That MySQL's space was/is being transferred to MariaDB, instead of just dying a relatively quick death.

Why bother with MySQL if you can just migrate over to PostgreSQL? Yes, of course, some of the weirdest bits won't work, and errors will now (for a change!) actually interrupt your work instead of silently losing information. But it seemed like a good way to kill that ugly beast!

Are three very different things. Java in the server and in the client is alive and very very much healthy. Ugly and slow applets in the browser thankfully are almost dead — Because HTML5 delivered way better. But applets dying off does not in any way mean Java is any less healthy!

...And yes, after reading the link you sent: More than a cycling proselytizer (which I am), I am a safe cycling proselytizer. Using the road as regular traffic, not running over red lights, not riding on sidewalks, not riding to close to parked cars, not riding against the lane's direction, and a very large etcetera. Wearing a helmet by itself, I agree with bicyclesafe, will not help much if I am a daredevil. But being cautious and wearing a helmet is much better.

Thanks for the not needed course on logic fallacies. I know why I had the accident: Because I was a newbie (as I said, this happened several years ago), and I didn't account for the sight block that a street sign imposed on a car driver. She didn't expect me. Thankfully, she was just starting to move, and the accident was a very minor one.

I know the helmet saved my face — Not with 100% certainty, but quite probably. I also know my then-girlfriend had a much, much smaller accident while not wearing a helmet (she fell by herself at roughly half the speed I was going, because of irregular pavement), and did scratch her head. No, no permanent scars, but a nasty bruise and some scratches that took some weeks to properly heal.

I am active in many local cyclist groups. I know many people who don't wear a helmet out of choice, but I don't know anybody who says an accident's outcome was better because they weren't wearing one.

As I said in my post, I think that were I not to have my helmet on, I'd have a nasty scar, the product of using my forehead as a brake. It was a fairly low speed hit, but my head did hit the pavement *in* the helmet. So, the helmet absorbed some of the impact — but it also put a good 2cm between my skin and the street.

Also, a helmet is coated in plastic to make it smooth, almost derrapant. It would not be impossible for my head, with a far higher friction, to get stuck while reducing the speed of my body - and could end up in spinal damage, maybe fatal.

Of course, I have no way to know if that would happen were I not wearing a helmet. But I won't take chances.

I am a regular biker — At least three days a week, I cycle to work. Not a great distance, but I end up making ~1hr on the bike every day I use it.

Several years ago, a car hit laterally my rear tire. Quite slowly, fortunately, although it managed to bend the rim ~30 degrees. Of course, cycling at ~20Km/h (~12mph), I fell down to my left.

I stood up right away, scared but not hit. My pants were slightly torn over the pocket where I store my keys. Nothing happened to me, just a scare, right?

When I took my helmet off, it was split in two. Yes, helmets are (and are designed to be) quite more fragile than skulls. Still, I'm very happy I didn't have to land with the side of my head on the road. Were I to be lucky, I'd have an ugly scar on my front left side.

Wear a helmet. Always.

I defend that same point, and of course, my mail address is gwolf@gwolf.org (hey, no point in hiding it, have had it for too long for spambots not to notice!). People's perception is *not* IMO what you say: When I repeat my name after the '@', the most common answer is, "come again?". Some people have even tried to correct me explaining my name can *not* be part of the domain.

Of course, I'm better off not receiving mails from those people...

You might not have heard about it... But we have colleges and universities also outside the USA.

I do agree that MOOCs offer alternatives for people who cannot -for whatever reason- attend presential courses. However, I can assure you that in most spots of the "third world" it's easier to go to a good university than to own a computer. (Source: I am a teacher at the largest university in Mexico, often ranked as the most reknown in Latin America. Several of my students don't own a computer. And I have reasons to believe this is a generalization I can make.

The fact this comment is uttered by an eight-digit user does not make it any less true.

Actually, I always try to be an anonymous poster. I don't know who this "gwolf" is and why my messages always appear in his name. I think my browser has a cookie addiction.

Let me go look for my nerd card so I can turn it in :(

I am unsure on the precise meaning of your question. However, many independent cultures shared this image — Just as the Greeks had the underworld ruled by Hades (Zeus' older brother) and under the custody of Kerberos, the Summerians had Ereshkigal (Inanna's older sister)... But the Egyptians had the underworld ruled by Osiris (son of Geb and Nut, gods of the Earth and Sky respectively). OK, but we are still talking about the East Mediterranean and Crescent region — Aztecs had the Mictlán (the underworld) ruled by Mictlantecuhtli and Mictlanteccíhuatl (literally, the lord and the lady of the underworld, and contrasting with Ometecuhtli and Omecihuatl, the lord and lady of either the life or the duality — "ome" means "two" in Nahuatl).

Not only that — Just as the Summerians had their myths of heros/gods descending into the underworld and emerging afterwards, and the relation of it with the agricultural cycle, as Earth seems to die during winter (the story of Inanna with Dumuzi, as well as Gilgamesh's quest to defeat death), Greeks have Hades' kidnapping of Persephone and Heracles' quest to traverse the Underworld without dying... But you also have somewhat the same with the Aztecs (although winter here in Mexico is not as "dead" as it is further North), where Quetzalcóatl and Xolotl enter the Mictlán to steal the old gods' bones in order to create the many races of living beings... Again, forming the life-death-life cycle and linking us living beings with the past.

Anyway, more than provenance of any given culture, these myths talk to us about the fear of death and the hope for an underworld — And the possibility of avoiding death. And, of course, a parallel between our own life and the agricultural cycle.

Canaanites are known to come from Sumerian-Accadian roots (just as Hebrews, later turned Jews). You can look, as an example, as their cosmology. Summerian goddess Inanna (and the whole pantheon around her, being she not the only but a very important goddess — And yes, I know the word pantheon _is_ Greek) is replicated in Canaan. Some Canaanite tribes were known to also worship trees as gods (and that's why the names for many trees in Hebrew include the particle "El" — Ilan, alon, ela, etc.), and that's why the old testament specifically forbids making altars to (the only, Israelite) God "under big trees and in high places".

As for Philistines, there might be some link to Greeks: After all, the main Philistine god was "the lord of the flies" (Baal Zvuv — One of the names of the devil, "Belcebu" stems from it). From the composed name, "Baal" means basically "the lord, and Zvuv has an ethimological closeness to "Zeus". The theology is, however, quite different.

The guy who complained loudly about his department introducing the requisite to use a password, and stop having account separation based on trust.

I am surprised it took so many comments for somebody to mention Org Mode.

I am currently about to finish a book written 100% inside Org-mode. With great, easy to read (and write) markup. Equally epxortable to LaTeX and to HTML (for generating PDF, regular Web pages, ePub, etc.)

Please, somebody mod PybusJ's comment up.