I really liked the little "flavortexts", as Emo as they were... they were really well done.

Some of these still exist and are as readable as when they were written

Actually one of the saddest things about sitting down to a nice modern translation of Gilgamesh is how many chapters are just plain missing, or otherwise distorted, with the translators having to make up bits as best they can.

Atari 7800 homebrew was well-nigh non-existent, and still is pretty weak, in part because of the checksum encryption Atari used... and that is old, cheap hardware from the mid-80s.

Quick hint: it's perfectly possible to believe both in God and in the Big-Bang - they're not at all mutually exclusive as long as you look at the bible as a book full of allegories instead of trying to believe that the English translation is literally the word of Jesus.

That really is it in a nutshell.
A lot of American atheists are fighting against that literal minded Fundamentalist thinking... and to be fair, the cultural environment has an awful lot of that. It was a a REAL eye-opener for me (years and years into my mush agnosticism) when I read an interview with some Anglican Bishop where he says something like "well, of course the stories about Jesus aren't literally true..."- that a high ranking member of the clergy of a very established Christian group could even say that took me aback.

So then you get into, why believe at all? Is it a pragmatic, useful stance for moral guidance? Or is there an inescapable supernatural element? And - and this is crucial - are the *other* books full of allegories about equally as true, or do you think that one specific one or group is special in its connection to the truth?

Hmm. Well, I think there's a well-established precedent for verbing that particular noun, it rings true to my ears.

It's also less awkward than "making a transition", especially in the context used (though "transitioning and growing from a youth into a man" might be a bit on the redundant side).

Then again I'm more of a descriptivist than not.

I know someone is going to point out "unique" is a boolean state, but I think that's the wrong way of thinking about it... technically, everything is probably unique, since you can just redefine your thinking of "its kind". And then again, nothing is 100% unique, because it falls under the category of "thing". So it makes sense to think about degrees of uniqueness.

Admittedly "incredibly unique" probably still isn't the deftest choice of words, but I've seen much worse.

This beautiful line of Perl code:
$line =~ s/([^\t]*)\t/$1." "x(8-length($1)%8)/ge;
replaces tabs with the appropriate number of spaces, respecting the tab stops. Its author Phiroze Parakh rocks

C=64 came first.
In fact, I remember a David Crane interview where he pointed to it as an example of something that couldn't be done on the 2600... maybe he shoulda said shouldn't...

Well, looks like we're winding things up here.

Hmm. Is that "all controls" the default now, and I'm just kicking around with an older OSX, or ? I'm just trying to think of what the justification could possibly be, since it adds functionality for the pro with VERY little added complexity for the novice.

I guess I don't see a lot in the foreseeable future that will really push me into a switch, though as Apple seems to be getting niftier (and I was sore tempted by the MacMini) and Windows seems to be getting more "whirlwind in a component factory", I wouldn't rule out re-evaluating the decision.