Good for you. There are plenty of Atheists that feel the need to condemn people of faith; you walk up to that line yourself by equating their belief with a belief in astrology, fairies, and alien abductions. More militant atheists feel the need to preach their lack of faith to the masses in a manner that's every bit as obnoxious as a born again southern baptist, with a healthy dose of smug superiority added for good measure.

Personally, I'm Agnostic, because anybody (militant theist or atheist) that thinks they have all the answers scares the shit out of me. True believers in anything, religion, atheism, a political party, whatever, they are the people that frighten me the most.

Didn't you read the summary? It's a "fully electric" digital camera. If you want low light performance you need one with a gasoline engine. :)

That's a political non-starter, whatever the merits may be. If you think you're going to change the law to tax every church in the United States I've got a bridge to sell you. I wouldn't even support it; I've belonged to UU churches and every single one of them operates on a financial razor edge. Taxing them would push them over the cliff. I'm sure they're not the only ones.

I'm glad you interpreted my bad one line joke at the expense of a friend as an in-depth analysis of Nokia's bad business decisions.....

You're preaching to the choir condemning Scientology, I doubt you'll find anyone here who disagrees with you there. I certainly don't. That said, can you at least acknowledge the frightening potential for abuse if we empower some Government bureaucrat to determine what is and is not a legitimate religion? How do you draw the line? There's no objective test. You can't go by age, that shuts out LDS, UUism, Wiccans, and a bunch of others. There's a lot of people that would welcome them being shut out, but I'm sure that's not what you're advocating for.

The only fair way to do it would be to treat all non-profit corporations (which is how all churches are incorporated in the US) the same. Leave religion out of it. If you want to tighten the rules for non-profit corporations you might find more support, there's plenty of abuse there, mostly in the secular world, but it's still a tough needle to thread.

Because there's a significant number of people here that are hostile towards religion in any shape or form. The mere fact that it exists drives them insane.

Leaving aside the problems this would likely pose under American law, in the United States it's generally the case that non-profit corporations are not taxed at any level of government. At the local level they're exempt from property taxes. At the state level they're exempt from sales and income taxes. At the federal level they're exempt from income taxes.

Doing what you wish would require a wholesale revision of the tax code at every level of Government. It would be fought tooth and nail by countless different organizations, religious and secular. In short, it's a political non-starter.

Betamax was arguably superior to VHS but that mattered not a whit once VHS had a critical mass of users.

Not quite. They ran their mobile phone business into the ground by clinging to yesterday at the expense of today and tomorrow. Clinging to Symbian when Android emerged was a mistake, one that they should have realized, but who wants to admit they've been out-thought? Same story as Motorola Mobility, incidentally, both outfits made superior headsets in the areas that really matter (ever try to destroy a Nokia phone? They were built like tanks. And Motorola handsets had the best radios ever made, take one alongside a Samsung into the wilderness and see who drops the connection first.....) but they failed to market them effectively and got crushed by inferior Samsung products.

Nokia's mobile phone business is not the whole enterprise. Far from it. :) Same with Motorola and Motorola Mobility, incidentally. Random stupid story: Visiting a friend of mine in Turku, noted that he was a complete Apple Fanboy. iPad, iPhone, iBook, the works. He doubtless has or will soon have an Apple Watch.

"Yki, what's with all the apple stuff? You're the reason Nokia is dying."
*ten seconds of silence*, "Fuck you."

Game, set, and match. :P

Any particular reason you couldn't do the same thing in a microkernel? I'm envisioning some form of IPC primitive that automatically spawns a lightweight thread to handle each incoming message, which isn't too different from the monolithic kernel approach apart from not having a fixed 1:1 correspondence between the client and server contexts. You would be able to use your shared data structures and locks just as you would in a monolithic kernel, at least within the filesystem code. For anything else, of course, you'd need to use IPC.

The solar constant is approximately 1.4 kilowatts per square meter. Aluminum smelting requires power input measured in the high megawatt/low gigawatt range. Have fun acquiring enough land to do it with solar power, whether thermal or photovoltaic. If you do manage to do that, have fun competing against the manufacturers that are using cheaper sources of energy that work 24/7/365.

You are arguing against a position I have not taken. I have no use for the "War on Drugs." I have already stated that I am in favor of the legalization of several substances for recreational use. For those that I would not legalize, well, I don't think we need a war against them. I simply think they should be regulated, in the same manner that all sorts of dangerous substances are regulated.

The degree of regulation should be based on the dangerousness of the substance in question. You can't buy C4 for your July 4th party, but you can get your hands on black powder without too much trouble.

Incidentally, as a former pot smoker, I tend to agree with the South Park line, "The truth is, marijuana probably isn't going to make you kill people. Most likely isn't going to fund terrorists, but pot makes you feel fine with being bored and it's when you're bored that you should be learning a new skill or some new science or being creative. If you smoke pot you may grow up to find out that you're not good at anything."

I wish I could have back the five years of my life I spent stoned. Does that mean I think it should be banned? No, it just means that I'm not going out of my way to encourage people to use it. I've done my best to discourage the people who have asked me about it. Sadly, like many political issues today, there's not much room for any position outside of absolutism.

So can overeating, that doesn't mean it's something to be encouraged or condoned. Some of us have the self-control not to do such things and resent having to subsidize those that don't. That's without even considering the more immediate impact that drug addicts have on those around them. Have you ever seen a baby that was born addicted to drugs, or children whose needs aren't being met because Mom and/or Dad are too busy chasing the dragon? I used to work for a human services agency, so I have....

Don't misunderstand me, I agree with the crux of what you're trying to say, particularly: "I think that drugs are a side effect of a larger more fundamental issue in those people's lives."

I have never encouraged a policy of blanket prohibition, throughout this thread I've said drugs should be regulated, not banned. The degree of regulation is something we could talk about for hours, suffice it to say, I'm going to get off the bus if you start talking about recreational heroin, cocaine, and other substances with a similar potential for abuse.

That's a very depressing and cynical outlook. A sustainable future simply requires a sustainable source of energy to power civilization. You mention such a source -- nuclear -- but you simultaneously believe that civilization as we currently know it is doomed?

I'd be curious to know how you arrived at the 1,000,000,000 figure as the ceiling of a sustainable population? I don't see a practical limit as long as energy is available. You see doom and gloom, I eventually see a future more like Star Trek, where nearly limitless (by modern standards) supplies of energy are available and we have an abundance economy. I guess we can check back in a few generations to see which one of us was right..... :)

At least we agree that humanity will still be around, in one shape or another. The doomsday people that think we're going to wipe ourselves out annoy me to no end.