for more details) to fool. Now all of a sudden we hear talk of going back into a world of tags that are being advertised as more "democratic" and this more sophisticated (but similarly flawed scheme) known as the "semantic web". Who wants to bet this new system won't last more than at most a year or two?
...he isn't accusing him of libel. RTFA. And no, I'm not going to sit here and explain to you why he wants the guy's identity, you are just going to have click on the link and READ THE F****** ARTICLE! Its not particularly long, it shouldn't be that hard to read it. And don't give me any "You must be new here" responses. I know/.ers have a habit of writing before reading, but thats not something to be proud of.
Except IT professionals often are treated on the same level as their parents. The entry level salary for a software engineer is 48-60 grand, thats pretty close to the average household income for people their parent's age (and note thats household income; often households have more than one working adult). And considering how often employers expect newly graduated kids to perform on the same level as their more experienced employees (just look at how often people complain the CS curriculum is teaching too much theory and not enough real world experience) and try to get them to do the jobs of experienced engineers, can you really blame IT workers for having this approach?
There are plenty of college graduate level jobs for Java developers out there, and skill in that language (note that there is a big difference between skill in the language and being able to write a hello world swing application in it) will be in demand for some time. Java is the new COBOL not only in the sense that it is clumsy and somewhat outdated, but also in that it is the default business application development language. Also remember that after graduation you will be a newly graduated student. You will not be expected to be a guru in the software world. The notion that many seem to have that fresh graduates from college should be as qualified as professionals with years of experience is just ridiculous.
That being said, throughout your career you will be constantly learning new skills. You will have to learn new languages and new paradigms, so you might as well start now. Hopefully the main thing you took from your CS classes was the backing theory (not to mention mathematical skills) that makes learning all that possible. The problem is with some schools that seem to be nothing but Java/C#/whatever-shops whose graduates have a very limited knowledge of anything outside of that one language.
Do you not understand what the word "primarily" means? And do you really think that with your track record I'm going to believe that you somehow know what issues the average Popular Mechanics reader is interested in better than the actual magazine (which, if they are like most magazines, they keep careful track of)?
And I'd take the time to teach you what a strawman argument really is if not for the fact that, with your rate, it would take over a month.
One more thing, if this really was a vast right wing conspiracy, why exactly is one of the categories listed as "Energy/Climate"? Do you think global warming is a conspiracy made up by George Bush and Trent Lott?
"Just don't do it in a way that's as sensible as your turning my saying "'gun control' isn't relevant to science / tech policy" into "guns aren't mechanical". Try some way that doesn't demonstrate that your political blurtings are purely theoretical, without meaning, ungrounded in reality."
Excuse me? What is the name of the magazine? Popular Science and Technology? No, its Popular Mechanics. And it was made include issues that were important to their readers, not/. readers (despite the fact that it eventually got posted on/.). Sure there is overlap, but to complain that it doesn't include your favorite issues and instead includes issues you don't care about it is narcissism to the extreme.
"Otherwise, my well-based inferences outgun your mystical speculations. Certainly no useful lesson about propaganda, except perhaps as a specimen of its effect, will come from what you're offering in this thread."
Thats what people used to say about portable mp3 players, game consoles, and even personal computers.
EBooks certainly certainly do have several advantages over paper books. Their weight (just ask any college or high school student who has to carry around 4 or 5 big fat textbooks in their backpack), their ability to get content on-demand, their durability (pressed wood pulp has a tendency to get crumpled), and features like searching, bookmarking, adding notes, etc. Yes, currently the disadvantages (battery life, compatibility issues, contrast, and probably most importantly, price) generally outweigh those advantages. But there was a time not long ago when similar complaints were levied at portable mp3 players, games consoles, and personal computers.
"No, your speculation is baseless, so it stands only in your mind. Unless you want to agree that it's all an alien plot to disarm us, which is also baseless."
You think that the idea that a gun is a mechanical object is baseless? I really don't know how to respond to that...
"You don't need to be an "expert" on gun policy debates to know that calling it "gun control" frames it to scare gun fetishists. Just some familiarity with propaganda, gun fetishists, and actual efforts to control guns. Growing up and living in NYC, I've got enough to count."
You are right, you don't need to be an expert on the debate (or even know anything about it) to know something that retarded.
Here is a hint as to how you are wrong. Like in any debate, activists on one side or the other use these phrases to illustrate extreme positions. The term "Gun Control" is actually a very mild phrase, nothing in it suggests that gun ownership is to be outlawed; in fact just the opposite. If guns are in control, they must be legal. But gun rights activists are usually trying to frame the debate that gun ownership is going to become illegal. Hence that is not their term. Yes, they will occasionally use it, just as opponents of legalized abortion use the term "pro-choice" and supporters of legalized abortion use the term "pro-life" to refer to their opponents (even those those phrases have much more spin than anything in the gun control debate).
"I know how you're voting. You're voting "libertarian". Predictable for people who decide on immaterial possibilities rather than realities."
No, you really don't. Sorry to crush your ego, but your clairvoyance is pretty much all in your head.
Its funny that you would even try to predict how I'm voting from this thread, as I have not made a single political statement in it. I guess you just want everyone to be against you for some reason (probably due to some deep emotional scarring as a youth). No idea whether or not thats accurate, but probably much more accurate than your "predictions".
""Right wing conspiracy"? No, I'm looking right at a coincidence theorist. You don't even know whether PM has regular gun content, but you're speculating about how guns are "science" over there, when there's no evidence that it is."
No, I don't know whether or not PM has regular content and never said I did, and no I'm saying they consider guns to be 'science' (there is more to "science and technology" than just science you know, and guns certainly qualify as a technical and mechanical device). And yes, I am speculating, I never claimed otherwise. And since you have not provided a shred of evidence that it was wrong, that speculation stands as a possibility.
"But if you want to understand how gun fetishists work their propaganda, just remember that this presidential election is defined by them (as always) as "the Democrats who will take away your guns" vs "the Republicans who won't". The fetishists live on fear, so of course they put the scare words "gun control" as the frame. That's their version of "get out the vote", regardless of whether people even click on the candidates and their policies. Once it's "gun control", the group from which they'll vote is decided for them, and then the Republican Party delivers the specific candidate they'll vote for. That's how authoritarianism works, and why Republicans look so "organized". Like the infantry."
<sarcasm>Yeah, you are such an expert on the policy debates surrounding gun control vs gun rights</sarcasm>.
Your ego aside, trust me, "Gun Rights" is the phrase with the conservative slant, not "Gun Control".
"Does _Popular Mechanics_ have a firearms classifieds section or something?"
They very well might. Popular Mechanics caters to mechanics geeks, not computer geeks like/. One shouldn't be surprised that they would be more interested in the gun control debate.
And as far as your right wing conspiracy theory goes, if that were true wouldn't they have called it something like "Gun ownership rights"? The phrase "Gun control" is usually used by supporters of gun control.
One other problem, it only includes information taken from the candidates websites. Nothing from other sources like debates or interviews. This seems to continue the modern myth that if something is not on a website, it must be unknowable. Its like when I'm arguing something here on/. and I make a point I read in a book or magazine or some other offline source, and the person I'm arguing with wants a link or they are not going to acknowledge its existence.
I suppose it could be worse, they could have used the Wikipedia as their primary source...
Slashdot Mirror
This is the one day we can trust the media. Granted the thing we are trusting is that they are full of crap, but that's better than not knowing whether or not they are serious or full of crap.
Either your university has a very good liberal arts program, very skewed statistics, or it is located in an area where most grads end up somewhere with a high cost of living (like California). Or you really suck at reading statistics. Here are the nationwide numbers. Political science is the only one over 40 grand, everything else is in the mid 30's or lower, with an average starting salary for liberal arts majors of $33,258. Meanwhile CS grads make $56,921 on average. So please, save yourself the embarrassment and give up this ridiculous claim.
And human resources is a business degree, not liberal arts.
"Forgive me if I have zero belief that there is any "patriotic concern" among companies. They want cheaper labor than they can get now; that's their sole motivation."
They are getting cheaper labor, from India and China. They aren't going to just hire spoiled Americans who think they are entitled to starting salaries right out of college of what, 70 grand?
"but there are plenty of liberal-artsy jobs that start at $40-50k"
Ha! Like what? According to my old university's post-graduation report, the average salary of a liberal arts grad is $35 grand. And the only major in there that is at or over $40 grand is International Studies. But thank you for confirming that your view of the job market is completely out of touch with reality.
Also, even if your numbers were right, most people consider 20% a pretty significant differential.
"Tech companies don't want to do the capitalist thing to entice new employees into the field (if supply is low at a given price, the price is too low)"
Oh no, supply is not low at all. There is a huge population in India and China who are willing to take those jobs. The concern tech companies have is not a business concern, but a patriotic concern. They understand that if Americans continue at this rate, we will not remain a tech leader for very long.
"so instead they whine to Congress about H-1Bs."
Most of the people I hear whining about H-1Bs are not companies but engineers worried about having increased competition for their jobs. Of course I know you are not among those, since you have already stated your support for doing "the capitalist thing" (and of course having the government artificially cut the supply to increase the price is antithetical to the principles of capitalism).
What exactly do you consider a good salary? Entry level software engineering jobs typically pay much more than most entry level positions. $50-60 grand right out of college? Most people consider that pretty good.
Yes, those jobs often involve a lot of boring work, but so do most jobs. Thats why you get paid for it. I think you've spent too much time watching TV where characters always seem to have fun exciting jobs. But in real life, work almost always involves, well, work.
"The first step would be to understand why women have babies. "
I know this was probably an attempt at a flamewar, but I can't resist.
As a general rule, for every woman who has a baby, there is also a man who... contributed to the process. Actually, scratch that "As a general rule" part. Its always the case. Get your mommy and daddy to explain it to you, its not my place to do it for them.
"In my own research, I was able to find many examples of women having babies when it was definitely not good for the man, for the society, or even for the woman."
You are not the arbiter of when it is good and when it is not good to have a baby. In fact, there is no such arbiter. Hence why eugenics does not work.
You seem to be one of those people who saw a news report on "Octomom" and now think every woman in the world is just like her.
Well now wait a second. As a fairly recent grad (its been a little over 4 years now since I graduated), I did well in college and as a result I have done well in the workplace. No, I did not approach it thinking that because I had a good education I was entitled to success, but rather that because of my education I was capable of earning success in the workplace. If you got the idea that you could just go to school and then sit on your ass for the rest of your life bringing in the big bucks, then you completely missed the point of what your parents and teachers were trying to tell you.
They did make a plugin for that, the fork was actually more in response to the fact that this kind of thing is fairly common with the pidgin/gaim developers. They don't particularly value the comments made by users who don't contribute to the project, which is fine for a small open source project but not so great for something that is distributed as the default im client for many desktops. In this light, a fork makes perfect sense.
Most Windows users don't make that choice, they just use the software that is supplied to them (with the possible exception of im clients, then downloading AIM is a common option). Don't mistake the users you personally know (who are more likely to be power users who know about and use applications like Firefox and Thunderbird) with typical users who more often than not think that IE icon on their desktop is a link to "The Internet".
"McCain publicly calls them his "spiritual guides"."
No, he called Parsley "a spiritual guide". No "his". McCain himself is not part of that church, in fact he really can't be as he lives in Arizona, which is a pretty long drive from Ohio. And he clearly is a spiritual guide for many people. And he never made any sort of "spiritual guide" comment about Hagee.
Well first of all, there is a big difference between a random supporter and your friend, mentor, and pastor. The better analog to Hagee would be Farrakhan's endorsement of Obama, which frankly I didn't think he had to renounce (or reject, for the Hillary Clintons of the world). While it can be slightly embarrassing, the fact that someone likes your politics does not mean you like their politics. In fact, it can be a testament to the broad appeal of your politics. Casting away everyone who disagrees with you is not generally considered a noble trait.
The main problem I had with the whole Wright controversy (not that I was inclined to vote Obama anyway) wasn't that it made me doubt Obama's judgment or values. It made me doubt his effectiveness. Much of his campaign is based on his supposed ability to bring people together, whether they be of different political parties or they are of different races (I guess he thinks he is a uniter, not a divider, though that sounds a bit familiar...). Well if his community back home has the opinions expressed during Wright's sermons, clearly he hasn't succeeded at that so far in his life.
I heard about it a while back as well. Though the problem they were worrying about wasn't what happened should you break one, but what happens a few years from now when all those bulbs people are now buying so they can pretend they care about the environment burn out Sure, some people will properly dispose of them, but my bet is that most will just throw them away like any other light bulb. Then when all those millions of discarded bulbs start leaking into the environment, we could have issues.
Oh no, tagging certainly wasn't big back in 2000, 2001. And no, early adopters don't count, as we are talking about popular trends when discussing cycles.
It does seem like we are in a cycle. Way back in the days when dinosaurs like Lycos and Hotbot ruled the search engine world, information on the net was categorized by tagging. Those of you over the age of 17 remember it, back then if you did a search for "American Revolution" half your results would end up being porn sites that put meta tags containing the phrase "American Revolution" on their page (although I can say those were great days to be a teenager). Then Google came about with their new "Page Rank" system which was much harder (though still not impossible, look up Google-bombing or the church of scientology's use of Google for more details) to fool. Now all of a sudden we hear talk of going back into a world of tags that are being advertised as more "democratic" and this more sophisticated (but similarly flawed scheme) known as the "semantic web". Who wants to bet this new system won't last more than at most a year or two?
Now you know why they are called "experimental".
...he isn't accusing him of libel. RTFA. And no, I'm not going to sit here and explain to you why he wants the guy's identity, you are just going to have click on the link and READ THE F****** ARTICLE! Its not particularly long, it shouldn't be that hard to read it. And don't give me any "You must be new here" responses. I know /.ers have a habit of writing before reading, but thats not something to be proud of.
Except IT professionals often are treated on the same level as their parents. The entry level salary for a software engineer is 48-60 grand, thats pretty close to the average household income for people their parent's age (and note thats household income; often households have more than one working adult). And considering how often employers expect newly graduated kids to perform on the same level as their more experienced employees (just look at how often people complain the CS curriculum is teaching too much theory and not enough real world experience) and try to get them to do the jobs of experienced engineers, can you really blame IT workers for having this approach?
There are plenty of college graduate level jobs for Java developers out there, and skill in that language (note that there is a big difference between skill in the language and being able to write a hello world swing application in it) will be in demand for some time. Java is the new COBOL not only in the sense that it is clumsy and somewhat outdated, but also in that it is the default business application development language. Also remember that after graduation you will be a newly graduated student. You will not be expected to be a guru in the software world. The notion that many seem to have that fresh graduates from college should be as qualified as professionals with years of experience is just ridiculous.
That being said, throughout your career you will be constantly learning new skills. You will have to learn new languages and new paradigms, so you might as well start now. Hopefully the main thing you took from your CS classes was the backing theory (not to mention mathematical skills) that makes learning all that possible. The problem is with some schools that seem to be nothing but Java/C#/whatever-shops whose graduates have a very limited knowledge of anything outside of that one language.
Do you not understand what the word "primarily" means? And do you really think that with your track record I'm going to believe that you somehow know what issues the average Popular Mechanics reader is interested in better than the actual magazine (which, if they are like most magazines, they keep careful track of)?
And I'd take the time to teach you what a strawman argument really is if not for the fact that, with your rate, it would take over a month.
One more thing, if this really was a vast right wing conspiracy, why exactly is one of the categories listed as "Energy/Climate"? Do you think global warming is a conspiracy made up by George Bush and Trent Lott?
"OK, tell me you're not a "libertarian"."
Certainly not by /. standards.
"Just don't do it in a way that's as sensible as your turning my saying "'gun control' isn't relevant to science / tech policy" into "guns aren't mechanical". Try some way that doesn't demonstrate that your political blurtings are purely theoretical, without meaning, ungrounded in reality."
Excuse me? What is the name of the magazine? Popular Science and Technology? No, its Popular Mechanics. And it was made include issues that were important to their readers, not /. readers (despite the fact that it eventually got posted on /.). Sure there is overlap, but to complain that it doesn't include your favorite issues and instead includes issues you don't care about it is narcissism to the extreme.
"Otherwise, my well-based inferences outgun your mystical speculations. Certainly no useful lesson about propaganda, except perhaps as a specimen of its effect, will come from what you're offering in this thread."
I never claimed you were a quick learner.
Thats what people used to say about portable mp3 players, game consoles, and even personal computers.
EBooks certainly certainly do have several advantages over paper books. Their weight (just ask any college or high school student who has to carry around 4 or 5 big fat textbooks in their backpack), their ability to get content on-demand, their durability (pressed wood pulp has a tendency to get crumpled), and features like searching, bookmarking, adding notes, etc. Yes, currently the disadvantages (battery life, compatibility issues, contrast, and probably most importantly, price) generally outweigh those advantages. But there was a time not long ago when similar complaints were levied at portable mp3 players, games consoles, and personal computers.
"No, your speculation is baseless, so it stands only in your mind. Unless you want to agree that it's all an alien plot to disarm us, which is also baseless."
You think that the idea that a gun is a mechanical object is baseless? I really don't know how to respond to that...
"You don't need to be an "expert" on gun policy debates to know that calling it "gun control" frames it to scare gun fetishists. Just some familiarity with propaganda, gun fetishists, and actual efforts to control guns. Growing up and living in NYC, I've got enough to count."
You are right, you don't need to be an expert on the debate (or even know anything about it) to know something that retarded.
Here is a hint as to how you are wrong. Like in any debate, activists on one side or the other use these phrases to illustrate extreme positions. The term "Gun Control" is actually a very mild phrase, nothing in it suggests that gun ownership is to be outlawed; in fact just the opposite. If guns are in control, they must be legal. But gun rights activists are usually trying to frame the debate that gun ownership is going to become illegal. Hence that is not their term. Yes, they will occasionally use it, just as opponents of legalized abortion use the term "pro-choice" and supporters of legalized abortion use the term "pro-life" to refer to their opponents (even those those phrases have much more spin than anything in the gun control debate).
"I know how you're voting. You're voting "libertarian". Predictable for people who decide on immaterial possibilities rather than realities."
No, you really don't. Sorry to crush your ego, but your clairvoyance is pretty much all in your head.
Its funny that you would even try to predict how I'm voting from this thread, as I have not made a single political statement in it. I guess you just want everyone to be against you for some reason (probably due to some deep emotional scarring as a youth). No idea whether or not thats accurate, but probably much more accurate than your "predictions".
""Right wing conspiracy"? No, I'm looking right at a coincidence theorist. You don't even know whether PM has regular gun content, but you're speculating about how guns are "science" over there, when there's no evidence that it is."
No, I don't know whether or not PM has regular content and never said I did, and no I'm saying they consider guns to be 'science' (there is more to "science and technology" than just science you know, and guns certainly qualify as a technical and mechanical device). And yes, I am speculating, I never claimed otherwise. And since you have not provided a shred of evidence that it was wrong, that speculation stands as a possibility.
"But if you want to understand how gun fetishists work their propaganda, just remember that this presidential election is defined by them (as always) as "the Democrats who will take away your guns" vs "the Republicans who won't". The fetishists live on fear, so of course they put the scare words "gun control" as the frame. That's their version of "get out the vote", regardless of whether people even click on the candidates and their policies. Once it's "gun control", the group from which they'll vote is decided for them, and then the Republican Party delivers the specific candidate they'll vote for. That's how authoritarianism works, and why Republicans look so "organized". Like the infantry."
<sarcasm>Yeah, you are such an expert on the policy debates surrounding gun control vs gun rights</sarcasm>.
Your ego aside, trust me, "Gun Rights" is the phrase with the conservative slant, not "Gun Control".
"Does _Popular Mechanics_ have a firearms classifieds section or something?"
They very well might. Popular Mechanics caters to mechanics geeks, not computer geeks like /. One shouldn't be surprised that they would be more interested in the gun control debate.
And as far as your right wing conspiracy theory goes, if that were true wouldn't they have called it something like "Gun ownership rights"? The phrase "Gun control" is usually used by supporters of gun control.
One other problem, it only includes information taken from the candidates websites. Nothing from other sources like debates or interviews. This seems to continue the modern myth that if something is not on a website, it must be unknowable. Its like when I'm arguing something here on /. and I make a point I read in a book or magazine or some other offline source, and the person I'm arguing with wants a link or they are not going to acknowledge its existence.
I suppose it could be worse, they could have used the Wikipedia as their primary source...
Its also an article in the Washington Post, not the Wall Street journal, so I'm guessing somebody copy and pasted the wrong link.