It's not as well known as it deserves to be, but the early Christians were actually a very diverse group. What we now call Gnosticism was representative of many if not most of them.

Sadly it was systematically stamped out, largely in part because there is such great power in organized religion and adherence to its dogmas.

Excluded, "non-canonical" books like the Gospel of Thomas, the Book of Enoch, and the Gospel of Judas are really fascinating to read.

That's both sad and amusing. Having read and learned about the Bible, I can tell you this much: the geneologies in Genesis and elsewhere are not complete and exhuastive. They do not claim to be complete and exhaustive. Nowhere in the Bible is it so much as implied that they are.

The standard ancient Hebrew practice of listing such geneologies is to list only the most famous/notable ancestors. More mediocre and lesser-known ancestors are left out deliberately because they were not considered worthy of mention. Thus there are large gaps of unknown time in the geneologies listed in Genesis and elsewhere. Nothing to the contrary is ever claimed. This fact is not even difficult to find out, except that it does depend on doing your own homework instead of letting the TV and the culture do the thinking for you. The main point of all the geneologies in the Bible is to establish that the line of King David was known (old testament) and is the same line from which Yeshua (new testament) is descended, which is important because various prophecies concerning the Messiah predicted this (e.g. Isaiah).

To infer some kind of final ultimate Age of Humanity or Age of The Earth from this is madness. The Bible never represents it as such, and anyone claiming it does is simply unfamiliar with the very book (and ancient Hebrew culture) they are claiming to understand. The Bible makes no claims whatsoever concerning things like how long ago Adam lived, how long ago Noah lived, how long ago the Flood was, etc.

Most self-described Christians don't know this and that's just plain fucking lazy, to be frank with you. You believe this is the WORD OF GOD and yet you can't be bothered to learn a few easily researched facts about it?? This is what happens when people always have some excuse for why they won't do their own thinking and their own learning.

If you are conducting the surveillance of me necessary to make that determination, then your surveillance is faulty. I merely gave an example scenario and I don't share this puerile urge to make everything into a personal matter. So I wrote in such a way that I made no claims about my own programming skill or lack thereof, in order to provide a hypothetical. What I wrote is equally true whether I've never seen a compiler before or whether I am an advanced expert.

The hostility you have makes you appear stupid because it prevents you from thinking of such things. After all, such things might make me seem reasonable and level-headed. That would be like giving aid and comfort to The Enemy, right?

At no point did I say that anyone should or shouldn't work on this project. Re-read it yourself if you doubt I know what I wrote. To paraphrase: what I said is that it's an unusually important project and therefore the work involves higher stakes. No one is really going to care very much if you screw up a free single-player solitaire game. If you screw up SSL, that can impact many other people in negative ways. By saying that I am hardly keeping competent people from their jobs, though it's flattering that you would ascribe to me such power.

This isn't difficult to acknowledge; at least, it certainly shouldn't be. Is there something about saying it that makes you so angry? Were you built up by praise you didn't really earn and are coming to realize how fragile a foundation that really is, or what (by means of my "platitudes")? Beware of hating someone for no good reason, someone who means well by you and wants good things for you. It's one of the more toxic ways you can pollute yourself.

Ever heard of the principle of non-resistance? If he really was trolling then my post will affect him more than it could affect anyone else.

I don't really think he was. I think he made an emotional outburst reflecting his view of an unpleasant (but improving) situation. That can seem like trolling especially when it turns into a big story (among techies anyway) like this did. But I don't claim to know his heart and I could be wrong, in which case the above applies.

Both bosses should go to jail. Depending on the situation it's called collusion and/or conspiracy.

I would attribute it more to economy of scale: It's cheaper to produce one speedometer that will work across your entire product line than to produce one tailored to the maximum speed of each model you sell.

The Soviet Army's logistical apparatus would have fallen apart without Lend Lease, so again, you're welcome.

The Government fights the last war, because it's reactive rather than proactive. If 9/11 had consisted of four blown up airliners via wheel well bombs this hole would have been closed a long time ago. Likewise, if some jackass hadn't tried to light his sneakers on fire we'd still be able to board without taking our shoes off.

The speedometer on my Suzuki Reno went up to 140mph but that poor car started to struggle around 110mph. ;)

Public schooling was never intended to encourage curiosity and deep understanding. People like that would be too difficult to manipulate via advertising, PR, carefully cherry-picked news, and other forms of propaganda. No one in politics or business wants that.

In other words, the answer is a truly universal system with no insurance middlemen.

He had a birthday party at the Russian embassy in an attempt to mask his involvement with Russia? Then filed for assylum, waited on approval, finally moved to Russia, and engaged Putin on TV, all in a clever attempt to cover up for the fact that he was a Russian spy/plant all along? That is stretching the bounds of credulity.

So you're basically saying that you're like the French?

P.S., You're welcome.

Good thing I never said that then. All I hinted at is the stupidity of punishing ~100,000,000 gun owners because of the actions of ~14,000.

Whew! Good thing Earth isn't being heated by a giant thermo-nuclear oven too!