Well said, and true. I've had a similar experience, in my elementary school one could elect to take a class of comparative religion instead of the default one (which was literally called Christianity, taught by an actual methodist preacher in our school. No, seriously, the teacher was a methodist minister in his spare time. No chance of even a mediocre grade if he knew you to not be religious). The alternative class was as you describe.

The issue here is that creationism belongs in history, comparative religion, or social science classes as a side note (luckily I resisted the temptation to mention a folklore class), not presented as a viable alternative to evolution in biology lectures.

That's just demagoguery. The people spouting that bullshit are well aware of the correct definition, and also that they're misleading people (doesn't their book say something about that, even presented in a simple, numbered rule consisting of single-syllable words?).

A far larger problem is that in order to support their creationist views they basically need to tear down and discredit huge swaths of established science, not just evolution, since numerous (most?) other areas of science also contradict their pet belief. If successful, that could result in a scepticism amongst pupils to science and rational thought which is antagonistic to the advancement of society.

I'm not from the US, but where I live, working for schools to include creationist preaching in the curriculum is a very strong indication that you are a fundamentalist. Hell, being a creationist is qualification enough in itself even if you don't work actively to foist it on the population at large, what with the belief in biblical inerrancy and all that*. From my impression there are a *lot* of fundamentalists in Texas, but they might not necessarily view themselves as such. After all, for most people it's a word with negative connotations, and people don't want to believe that they themselves are *those guys*.

Certainly there are a lot of christians who are not fundamentalists, but they do not figure strongly (if at all) in the context of teaching creationism in schools. Thus neonmonk, while being a bit condescending, is not wrong in calling you out as fundamentalists in my opinion.

* A basic tenet amongst fundamentalists is that the bible is inerrant, which is directly connected to creationist beliefs. The other tenets of fundamentalism follow from that. The bible is the source for literal creationism, so if you are a creationist (and thus believe that the events described in Genesis are true), you can correctly be labelled a fundamentalist in my opinion.

Not necessarily. I got a $692 Android phone for $460 just for paying my provider in 12 monthly installments. These installments are included in my monthly bill, but they are not tied to any specific plan. The phone is not locked, so if I want to switch providers (I'm actually very happy with my current one, so I probably won't) I could just pay my remaining installments in full and leave. I don't have to pay additional fees unless I leave within three months of purchase (in which case there is a fee of about $40), and I won't have to reimburse them for the discount I got in any case.

The provider's advantage is probably that very few people actually switch when having that payment plan, but if you want to leave there's nothing they can do. They get the money you owe them for the phone, but that's it. That's what you get for living in a country with reasonably strong consumer protection laws :)

Found it! :)

(The documentary referenced in my sibling post, that is. It's from 1988.)

The fly-swatting scene is in the second-to-last episode on that page, from about 20:30.

Yes, I distinctly remember a scene from a documentary which portrayed a fly escaping being swatted by a rolled-up newspaper -- in super-slow-motion, to indicate that this was actually how the fly perceived the incident. I watched it in the early nineties.

It might have been the "Time" episode of a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Supersense">the series Supersense , although I'm not entirely sure. It was a brilliant series in any case.

This is currently modded troll, but on a related note, WINE is by far the easiest way of running oldish games (Windoes 95-98 era and onwards) in my experience. The compatibility modes of Windows 7, XP and even 2k has so many quirks as to be useless, if they manage to run them at all. WINE frequently Just Works.

Same here. I've also found that for gaming Steam Mover makes it very easy to shuffle my current games onto the small SSD. It works for any directory, not just Steam games. Windows doesn't know the difference, but some games benefit greatly from living on the SSD. It would likely fool any stupid software that insists on living on C: as well :)

In addition to better performance on some IO-heavy tasks, what makes even a cheap SSD stand out is close to zero access time. Everything is more responsive, large programs launch in literally 1/10 of the time. The performance difference is slightly less noticeable in Linux, but it's still a huge boost. The system is simply more pleasant to use. As drkstr1 says, it's obvious that you've never tried one :)

Every carpenter knows that it's worth it to invest in quality tools, I'm surprised that a developer who presumably does serious dev work would skimp on a crucial part like the system drive. You could probably get by with only 2GB of RAM as well, but why on Earth would you want to do that?

A musician I know who also does a significant amount of studio work asked me if I could help him setting up a Linux computer for mastering. He preferred using a Mac, but would like to save some money going the Linux route when getting a new computer. I advised him to fork out for the Mac instead, it would not be smart for him to reduce the productivity and enjoyment of a significant portion of his livelihood.

I think this entitles you to a big lump of Tungsten-hydroxy-osmium-hydride!

I don't think so; I get a slightly different tone if I call abroad (from Norway), both from cell and landline phones. This also comes into effect if I'm redirected to outsourced customer service when calling a Norwegian support number. Also, a bad connection is affecting the "ringing" signal I hear in my cell, meaning that it's at the very least generated at the tower, if not on the receiving central.

Check out calibre for library management and sideloading of e-books. It can do categories, and export them to the Kindle.

Yup. Six years ago or or so you had to pay a substantial premium to get a 600+ W PSU, now it's much less expensive. I've also read that a larger PSU has more efficient cooling, by running a large one at less than capacity you'll likely get less noise. I currently have an oldish 500W of a high-quality brand in my modest gaming rig, when I'll replace it on next rebuild (mainly because I want a modular one) the new one with be at least a 700W of a similar quality.

Wow, what a surprice. Have a nice day :)

My troll alarm is ringing its bells off... Oh well.

What do you mean by "overarching design", and how is lack of it a hindrance to you? Please be specific, don't just spout vague criticism. In fact, from your posts on this story you seem very similar to a guy who posted a few times on the forum with extremely vague (but very vocal) complaints about the "bad UX". When asked repeatedly by exasperated forum members, he was not able to communicate what, exactly, his problem with the GUI was. Obviously he didn't have any constructive suggestions either.

I'm still not sure what you want here. The GUI does exactly what I need it to, and it obviously works well for most people, as there are not a lot of complaints about its usability on the forum. Remember that even if you personally are not able to use the software, literally millions of others are getting great value from it daily, many of whom are definitely not techies or even well versed with computers. Maybe it's not the software that is the problem here.

Uh, what? Is great community support, including for inexperienced users, a minus? Most questions are about relatively complex topics like composing regexes and templates, not "how do I transfer books to my Kindle".