The thing to understand about Linux is that you _don't_ buy software off the shelf. Instead, all the software you need is available - for free!

This is great for many reasons - besides just the reduced cost. For one thing, it's much easier to install software on Linux: just go to Package Manager, select what you want, and press Install. Takes a minute or two. The Windows alternative is to go buy some software, put the disk in, then press Install. That takes alot longer.

And because the Linux software is free, you don't feel constrained - if you're curious about a software package, just go ahead and install it, and try it out!

Because there is no corporate interest behind the software, it won't try to screw you over in some way which is designed to get you to cough up money. For example, it won't try to force ads on you (at least, I've never seen it). It won't try to prevent you from un-installing it. It won't do nefarious things in the background (spyware, or other virus-like activity).

The reason you would use Linux (and Open Source tools in general) is that it gives you total freedom. The users are in control - not corporate interests.

There's something very liberating about that. Once you've tasted freedom, you never want to go back into the birdcage...

I think you're onto something with your splitting of the NT into the earlier Jewish (Mark, Matt), and later Pauline (pretty much everything else - but including Luke) parts.

The Christianity of today is really much more the religion of Paul than of Jesus. That battle was won when the Ebionites and Gnostics were put down as heretics in Constantine's day (once the religion became an instrument of state power). It's very hard to know what Jesus was really about - so thorough was the Pauline victory. Naturally, all non-approved religious texts were burned.

However, in recent decades, some ancient (and hence uncensored) texts have come to light (see Lost Christianities). It seems clear enough that:

1) The original followers of Jesus were Jews.
2) The original Jewish followers of Jesus became the Ebionites.
3) The Ebionites had a single gospel - Matthew, minus the virgin birth.
4) The Ebionites believed in one god (like the Jews) - not the Pauline trinity.
5) The Ebionites kept Jewish law.
6) The Ebionites considered Paul to be a heretic.

Paul's religion started within a few years of Jesus's death. Paul was very big into prosyletizing - hence, his religion spread. Luke was apparently Paul's secretary/doctor/accolyte. In general, Pauline theology is much more elaborate than Ebionite theology - if you compare Luke to Matt or Mark, you see this elaboration. John came much later, and seems to be utterly unconnected to anything Jewish - it's purely Pauline.

So, the Ebionites held sway in the more traditionally-Jewish areas (Middle East), while Pauline ("proto-Orthodox") Christianity spread thru the rest of the Roman world. In particular, it became dominant in Rome.

None of this would have mattered, except that Constantine (300 years later), out of the blue, decided to make Christianity (very much a minority religion at the time) into the state religion of the Roman Empire. Which variant did he choose? Naturally, the Pauline variety. At this point, all competing Christianities became illegal - Ebionities, Gnostics, etc, were branded heretics, were executed (if they wouldn't recant), had their texts burned, etc.

What I'm getting at is, if you're going to call Pauline theology into question, you've got a whole lot of unwinding to do! There's very little left of non-Pauline Christianity to fall back on. You'll have to go back to the most ancient, pre-Pauline texts. Then, you'll need to start keeping Jewish law, stop believing in the divinity of Jesus, etc.

I think your application of Occam's razor is correct.

Ironically, tho, Occam himself (a medieval theologian/logician) used his razor in the opposite direction: his point was that any assumptions besides the existence of God were superfluous. From there, he argued that there could be no good or evil, as applied to God (i.e. God could not be evil, by definition). He thereby justified the many terrible, murderous/genocidal happenings recorded in the Old Testament (as ordered by God).

Some points to consider:

Total outstanding student loan debt recently topped $1 trillion (e.g. see link).

Student loan debt now exceeds household credit card debt (see link).

It isn't possible to escape student loans via bankruptcy - they will follow you your whole life, no matter what. This puts them in a class by themselves.

Obviously, the current system is badly broken. Why should the federal govt be in the business of hooking young adults on these onerous loans? If the goal is social leveling (a goal I can get behind), then we should be talking about grants, not loans. What we're doing is creating a new class of indentured servants.

You say "... many former computer scientists decide to start a career in programming rather than finishing (or after finishing) a degree."

Are you saying that "computer science" is limited to academia? If so, are you saying science in general is limited to academia? Surely not. Then, are you saying that computer science isn't really a science? That seems reasonable - in that science is all about probing the truths of nature via experimentation (i.e. the scientific method).

I think you have that backwards: it's not that climate deniers have come to distrust science because science has it wrong on global warming; it's that the deniers distrust science, period. Distrusting science, you're "free" to believe whatever you want to.

Unsurprisingly, such people end up believing just those things which it is in their interest to believe.

These demands are in reasonable sync with the Ron Paul school of Tea Partiers:

1) End the Collusion Between Government and Large Corporations/Banks, So That Our Elected Leaders Are Actually Representing the Interests of the People (the 99%) and Not Just Their Rich Donors (the 1%).

Ron Paul has consistently been against any kind of bail-outs. He was dead-set against the $700 billion bank bailout, for one example.

2) Investigate Wall Street and Hold Senior Executives Accountable for the Destruction in Wealth that has Devastated Millions of People.

Ron Paul hasn't (to my knowledge) advocated this kind of thing. But in a similar vein, he has been an outspoken critic of the Fed - he wants full exposure of all Fed policies. These policies have been used for decades to pick industry winners - so this is an example of collusion between govt. and business. Maybe this really goes along more with point 1, above.

3) Return the Power of Coining Money to the U.S. Treasury and Return to Sound Money

This has Ron Paul written all over it!

4) Limit the Size, Scope and Power of Banks so that None are Ever Again âoeToo Big to Failâ and in Need to Taxpayer Bailouts

See above comments on bank bail-outs. Ron Paul has consistently advocated that banks must be left to fend for themselves - no bank bailouts. He's really been the more forceful advocate of this stance, for the longest time - among elected representatives.

5) Eliminate âoePersonhoodâ Legal Status for Corporations

Not sure about this one.

6) Repeal the Patriot Act, End the War on Drugs and Protect Civil Liberties

Ron Paul has been a long-time advocate of drug legalization.

7) End All Imperial Wars of Aggression, Bring the Troops Home from All Countries, Cut the Military Budget and Limit The Military Role to Protection of the Homeland

Again - Ron Paul has consistently argued for de-imperialization for years/decades. He is one of the few in Congress who have voted against all foreign wars, and to bring troops back from pretty much all foreign deployments.

So, if the above list does, in fact, reflect the desires of the Occupy Wall Street-ers, then there is at least a strong theoretical connection between them and the Tea Partiers. That is, if you buy the idea that Ron Paul is the true standard-bearer of the Tea Party. Unfortunately, that isn't necessarily the case...

In my system, winter consists of Dec, Jan, Feb, Mar, while summer consists of Jun, Jul, Aug, Sep. That leaves Apr and May as Spring, and Oct and Nov as Fall.

This system matches reality much better than a "1/4 of the year in each season" system. Winter is when it typically snows. Spring is when it's cool and rainy. Fall is when the leaves fall. Summer is when it's mostly warm and sunny. I find that Jan and Feb are similarly winter-like, while Jul and Aug are similarly summer-like. Jun & Sep are sort of "wishful summer". Conversely, Dec is "wishful winter", while Mar is "wish winter was over".

(for reference, I live in upstate New York)

Once I figured C++ out, I found that my bug rate went way, way down. It's quite rare for me to get any memory reference errors. When it happens, it tends to be within some new library I've written - so when I solve the problem, it's solved generally. Pointers are quite rare - and when they happen, it tends to be buried in some library framework. They're definitely not used willy-nilly. On the other hand, they can be very useful when needed. Typically, they get encapsulated in a smart pointer.

It comes down to making heavy use of the STL. Array reference errors? You can turn on debugging for that, if you want. For some reason, I just find random array references to be rare. It's common to iterate thru an array, but that's a low-bug kind of operation.

C++11 has some really nice features to make for even lower-bug coding. Can't wait...

If C++ is programmed well, then there are few bug opportunities. Probably about comparable to Java (assuming, again, that Java is programmed well). Except that in some ways, C++ is superior to Java (i.e. fewer bug opportunities). The reason is that Java insists that you use its own garbage collector framework, whose properties can be unsuitable for your task, C++ gives you total control.

I'm not saying that any-old programming language, if programmed well, provides few bug opportunities. A counter-example would be C. If you program C++ like C, then you'll have alot of bug opportunities. What I'm saying is that C++ allows for very low-bug programming.

I'll also agree that other programming languages (not including Java) allow for even fewer bugs than C++ - for example, ML. But there are many disadvantages to using a language like ML (e.g. few available programmers, few available API's, speed, to a degree, etc).

Even better is to develop meta-programming frameworks, specific to your task - built on top of C++. This can reduce your bug opportunities even more...

I disagree. In my experience - in the domains I've worked in over the last several years - C++ has been the best overall language for almost all purposes, except for cases which can be handled by simple Bash scripts.

What makes C++ so good? First, to create complex code, it is essential to have a bullet-proof static typing system. This lets you refactor your code with confidence. Refactoring is a continuous process - supporting refactoring is the main task of a (non-trivial) programming language.

In order to have a bullet-proof static typing system, you need templates and generic programming. Check.

OK, so C++ has all these things. On top of that, it provides excellent efficiency, in terms of both memory and run-time.

The icing on the cake is operator overloading. This lets you write very clean domain-specific mini-languages, in effect.

And then, of course, you get the excellent standard library, Boost, the large amount of third party code, the large number of excellent compilers for a very wide range of hardware, and the large number of trained programmers.

All in all, it's pretty hard to come up with a good reason to _not_ use C++ in any domain where efficiency is paramount. Beyond that, C++ is an excellent choice in a wide variety of cases, even where efficiency isn't the most important consideration.

I'll just cut right to the chase: you ought to run Linux, and Ubuntu is probably your best choice.

Here's why:

1) I'm assuming you don't have a budget to buy new hardware across the board. You've got 5,000 machines running (mostly) XP, and a modest IT budget. Your _real_ choice becomes: keep running XP, or switch to Linux. Why? Because you won't be able to run Windows 7 on your old machines (firstly, because of prohibitive licensing costs, and secondly, because your old machines aren't going to be powerful enough).

2) So, the only important question in your case is: should you stick with XP, or start migrating to a free Linux variant? Continuing to run XP is a really bad idea. So far, apparently you've been pretty lucky, and haven't been hit too badly with viruses. If you had, then it would be next to impossible to keep 5,000 XP machines running with a staff of 10. Linux is rock-solid: once you get it installed, it's pretty hard to mess it up.

3) If you stick with XP, you'll necessarily have to switch to something different for any new machines you buy. You understandably want to standardize on one platform, given your tiny IT dept. That won't be possible if you stick with XP.

4) Why Ubuntu? It's very easy to maintain locally (i.e. without an admin), and it has very widespread support (i.e. you'll find almost any Linux-able software can be installed on Ubuntu).

From my understanding of your situation, the bottom line is that the only reasonable way you can hope to keep 5,000 machines going, on a shoestring budget, with 10 support staff, is to switch over to Linux. Then, figure out what software you can run. You'll probably find anything you need for a high school science curriculum.

(And keep an XP machine in some labs if you have special equipment that requires it.)