... the boot sequence?

I agree - an here's a contemporary example that I think everybody already knows about: the conflict between General Relativity (GR) and Quantum Mechanics (QM) - those two theories being fundamentally incompatible. For a long time, now, those in favour of QM have tried in every way to disprove GR, even to the extent that you can find numerous articles along the lines of "this is another symptom of GR being wrong". Now, personally, I favour GR as being the more fundamentally sound theory, but I have to admit that the "QM side" is scientifically sound in their attacks. In my view this conflict is a good illustration of how real science works, and it is also a very prominent example of how even the most popular, scientific theories are not safe from good, honest criticism. It also demonstrates why climate deniers, creationists and the like are not taken serious: the just don't have what it takes, scientifically. They can make noise and bluster, and that can fool the popular view for a while, but they don't have any true evidence.

It seems strange to a foreigner, that way Americans seem to always go on about the Constitution and Freedom and that sort of things. Leave that to one side, however; the issue here seems to be the idea that gun ownership is, somehow, simply a "Fundamental Right" with no strings attached at all. But there is no such thing as 'no strings attached' - we don't live in a vacuum, and everything we can or cannot do has consequences, and for that reason alone implies responsibility.

It seems obvious to me that the responsibility you have, and the penalty you should face for not fulfilling your responsibilities, should be in proportion with the magnitude of the potential damage you can cause. A car owner can potentially cause great harm, if he is incompetent or irresponsible, so he is under an obligation to keep his vehicle road-worthy and he must have a driving licence before is takes it out on public roads. From what I can see people replying, it looks like there isn't a similar 'driving licence' for gun owners, or if there is, the requirements appear to be completely negligible. If so, I think that is deeply worrying.

It was never meant as more than an illustration of 'curved space' and how that might affect motion, which would be easy for lay-people to follow intuitively.

Also, all theories are 'fundamentally flawed'; we all know that. The best we can hope for, using the scientific method, is that we can discover more and more of the flaws and get rid of them. That is the fundamental insigt one needs to understand science: we knows we are wrong, but we have a method that brings us a little closer to the truth, if just we keep working on it. And even a flawed model can be useful, if the flaws are not too big for practical purposes.

By leaving? But, more seriously, a good, non-technical manager can actually be of value to a technical team, if he understands his role, which is it to take care of all the non-technical management - and nothing else.

To illustrate: I once had a manager who used to say "leading programmers is like herding cats", which brilliantly demonstrates that he doesn't understand programmers, leadership and cats. Firstly, thinking that "leading" is similar to "herding" means that you believe your staff are no more than non-thinking cattle. But programmers ARE a bit like cats - they have a mind of their own and see you as their equals - at best. The secret to leading cats - and to any good leadership - is to treat them with genuine respect, so they get to trust you, and never try to hem them in without a very good reason, because they will just walk away. You have to be the sort of person they want to follow.

Most non-technical managers just aren't the kind of person a techie would want to follow, sadly. I suppose at least part of the reason is that in order to be successful in a management career, you have to have a rather conformist mindset; you need to be somebody who likes rules and feels that it is wrong to question them. A technical career, on the other hand, requires you to ask critical questions all the time - you can see how that might make the relationship difficult.

Language is an amazing thing, especially Australian English; there is hardly a word in the dictionary that isn't somehow a profanity in Australia (http://www.koalanet.com.au/australian-slang.html):

It never ceases to amaze me that religious people - Christians - seem to be so almost universally against contraception. Is it really better to be born into a lifetime of guaranteed, hopeless poverty and suffering, than simply not being brought into existence at all? I wonder what those 'blessed' with that existence would say, if the faith-mongers would care enough listen? Religion is not necessarily evil, but when your personal opinion gets to be called 'faith' and becomes more important that real life and real people, then it is hard to think of any other word for it.

I think, to be fair, that this bit of research is pretty inconsequential. Most people simply don't have the insight to understand what evolution is about - as evidenced by much of the discussion on this forum. It's like accepting general relativity or quantum mechanics - if you believe or disbelieve simply because the group you associate with believes or disbelieves, then it is no better than following the fashion of the day.

The danger in a democracy, however, is that there is a risk that popular sentiment can influence scientific research indirectly, through funding and otherwise; for that reason alone, science should work at being more appealing and to the public. It shouldn't be hard, either - just point out how all the benefits we enjoy today are directly connected to science in general. Without the insights of QM and GR we would have no computers and other modern electronics; without those and the insight of the theory of evolution, we would have very little modern medicine: no cure for bacterial infections, and we wouldn't now be just on the verge of cracking cancer, genetic diseases, Alzheimer and viruses, just to mention a few.

I wonder how old you are? Not far out of your teens?

This is not to belittle your opinions, but although the article doesn't present any evidence, it is something that rings true to me, having grown up in a pre-PC and -internet age. When I was a child, it was common - expected, even - that you let your children go out on their own every day after school without worrying much about what they got up to. I never once got driven to school - I had a bicycle, and it was only about 3 km (a couple of miles, for the metrically challenged) along a country lane with only the occasional lorry barreling past. And what do children do when they are on their own? They find other children their age and play, working out their social skills together.

But nowadays parents molly-cuddle their children, so they hardly ever get to scrape a knee or get into minor trouble - get themselves good and dirty. I don't think they lack social skills so much as the freedom and opportunity to take responsibility for their own lives - there is always a parent to head off any trouble they might get into, until they move away from home, and they find themselves unprepared for the amounts of shit that cascades into their lives. Social media and games wouldn't be so attractive, if they weren't such a convenient way to get away from over-protective parents, I think.

This sounds like an advert for Apple, simply. Already for that reason alone, I am not going to read the articles.

Calling what I suspect is just a souped up fashion statement a "work horse", is probably just a symptom of cluelessness. And wanting to do the same with Windows supports that diagnosis. A "work horse" is a big, sweaty and dirty animal, not a dainty thing to take on a fashionable stroll along the promenade; and a souped up Macintosh or PC is more like a rich kid's toy car than a tractor. I don't know if you have noticed, but you don't often see a Ferrari pulling a plough - there's a reason for that.

As for the price - for $10000 you could get a decent sized Dell PowerEdge server; or even a Sun SPARC, IBM pSeries or HP if that takes your fancy. All of them are real work horses and all run operating systems that are meant for real work. True, you can't play games on them, and they don't pull chicks, but it is amazing how often that is not a major concern when you need to hold down a job.

Have they? I haven't - instead, I have installed things like NoScript, AdBlocker and other, and I use them to good effect. I always block all illustrations from sites that I find annoying - in fact, I mostly block the whole site with a wildcard. I only ever allow JavaScript temporarily - true, I have to reload many sites several times, but it works for me, and I rarely have to tolerate any of the obnoxious crap that others have to learn to ignore.

Wouldn't it be nice if it wasn't necessary? I can't for my life see why advertisers keep believing that they get value for their money when they so blatantly intrude on people's attention. The only effect it has on me is, that I make sure not to buy crap that has been pushed in this manner.

Sure, it's great that there may be better support for developing games on Linux in the future, but I am not sure it makes all that much difference. It certainly won't to me, if all it means is that we are going to have the existing games ported Linux. I stopped taking an interest in games long ago, because there is no true innovation - it is always just about more 'relistic' graphics, more 'stunning' effects etc; but the actual games underneath haven't really developed since the very beginning.

What I'd really like to see is a type of social game that is strongly focused on learning and experimentation, something that will stretch and develop your academic skills. Examples:

- You are part of a team of researchers working together, trying to learn the secrets of some advanced, scientific subject - something above high-school level.

- You are creating a new universe, designing physical laws etc. Can you create life - and what is the definition of life in your universe?

- You are a hero, you are on a quest to find a treasure and probably kill a number of monsters. But your world is not quite what you are used to. Space is not Euclidean, it may not even be a smooth manifold - the topology may not be Hausdorff, and you are influenced by force fields that are ... different. You only know that the laws of logic are valid. Probably.

First of all - I admire and respect your sentiment, and it is something I strive towards as well, although I am less modest about its merits. To me, this is what science is all about, on the philosophical plane.

But about making a joke - I think all good humour strives to win over the ones that are on the receiving end of the joke. We know it is never fully successful - there are plenty of people who are well-prepared to take offence of anything they hear - but the intent of good humour is always friendly, and as a result, a lot of people accept it as humour, even if they feel it is rather naughty.

If I may tire you with an anecdote: A couple of months ago there was a program on the BBC, starring Anne Widdecombe, who is very much one for spotting an offence - taking it to heart; she is a Christian and feels that her faith is beleaguered on all fronts, and is being ridiculed. She was particularly upset by the scene in "Life of Brian" where a group of people have been crucified and start singing "Always look at the bright side of life". However, she also interviewed some prominent priest or theologian (don't remember the name), who said that to him, this was one of the most epically funny things he had ever seen in his life.

This is where I felt he said that people don't have a right to be offended - on re-reading, I can see that it may be interpreted differently: that he protests against people not being allowed to feel offended. Mea culpa; I should have read it more carefully.

Wow, what astonishing insights you have on offer. Yes, all good humour plays in the region bordering on the offensive, but saying that people don't have right to be offended is plain idiocy. After all, what is the point of offending, if people don't get offended?

However, "offensive" is not the same as "humour" - good humour is when you are able to persuade the "victim" that you are playing, that you want them you to laugh with you.