I'm sure I've installed minimal gentoo and Debian systems that fit that description.

I'd like to think that, among people of faith, you are in the majority in having sufficient faith to believe that you might have been "endowed" with the capability for critical thinking and that it's reasonable to use that faculty (if for no other reason than to uncover more to wonder at the mystery of).

I don't share your beliefs in a creator, but when I consider the position of people that do, I can't for the life of me see why anyone should consider critical thinking to be unholy. Unless they're just plain scared that it will unseat their "fixed beliefs", which seems to be rooted in insecurity rather than faith.

Hey, if you can come up with a good explanation of why 2+2=5 and it passes muster with the math community then go for it, it could be the next math breakthrough. But most kids working their way through school will stick with 2+2=4 and get full marks for it. Common core seems like a perfectly reasonable approach to education to me, if anything I wish it went further than it does in prompting kids to explore why they know what they know.

Question it, be my guest, gather facts diligently and reach a conclusion based on the facts. There are people to do that, overwhelmingly they conclude that AGW is real. As you say, life is not for the lazy...

One thing that annoys me is that it seems the only documentation worth a damn is the documentation they give out at a training session. i.e. the available system documentation is engineered to ensure that the training is the only viable way to learn enough to operate the system.

Design a system or an improvement to a system, argue that it should be used. Defend your ideas. Stop depending on your manager to put your ideas forward. That should solve the problem one way or another. You'll either be up to your eyeballs in responsibility for a project or out on the streets pretty rapidly I should think.

I watch my son play minecraft and I like what I see... creativity, use of a commandline, interaction with his friends (he's usually on the phone to a friend who moved away across the country, so it's a good way for them to stay in touch). It's fine for half an hour a day or so. On the other hand, when I see my nephew play minecraft I'm appalled. The chat messages are full of nasty, hateful language. It seems to me that the user experience varies greatly from one server to another.

I use deep freeze too, it gives the kids lessons in backing up their data from time to time (you can back up minecraft etc.) so it's educational too !

no, it's the gaol of capitalism

Of course there will be The Bonnie Banks o' Loch Lomond.

Which consumer level device out there will rate limit ACks for some applications if other applications are in play ? I'm not talking about a TCL script for cisco or a fancy TC rule for linux, I mean a consumer grade router that you can check the box that says "limit other applications if I'm watching breaking bad but not when the kids are watching Dora the explorer" or something similar.

Presumably the reason to allow this is not to permit hams more freedom, but rather to persuade hams to purchase encryption units so that when the authorities ask them to provide communications they can do so in an encrypted way. Or, for the lobbyists, to make the ham radio service appear to have more utility in handling emergencies.

I can't think of any reason why encrypting ham communications would do anything to improve the hobby, but I can see why authorities might like to have access to another somewhat secure communications alternative. How secure could it be anyway, you still have to distribute the keys ?
The best this would do would be to make it slightly harder to listen to.

I'm a new ham, looking into installing an antenna in my back yard. I have kids.

The impedance at the center of a half wave dipole is low, say 70 ohms or so if it's the right length for the transmission, but at the ends it is really high. 100W (small beer for a ham operator) into 70 ohms is 80 volts or so in the middle of the antenna. At the end of the antenna the impedance is very high, say 4000 ohms, the same 100W is then 630 volts or so.

The impedance can be much more, the power can be much, much more, these are moderate numbers for RF that can be generated from a small radio. That's one of the reasons the antennas are hoisted into the trees, it's not just for propagation.

I think a ham operator can encrypt the control link to a spacecraft legally.

I only wanted windows, can I get a refund for the hardware ?