Not to mention, this is similar to saying, "Most households with a sports car also have a vehicle that is not a sports car but not vice versa." Over time, car aficionados tend to buy nicer cars, such as sports cars, but they don't necessarily get rid of the SUV because of it.

Windows PCs are practically ubiquitous. My wife an I have switched to Macs and have several of them but I've been in the computer industry for over 25 years so of course I still own some old Windows-based systems. I just rarely use them. They sit in storage to be pulled out and installed with Linux if a need should arise. In fact, I suspect far more Linux users own a Windows PC than vice versa, too.

Actually, the best way to keep a secret is to hide its very existence. To use your example, it's much better to have a small bag of trash that no one knows exists and kept hidden until it can be properly destroyed. This is far preferable to mixing your secret stuff in with the rest of your garbage on the curb in a big can marked "secret."

As far as your assertion that nothing will fail to be processed because you label everything secret, this is just not true. If you only deal with a small amount of data marked secret its much easier to track and ensure that it is properly processed. When people know that much of the "secret" information is mundane, it leads to those people being less diligent in general which is exactly what you don't want to happen with your truly secret data when it's mixed therein. This is exactly why the Department of Homeland Security fails to find serious weapons when auditors try to smuggle them in. Largely because the agents are wasting time looking for proper amounts of liquid and other non-threat items.

Gee, it seems to me that the banks already give your account information to reporting agencies who will sell it to anyone with the money to buy it. So, despite my desire to keep the information secret, the governemt has already decided that we do not deserve this privacy.

The problem with government secrecy is that rather than concentrating their efforts on information that is vital to keep secret, they mark almost everything as secret with very little justification. The more pieces of information you claim are secret, the more likely that some of that information will leak through the cracks. Meanwhile the attempt to keep many secrets removes focus from the truly vital pieces which makes any given secret more likely to slip out from divided attention.

Couple this with the technology and recent government directives and we end up collecting even more public and private information, networking the information together for easy retrieval, and not focusing on the most important secrets which leads to a total mess.

Down? I don't think any amount of money can make him living again.

And employers who will abuse their developers time.

I've never taken a job at a company that requires a second or third interview. If I have to make more than one trip to your campus I'll take another job before you get a chance to make an offer. Likewise, if you have any testing that requires more than a trivial amount of time on my part, I'll pass on the "opportunity" to waste my time at your company for free. If you want me to spend my time you'd better be paying me for it.

You seem to be built wrong, my python is in the front.

Well, America also copied all the existing case law from England when the United States was formed, too.

I forget, how many virgins does one get for an exploding iPod?

Seriously, has anyone here ever written to their representatives and had it work properly? Usually, I send a clear letter stating my position and get a form letter saying something to the effect of "thank you for your support and we agree with you that's why" then they continue to list the very opposite of what my letter said. Not only does your representative not read the letter, their office flunkies miscount you letter as a letter of support rather than dissent.

It seems to me that the voter matters less and less every year. I guess once they get computerized voting machines in place, with their lack of recountable ballots, the voters will be removed from the loop entirely.

And herein lies the fundamental problem with religious believers. The statement "because God ..." does not explain anything. It is the very antithesis of science. If the actions of God were an adequate explanation then there would be absolutely no technological advancement of society as a whole because everyone would know that everything is exactly as God wanted it to be.

Now, I realize that the above statement immediately upsets the sensitivities of many religious folks reading this and they want to attack me for saying it. This is generally where any discussion of religion gets derailed and the religious believers begin to attack the person who made the argument. Let's not do this and try to stay on topic.

In my experience, religious believers and scientific thinkers have a fundamentally different way of coming to conclusions. Religious believers are comforted by knowing what is right in their heart and no fact will ever overcome this. In fact, to suggest that a mere fact could make them doubt their religion is deeply offensive to them. Whereas, those following the scientific method try never to believe anything without the facts to support that belief. These people are ready to completely toss out any belief once verified facts prove the belief is wrong. These are mutually exclusive concepts and both sides have a hard time understanding the other. It's amazing how many of these types of arguments have degenerate into practitioners of the scientific method spouting facts at the religious while they try to frame the argument as a matter of "faith." These arguments never resolve, for obvious reasons.

Now, back to the point of this post which I've bolded above. I've bolded it for one reason, I don't want anyone replying to this post to get lost about what the main thesis is. We are debating whether God is an adequate explanation for the world around us. This and only this. Don't get sidetracked arguing any other statements in this post as they are tangental to the primary argument and will only lead us all astray. So, is God an adequate explanation of the following?

Why did my mother get sick and die? "It was God's will."
Scientists did not accept this as an adequate explanation and created the entirety of medical science. Of course, there is still much to discover and figure out and some of the models we're currently practicing will undoubtedly be proven wrong at some point but we have come a very long way throughout human history in the treatment of disease and other medical ailments. Today, even religious people are willing to go to a doctor for treatment because they don't consider "God wants you to be sick" an adequate explanation and know that medical techniques will save them. Most religious people think it's cultish to refuse treatment to the sick because you have faith that God will heal them. Though there was a time when the concept of germs and medical research was blasphemous, today we save countless lives because scientists sought better explanations.

Why didn't the crops grow this year? "It was God's will."
Throughout the ages countless animals and even people, were sacrificed to appease a vengeful God in an attempt to get the crops to provide food for His followers. Scientists however sought to find out exactly why plants grew and failed to grow. Agricultural researchers have made leaps and bounds in their understanding of food crops. It's a good thing, too, because with over six billion people on this planet, starvation would run rampant if not for their efforts.

Why do the stars in the heavens move? "It is God's will."
As it turns out, the stars don't move. Even the most devout religious believers know this now but the followers of Copernicus were condemned by the church for believing this apparent blasphemy. Was this because these sun-centric followers were seeking to destroy the church with this fact? No, they simply dared to seek a truth other than "It's God's will" to explain why the stars and planets appeared to behave so oddly in the sky.

The problem with religion is that it offers a poor, but all encompassing, explanation for everything. If everyone accepted that everything happened according to God's plan and that everything was proceeding exactly as God intended then we would never have ventured to make the scientific strides that have improved the lives of billions of people on this planet. Sadly, religious people are not content to simply have their faith and keep to themselves. Instead they actively try to hinder the needs of scientific progress whether it's arguing against evolution, trying to pass laws to hinder genetic research or dumbing down the scientific curriculum in schools. And this hurts us all.

I will reiterate that the thesis of this post and the only thing up for debate here is that the actions of God are not an inadequate explanation of the world around us. Please don't argue any other minor points but keep the primary debate in mind if you respond. However, for extra credit, if you still believe that science and religion are not mutually exclusive, remember that one of the tenets of science at that everything must be able to be disproven if facts to the contrary are discovered. In fact, scientists conduct experiments in an attempt to disprove their most precious beliefs continuously. For anything I believe, I can list many examples of facts that, if proven, would cause me to discard that belief. So, for anyone who thinks science and religion are compatible, please list the specific facts that would adequately disprove the existence of God.

Well, if the headline were referring to any particular White House photographer or their position I would expect it to say "White House photographer" not "Obama photographer". The primary reason for having "Obama photographer" in the headline rather than simply "photographer" is that the news story is only relevant because a well-known, iconic poster was made from the reference photo. If this were a lesser known photo with an equally unknown derivative work it would simply not be newsworthy. Having "Obama photographer" in the headline provides the most useful information about the story's newsworthiness. If this story wasn't about "the Obama photo" no one would bother to read it. The summary exists to clarify any information that couldn't be clearly condensed into the headline and the story exists to provide further information. Though on Slashdot YMMV.

Personally, I would prefer the headline "Obama Photographer Says AP and Fairey Are Both Wrong" for the same number of characters.

And that's clearly what makes Bill Gates evil. :)

Gee, my methods were different than most: I married a Ukrainian woman. Having a wife who knows several languages, each with different 8-bit encodings, using computers in your house on a daily basis makes you appreciate Unicode in a hurry.