Poor comparison, honestly. Only like 5% of Windows users will only have a vague notion about what a registry is and a fraction of that would have messed with it under duress. By comparison, nearly all Linux users are expected to learn a handful of commands with strange abbreviations and arcane symbols to perform otherwise basic tasks. That’s not some unsubstantial barrier to be dismissed.

Domesticated microraptor. It would be cool as hell, and also imply that we’ve somehow resurrected a dead species.

No; jealousy paints a target on your back. I’d rather people wish well for me and feel that my victories are at least indirectly theirs.

Failing that, I’d want others to be unaware of my existence.

Link Alligator would actually be a fun name

One site forbidding you from directing traffic to another isn’t disrespecting you. If it’s something so groundbreaking that others need to see it, screenshot it and post it. You don’t need to directly link it.

The ability to shapeshift doesn’t really get affected by this caveat, so that remains about as appealing as it was before.

Taken to an extreme, one can get a controllable/turn-off-able biological immortality and at-will violation of conservation of matter/energy.

I’m much more comfortable trying things that I’m not sure will (or expect not to) work. I can just blast the toolbox or whatever afterwards.

Compare to some of my earlier forays into Linux, where I’d do some nonsense and then attempts to remove said nonsense would break some other load-bearing part of the OS.

1. The legal framework and argumentation used to justify the ban is worrisome and can be applied overbroadly in the suppression of speech.

2. Despite this broad possible argumentation, it has just been, and will likely continue to be, wielded in a way targeted towards suppression of speech in a targeted, nationalistic, and at times overtly racist ways. (See: “Senator, I’m Singaporean, not Chinese.”)

3. Like it or not, it’s become a large repository of internet history and online conversation. The loss of the platform is the loss of that history.

If the government had particular problems with the platform’s practices and behaviors, it would have been able to field an actual lawsuit with real charges, or levy fines. This “sell or be banned” is a clear grab for power more than any actual gesture towards protecting the people.

It’s a little strange that you think “I want feature parity with what’s working for me (from my perspective)” is:

1. A lie.
2. Unreasonable to ask for.

The healthy responses would be “Well, I hope either support grows or your needs change, because of some philosophical reasons you might not care about… yet” or, if they’re open to it “Oh, it can do this if you put a little work in, let me help you.”

The unhealthy response is to accuse people of moving goalposts as if someone’s tool of choice is a political debate. It can be, obviously, given FOSS philosophies, but honestly this kind of screed just drives people away.

The first I bought for myself was a PNY XLR8 GeForce GTS 250 in 2010. It tided me over for 4 years, until my power supply gave a loud POP, and I replaced pretty much the whole build just in case the other parts were damaged (or caused the damage).

Cross the wrong people and you end up not dead, but irrecoverable. Cement shoes, buried alive kind of stuff. Cross a different set of wrong people and you become a labrat. To avoid either scenario, you’ll be in a constant state of “undocumented” or false-documented which will keep you in a pretty consistent state of poverty.

Looks like I’ve blocked 2? One for bigotry reasons I can’t recall, and the other for being just having annoying posting habits (applying a license to every comment like those facebook chainletters).