I won't argue that there isn't something wrong with the fact that those businesses paid so little in taxes, but I do wonder why your ire seems to be directed at the businesses themselves, rather than the dysfunctional government which allows the loopholes. If what they did is legal, then why wouldn't they take advantage of the loopholes to preserve value for themselves and their shareholders? When you do your taxes, do you take all of the deductions available to you, or do you take some sort of moral high road out of patriotic duty? I'm annoyed that my net worth isn't enough to let me play the same games. Hoping that the US tax system will become fair is useless. What most folks don't recognize is that making adjustments to the tax code is a powerful tool for Congress-critters to reward or punish friends and foes. Probably more powerful than earmarks, because it's subtle.

Bob is a PINK unicorn, you damned dirty heathen!

I don't typically respond to ACs, but I'm genuinely curious about what I got wrong. Please enlighten me.

What's your point, exactly? That my faith in the logic of math and science is equivalent to Sarah Palin's faith in the veracity of Genesis as an explanation for why we're all here? If so, that's pretty stupid. You seem to be saying that because I abdicate responsibility for understanding every detail of how the A320 I'm in gets and stays in the air, that I've put faith in someone else and therefore it's exactly the same thing as placing faith in L. Ron Hubbard's claim that Galactic Overlord Xenu blew up billions of rebels on Earth 85 million years ago and their souls hang around to cause mental illness today.

Yeah, that makes sense, thanks for pointing it out. I never would have made that connection.

My theory, having been raised fundamentalist Pentecostal and losing the scales over my eyes in my late teens: Religious people fall into one of three categories:

1. Completely incurious and uninterested in anything which contradicts or otherwise isn't addressed by a literal interpretation of their scripture (never mind that the scripture often contradicts itself!).
2. Recognize that religious belief is not necessarily completely logical but are OK with that and don't try too hard to reconcile religion and science beyond a weak "god of the gaps" approach.
3. Some combination of the two, usually moving in the direction of 1 -> 2... In my experience, this is the dangerous time for religious belief, as a person with enough curiosity and/or intelligence will begin to recognize how completely illogical (and perhaps damaging) fundamentalist belief is, and may well become completely disillusioned with the whole thing. An individual starting on the 2 side of things may not feel that religious belief is as pernicious as one moving from 1 -> 2 and may be more comfortable with keeping it as part of their cultural identity.

So to more directly answer your question, most religious people aren't interested in trying to develop a more nuanced form of belief, because it requires a LOT of work! If A is actually possible, then maybe B is too, and well let's think about C too, oh, and then there's D..Q, etc. etc. I suspect that this mental shuffling is why personal-belief style religions (e.g. evangelical christianity) tend to attract more rigid people than hierarchical and paternalistic religions (e.g. catholicism, eastern orthodox, islam, etc), where the thinking is done by a select few who get a lot of reinforcement from their peers (other clerics) and the predigested Deep Thoughts are passed down to the faithful who happily believe without taking responsibility for forming the basis of their belief.

Have you ever actually met one of these people who devoutly and fervently believe in the non-existence of God? Really? Insecure theists love to imagine (at some level, perhaps not concretely) that there is some kind of Anti-Church where all the Atheists go every Sunday and not-believe in their God. The idea that there could be people who don't believe in anything in particular just Does Not Compute for them.

For most of human history, the vast majority of us have all believed in the existence something other than the physical world (be it a well-developed mythos like modern religions, or simple animism, or something in-between). The concept of just plain old not-believing is not something those who have been steeped in belief are wired to "get". At least people who believe in something else are comprehendible (but WRONG!) to them.

The reality, as so many other have pointed out, is that atheism is a religion like not collecting stamps is a hobby. Or to go all Zen about it: A Believer asked a non-believer what he believed in. The non-believer replied, "Mu." The Believer was not enlightened, and went away more confused and hostile than ever.

A useless distinction to allow insecure folks some kind of pointless illusion of non-confrontational middle ground. Either you're a Believer, or you're not. Period. Have some courage in your (non-)convictions.

Lustre is pretty cool, but it's not magic pixie dust. It won't break the laws of physics and somehow make a single node faster than it would be as a NFS server. It's for situations when a single file server doesn't have the bandwidth to handle lots of simultaneous readers and writers. A "small" Lustre filesystem these days usually has 8-16 object storage servers serving mid-high tens of TB. The high end filesystems have literally hundreds of OSSes and multiple PB served. The largest I know of right now is the 5PB Spider filesystem at Oak Ridge National Labs.

One nice thing about Lustre on the low end is that you can grow it... Start out small and add new OSSes and OSTs as you need them. This often makes sense in Life Sciences and digital animation scenarios where the initial fast storage needs are unknown or the initial budget is limited (but expected to grow). But if you're never planning to get beyond the capacity of a single node or two, Lustre is just going to be overhead. I don't know much about the other clustered filesystem options.

You do realize that words have commonly-accepted meanings, right? Your argument makes as much sense as me going around claiming that up is down and black is white and insist that because there's no institute of official English language my use of those words is perfectly valid.

"ir" == "not"
"regard" == "consideration"
"less" == "without"

ir- + regard + -less == "not (without consideration)" == "worthy of consideration"

Yes, one could argue that "irregardless" is a valid grammatical construction, but it's invariably used to mean the opposite of what the construction would imply (to anyone who gives a shit about language and effective communication of ideas).

That doesn't make them any less stupid. Anyone with even a basic understanding of prefixes and suffixes should flag "ir-" + "regard" + "-less" as nonsensical in context. "not" + ("regard" + "without") == "with regard", or worthy of consideration. It's right up there with "I could care less" in the retarded language department.

For the record, I twitch at most uses of the word "decimate" as well. It's rare that one would get to use it properly in most conversation, and rarer still that it would both be used properly and understood properly by the recipient. I don't use it, personally.

...

As opposed to weak purposes? I think the phrase you're looking for is "for all intents and purposes".

I'm sure you could care less about getting it right, but irregardless, that is a rediculous goof-up.

Called into question by whom? Who has serious doubts about anthropogenic climate change (ACC)? You? Are you a climate scientist with a PhD in climate science from an accredited institution (aka fancy book lernin')? No? OK. So, you have your doubts, but you're not a climate scientist. So, on what are you basing your assertion that the research behind ACC is in serious question? You read stuff on the internets? You watch/listen to FOX and other contrarian sources? On what are they basing their assertions that ACC is a liberal hoax? "Research" funded by the fossil fuels industry?

Why on earth would thousands of climate scientists back the assertion that the earth is, on average, warming significantly due to the CO2 that we're dumping into the air at a prodigious rate? What's in it for them? Do they get paid off by Al Gore and his SuperLiberalFriends(tm) task force? Do they use it for pickup lines at the bar (hey baby, it's gettin' hot in here, and I know why...)? Assuming that there is SOME reason for all of these scientists to band together and promulgate this enormous falsehood, do you really think that such a major conspiracy could hold for very long, with so many people participating in it?

OK, so you don't actually believe that there's a vast left-wing conspiracy. You're smarter than that. The problem isn't that climate scientists are all consciously trying to hoodwink us, it's just that they're mistaken. They're misinterpreting the data. Almost all of them. All except a few (who just so happen to be employed by or otherwise funded, directly or indirectly, by fossil fuel companies, but that wouldn't affect anything) who have bravely stood up to go on FOX and tell us all about the Big Lie (or Mistake, if we're being generous/sane/whatever).

Please explain to me. I want to understand, truly I do.

I hope that was a joke!

Ha, yeah. Got it, thanks! Also got the "exceeded capacity" message, boo. Hopefully it will work later. They didn't count on the /. effect. :)

Hi! jerkbob_at_pobox_thatthingsunwas_com please and thanks very much!

So you're not anti-environment, you're just anti-social. The world is your ashtray, eh? I have few strong pet peeves, but that is one of the big ones for me. I guess you wouldn't mind if I brought my dog over to your house and let him shit on your driveway, huh? At least the shit decomposes eventually.