On the other hand, the reason for most people's belief is probably "I was born and raised with Religion X so that is what I believe." That doesn't appear to be Analytical or Critical thinking.

To be fair, there are plenty of people who have their children skip vaccines on the word of Jenny Mccarthy. People will listen to whatever advice sounds good to them.

We are about halfway between XP/Server2003 and Win7/Server2008 R2. I get pretty bummed out every time I have to deal with the XP/Server 2003 boxes. I can say a lot of bad stuff about Microsoft, but their current operating systems are pretty darn good.

As much as I despise the anti-vaccine crowd, I have a problem with making vaccination a criminal issue. Once we open the door for "You will put this chemical in your/your offspring's body because the government says you must", a very frightening precedent will be set.

I'm going with "Gay people have a genetic disorder. We have to cure the gays of their gayness!"

By "cure" they will mean "throw into a vat of boiling oil" or "press them with rocks" in an attempt to burn or squeeze the gay out of them. It is a fail safe solution. None of the subjects displayed symptoms of being gay after "treatment".

This "Give me your password" technique should be used in hiring. Especially in Network Engineering/Admin type positions.

HR Person: "Please provide your login credentials for Facebook."

Candidate: "Here you go."

HR Person: "You FAIL."

After all if you are willing to hand over your personal passwords to some random HR person, can you really be trusted with root passwords/domain admin passwords?

Not to mention what this is implying for the legal system in general. You or I "Might" have several pounds of Marijuana laying around our houses. You or I "Might" have some type of bomb strapped to our chests at this moment. Subjecting my person or home to searching is a gross violation of rights in this instance. I fail to see why computers should be thought of any differently.

The occasional local currency is legal as well. Take for instance, Berkshire Bucks

Why would they pray to God for a new vaccine? Vaccines cause autism and are evil!

Regarding the comfortable and pleasant....

I myself like having two "Home Office" type areas. My actual home office and....my balcony! On really nice days one of the largest benefits for me is that I can grab my stuff and go sit outside. I find myself to be much happier and productive outside. Of course, you need to have an area shaded enough to read a laptop screen.

Of course, you do have to remain disciplined to keep from getting distracted outside just as you do indoors.

Whenever someone tells me they are preparing for the apocalypse, the world economy crashing, or some other catastrophic event by buying up some gold, I highly recommend they scratch that idea and just buy up a bunch of whiskey. It is an item a lot of people will want that can actually be used.

The difference is that the conservatives have the God and wholesome family value add on pack and the liberals have the "But that isn't any good for you. Let me help you to be better..." add on pack. Both ways of thinking lead to slightly different versions of a messed up government.

The company I work for is the US subsidiary of of a much larger Japanese company. We have several colleagues from Japan that oversee and/or work with us. If they want something, we pretty much have to give it to them.... and they are the friendliest and most reasonable people I have ever worked with in my life. They don't really interfere with anyone provided the job seems to be getting done, they let me get away with absolutely anything with regards to my schedule, they trust and respect my expertise, they enjoy socializing within the company (as well as the language barrier allows them)/helping others with problems when they can, and they would absolutely never ask me to do anything demeaning.

Basically they treat me so well that I'd feel like a complete ass hat if I didn't do the best work I can.

I really think you should walk into a few poor urban classrooms. You seem to come from a fairly educated background, so expect it to be staggering. It isn't a situation where you have one or two bad kids acting out with an incompetent teacher. There are loads of kids with some serious behavioral problems. They can't sit still, they can't stop talking, they can't concentrate on the material...a lot of them have some serious problems at home. Tacking on a few more hours of school every week isn't going to help the situation. Having the children get out of their desks yet again when a teacher enters or leaves will be counterproductive to calming them down....that and they don't give a shit about some code of honor you are trying to instill. They certainly won't clean up after themselves. How are you going to enforce it? Give them detention? They won't show up. Kick them out of school? They have to be sent to another. And yes, they'll eventually get cycled back around to your school. The teachers have no way to control their classrooms. No amount of "Training" is going to fix that.

Apple market share for computers is about 14% right now. If 14% of your users are complaining that they want to use a Mac at work just like they do at home, they will pretty much be ignored and considered quite annoying by IT departments.