A combination of: it's long-standing reputation for user-hostility, a general lack of interest in "geeky" things, fear of the unknown, and the fact that you have to go wayout of your way to get a copy.

True story:Iwas talking with a friend, who is a school-teacher, at a bar, and she mentioned how sad she was that the school was shutting down their Ubuntu lab. A while later, Isaid something about Linux, and she said, "Oh Ihate that." So Isaid, "if you hate it, why are you so sad the school is shutting down the Ubuntu lab?" And she replied, "Oh, is that Linux? Ihad no idea! Ithought it was that system where you had to type to make the computer do anything." :)

I don't know if you realize this, but "outside the US" is an area that contains countries which are not among the developed nations, and in poor countries with limited access to schools and low literacy rates, a lot of people do take the controversy seriously. Heck, Turkey, which is actually part of the EU, has a ever-so-slightly higher rate of evolution-rejectionism than even the US does. (Although it's the only country in the EU with more anti-science idiots than the US.) :)

Brazil also seems to have a lot of science-rejecting creationists. India, perhaps surprisingly, does not, but then evolution isn't actually all that incompatible with Hinduism. Can't find any data on China or south-east Asia or the rest of South America.

Yes, we're programmers, so all those so-called experts in user-interface design should just shut up. We don't need usability studies! We wrote it ourselves, and pressing Alt-X and then typing "frobnitz" works and is memorable for us. Why should we adapt to using these stupid mice the way lusers would expect?

Sure, intelligent programmers might realize that there are domains involved with computing and software projects that don't directly involve coding skills (like user interface design, or real-world use cases, or, god forbid, the realities of social interactions with others), but those are all quivering gamma rabbits who cower before us mighty Social Injustice Warriors who lurk in our mothers basements, and never have any interaction with women whose names don't end in .jpg!

Successful ones invariably are, yes. One common mode is the "benevolent dictator" model used by the Linux kernel. Another is the constitutional-democracy-with-technical-oversight model used by Debian. And there are a variety of others. But for an open source project to scale well, it needs some sort of conflict resolution method (at the least), since programmers are about as easy to get pointed in the same direction as cats.

Yes, the first thing Ithought when I saw the article summary was "this is going to bring out the SIWs (Social Injustice Warriors) in force!" :)

The unexpected reboot is clearly because it spotted something it shouldn't have. Can't let any photos of [elided] reach Earth. Can you imagine what would happen!?

Well, yes. But the paranoid Social Injustice Warriors who believe that Mozilla has become part of an ebul liberal plot to undermine western society and force us to all become devil worshippers and give Hugo awards only to registered members of the Communist party also believe that he was secretly forced to resign, and since the question wasn't relevant to my point, I decided to skirt the issue. But that is why I chose the (admittedly ambiguous) phrase "let him go." No matter who actually made the decision, the foundation certainly allowed it. :)

You mean the way we never hear the end of it now? I mean, here we are discussing it how many years later? :)

Seriously, I'm surprised the bigots didn't get together and fund him enough money to retire on, the way they did that pizza owner who said he'd refuse to cater a gay wedding recently.

And then there's the whole blaming Mozilla for the situation, when they were facing a massive boycott. The browser may be free, but the foundation depends on money from third parties (like Google), who only pay if the brower actually gets into people's hands. He thus became a liability to the foundation, quite literally, and even he clearly knew it.

1. The point of the foundation is to promote the use of Firefox.
2. Eich's appointment had the opposite effect; it was causing people to switch away from Firefox.

You can say all those people who were organizing the boycott are evil if you want (that's another debate), but I don't see how anyone with two brain cells to rub together can blame the foundation for taking what was the only reasonable way out of the no-win corner they'd painted themselves into. They either kept him, and faced widespread outrage and an ongoing boycott, or they let him go and faced widespread outrage. So, they picked outrage, because that was already unavoidable.

Technically, I only need one. I can always attach a hub. And, in an emergency, one is enough that I could suck out its power to recharge my phone. However, it would have to have a truly outstanding set of other features to make up for its lack. I'm not sure I can imagine a laptop with only USB that I'd actually be willing to buy, but I can't say it's not possible. But I do need at least one.

Want, however, is another issue. I want probably at least four, and would be dubious about buying anything with less than three. :)

Ah, I see. The rights of gay people, people of color, and women are "bullshit to get people worked up over petty, unimportant, feelgood crap." Let me guess: you're not gay, of color, or female. Because I assure you that to people who do fall into at least one of those categories, those are not unimportant issues! For that matter, weed, while much less important, is still a fairly big issue to many sick people who don't respond well to other medications; a not insignificant number of people. But, of course, to you, anyone who cares about weed must be a useless stoner...

You're correct to suggest that the parties are identical on a lot of important issues, which is sad, because they're quite often both on the same wrong side. But they're on different sides on a lot of other issues, which, despite your lack of interest, are actually important to a lot of people. And on those issues, it seems to me, as someone faced with chosing between them on a regular basis, that the Dems are on the correct side the overwhelming majority of the time. Not always--I judge candidates by their stands on the issues, and I have voted for Republicans in the past, and may do so again if moderate fiscal conservatives ever manage to take back the party from the religious, anti-science nutjobs that seem to be running it now--but usually.

So, for capital crimes, relying on people's judgement is ok, but not for money matters? I think your priorities may be a bit screwed up.

The simple fact is that the government is already making those judgements. As someone who has founded three religions (one of which had as many as five members at one point), I assure you my ability to write off church expenses is precisely nil.

I agree, "common sense" is not sufficient by itself for such matters, but since these judgements are already being made (see my earlier reference to the Mormons), why can't they be applied to Scientology? I don't know the gory details, but I'm pretty sure the criteria for becoming a tax-deductable church are rather more complicated than "just some guy who decides". I'm pretty sure there are laws and precedence.

If some random guy (like me) could just declare himself a church and stop paying taxes, and the government weren't allowed to decide whether that's a valid claim (as OP seems to think), I'm pretty sure the amount of taxes collected in this country would be pretty close to zero! :)

As someone who has been using AMD Linux drivers (the built-in ones in the kernel) for the past year+, without noticing any of these problems you mention, I'm curious if you can document any of this. I'm certainly not going to claim you're wrong, since I don't push the drivers, and they may well have problems I've never noticed. But all I know is they've sped up incredibly since 3.9 or so, and now seem to do everything I ask of them. If there are problems I should be wary of, I'd really like to know.

how are we deciding what is or is not a religion?

Using these things called "judgement" and perhaps even "common sense". The same tools used to distinguish Murder One from mere Manslaughter (fer example).

If there's no legal criteria to refer to, then you're setting a precedent for revoking the legal protections for any religion that you don't like.

There's already precedent: the LDS church was not considered a valid religion for a long time. Once they cleaned up their act, the decision was reconsidered.

Actually, it's not that silly (though I admit it is silly). God is supposed to have miraculous powers, and, in theory, could accept some of the money thrown in the air, if He so desired. The poor, on the other hand, have no such ability. So the sillyness levels are not equivalent.

But yes, what he's describing is not what is formally known as a tithe, although the word has come to have a much broader meaning over the last century or so. And what he's describing is quite silly--a fact I'm sure he's aware of.

As far as I can tell from a bit of quick research, absolutely zilch. Since dark matter is mainly hypothesized to explain the observed motion of galaxies, and most of the evidence for it comes from observing other galaxies and, especially, galactic clusters, the size of the Milky Way has no bearing.

Also, as someone else pointed out, this is about volume in any case; the actual mass of the Milky Way is probably not a lot different from previous estimates—but all estimates of the size and or mass of the Milky Way are necessarily rough in any case, since it's too close to see very well.