I'm going to bet you live in a city. Where I grew up, my next door neighbor was one mile away. The nearest Wal-Mart was an hour drive. What you are proposing would have left me and my family more or less under house arrest. Public transportation isn't always available, and driving is not so dangerous as to justify the draconian measures you are suggesting. We aren't talking about flying airplanes!

Boy Scouts of America is a private organization and as such has the right to set requirements for membership. The Scout Law explicitly states that a scout is reverent. The Scout Oath states that a scout will "do my duty to God and my country." You can see how an atheist could not recite the Scout Law or the Oath with a clear conscious. The only way atheists could participate in Scouting would be if BSA changed the Law and the Oath, but neither of those things have changed since their adoption in 1911. To change them would be to compromise the principles on which Scouting was founded.

As far as pushing Mormonism, this is the first I've ever heard of it. I am an Eagle Scout and have been very active in the Scouting community for the last 20 years or so. While Scouting makes a big deal about being reverent, they do not push any specific denomination. There are no religious requirements for advancement through the ranks. My troop was filled with a hodgepodge of Baptists, Methodists, Catholics and a few others. Scout camp chapels were all non-denominational (though a few of the larger camps had chapels by denomination) and very general.

There was no religious agenda being pushed upon any of us.

As far as the gays issue, would you want your daughter going on an overnight girlscout trip led by a male leader? Its the same issue. I know most gays are good people who wouldn't harm anyone, but don't pretend they are all saints. There is, at the very least, a perception issue and at the worst there is a legitimate safety issue for the boys in the troop.

BSA is a great organization that does a lot for boys and for this country. Every Eagle Scout has to do a service project that benefits his community. These are no small things, they typically require a few hundred man hours and get the scout's whole troop involved. They can't be done for Scouts or on Scout owned land. Every boy, to advance in the higher ranks, must hold a leadership position in the troop for at least 3 months. They learn how to work together, how to plan a camping trip, how to prepare for emergencies, basic first aid. Many boys have found their vocation through merit badges such as Environmental Science, Radio, Emergency Preparedness, Music or even Computers.

You can disagree with BSA's morals or with their admissions requirements or whatever. But please, don't demonize an organization that has done so much good and that is well within its rights to determine these policies you find disagreeable.

I look forward to the day when people aren't judged by their choice of cell phone.

That doesn't change the fact that the Mexican government is extremely corrupt. They have upped the fight against the cartels, but they are terribly ineffective because the cartels have sources inside the government. Heck, a lot of the men in the cartels came from the army, and brought their guns with them!

What I'd like to know is why the hell are we overseas fighting undeclared wars when there is a perfectly good opportunity for an undeclared war just to our south? We don't seem to care about any other country's sovereignty but our own, so just go into Mexico bomb the cartels AND the government, then rebuild the country like we are so fond of doing. The people of Mexico would probably thank us too.

I typically don't like joining the religion threads on Slashdot but this merits a reply.

The Old Testament is primarily about God calling out the nation of Israel to be His chosen people through whom He will bring His son into the world so that His son can serve as a sacrifice to atone for the all of man's sins. Everything in the OT should be interpreted in that context, including Israel's experiment with theocratic rule. In the end it failed because of man's sinfulness, they couldn't live up to God's perfect standards. This is the point of the 10 commandments, they aren't laws to be followed so that you may gain salvation, they are a mirror which reflects your own sinfulness.

When Christ became incarnate He expanded the 10 commandments to include not just actions, but thoughts. He equated hate with murder and lust with adultery. (Matt. 5:22) Obviously no human can ever keep this, we all hate, we all lust. The law of the OT is to point us toward our need of a savior, because we cannot keep the law and are therefore condemned by the law. Christ's death meets that need and thus fulfills God's perfect law.

Its like if I am in court and have been fined 1 million dollars and I can't pay so the judge goes to throw me in jail. Suddenly a complete stranger steps in and says to the judge, "I will pay that fine for him, here is the money." At that point I'm set free. I'm not bound by the law anymore. The grace that the stranger has shown me saves me from the law.

As to why do people pull out OT verses to beat others over the head with? I don't know, probably the same reason someone modded GP (SethThresher) down. His comment isn't worth a zero, someone just didn't like it. There are "Christians" who hate others and misuse the Bible to beat up on them. Just like there are Muslims that misuse the Koran to justify flying airplanes into buildings. Jesus even addresses this in Matthew 25:31 in the parable of the goats and sheep.

When judging a belief system its not enough to look at the people whom claim to follow it. This is because the extremists will always draw more attention than the system's real followers. You must look at the system itself, and then also look at how it effects the lives of those whom follow it.

The military found that air conditioning improves the combat efficiency of its personnel. This isn't about making soldiers more comfortable during their down time, its about keeping them sharp and focused which helps to keep them alive. The military is extremely conscious of the costs of getting fuel to forward positions, but it is also aware of the huge advantages to keeping its people at their best.

I propose a simple experiment. Try doing some task that requires mental concentration in 100 degree heat, then do it again at some temperature you are comfortable in. See which one takes longer and how many mistakes you make each time.

Do multiple cameras on the same device count? My phone has front and back...

Speculators get blamed a lot, but they aren't the real problem. They are a convenient distraction from the real issues that government doesn't want to address, like drilling more domestically. I found John Stossel's opinion on speculators to be rather interesting. He typically does his homework.

Dude, did you even read the page you just linked to? Right beneath the picture you find this:

My desktop has an ASUS A8N-SLI motherboard based on the nForce 4 chipset. Think its about time for me to upgrade?

Once upon a time two friends were hiking in the woods when they came upon a sign warning them that they were entering Grizzly bear territory. One of them immediately pulled some running shoes out of his backpack and began to put them on. The other asked him, "Do you really think you're gonna out run a grizzly in those?" His reply was: "I don't need to out run the grizzly, I just need to outrun you!"

While I'm sure that someone who can hack your WPA2 could also spoof a MAC address, I'm equally sure they'd seek an easier target first.

Not gonna lie, my first thought when I read the article was of the Biblical story of the Tower of Babel.

One distro to rule them all,
One distro find them,
One distro to bring them all
and in the GPL bind them!