I'll wait for the simulated Johhny Appleseed. Then at least there will be an actual reason to post the story on Slashdot.

Occam's Razor says no such thing. What, prey tell, is simple about the idea of one soul? How does it get distributed? Does it grow or shrink with the life and death of living being? There's nothing simple about the proposition it all. If we assume at least one soul then Occams's Razor calls for a one to one correlation of living beings and souls. Indeed, absent the assumption that there is at least one soul, Occam's Razor, if it said anything at all on the subject, would say that there are zero souls. It doesn't get any simple than that.

An apple "isn't" 1 either. So by your definition nothing is real, which actually turns out to be true. See also Maya. All science is a model. Our very perception is but a model. "essentially, all models are wrong, but some are useful". Is math useful? OK, then, it's as real as it gets.

"It still is mostly a server OS ..."

Yes. I just answered a call on my Samsung S3 server a little while ago in fact. I also watched some TV on my Comcast Server Set-top box. I'm thinking you either don't know very much about Linux, or what a server is.

The question is absurd, but you totally miss the boat as to why. Employee count as a metric is much like Lines of Code. One employee may be better than 7 others taken as an aggregate, just as a single line of code may be worthless or invaluable.

This virus doesn't attack Linux at all. It attacks PHP web applications. They could run on Linux or any other OS. The brute forcing is what the botnet does once it has a foothold on the machine in question, and has nothing to do with the attack vector.

"Warzones" as defined by who? The FAA didn't include this area in the area they warned US carriers to avoid in April. Should the airlines monitor the media for reports of SAM installation sightings?

Certain parts, apparently not including the area this plane was flying over.

Who the hell said no simulation of water will quench thirst?

Well, I can't speak for Dr. Chun, but I have known for at least 25 years that computer systems are merely a modeling of humans, albeit subconsciously so. Networking is merely a model of the psychic connection that one can attune to with enough meditation. Claiming that it is a poor assumption that the mind works like a computer has it bass ackwards. Computers function like the human mind, for that is from whence they come. Also, I should point out it is called Artificial Intelligence, not Actual Intelligence.

" If your definition of "intelligent" includes "we don't know how it works" then one day you'll wake up to find yourself unintelligent."

So he'll finally figure out what the rest of us immediately determined when we read his post, then?

I did read those links and they did not warn against bank transfers except overseas (and overseas transfers are quite different anyway - I can't simply entering an overseas bank account number in online banking to initiate a transfer as I can with domestic accounts). In fact both links are primarily concerned with phishing, not the sort of fraud we've been talking about. Obviously that is because the scamming you've been claiming is such an issue is not actually significant - it is phishing that catches people. My bank also warns me against phishing, yet they don't warn me against using direct transfers. What does that tell you?

If your claim is as minor as you're now saying, my response is "so what?" You might as well say that you can't be scammed in a transaction if you don't enter into private transactions at all. It's true, but it's irrelevant. Of course I concede that cash is less vulnerable to certain types of fraud than other payment methods. But the theoretically higher incidence of scamming with direct bank transfers is still so low that it doesn't matter. The fact remains that if scamming was as widespread as you make out then people would not use TradeMe or similar markets. Those markets exist, and are massive, ergo scamming is not the problem you think it is.

Cash doesn't work best for this because it is only practical for transactions in a limited geographic area. How far are you prepared to travel to gain this protection you rate so highly for a $20 transaction? $100? $1000?

Again, those links you provided do not warn against direct bank transfers. Did you actually read them?

Yet TradeMe still exists and people use direct bank transfers than any other payment method on the site. If your claim (that business this way is not practical) was true then people would not use direct bank transfers. But they do. Ipso facto your claim can't be true.

But the system still works. You haven't provided any evidence that it doesn't. You haven't even provided evidence that the incidence of fraud is higher with direct bank transfers.

No, you're misrepresenting my position. I never claimed there were no scams. I said it was not a significant problem in practice. Perhaps that is due to a difference in the cultures of our countries. But the fact remains that the system works here. When you claim that a system that is in widespread use doesn't work, that's not skepticism. It's simply denial. Again, I am not talking theoretically - if you believe I'm wrong you can track down the crime statistics for New Zealand and prove that there is significant fraud on TradeMe. But you'd be wasting your time because there isn't. There are isolated cases, but not to the point where it's seen as riskier than any other private transaction, and certainly not to the point where the system doesn't work.

Again, the system is widely used here. So the onus is on you to back up your claim that it can't possibly work with evidence.

Your position is that direct bank transfers aren't safe essentially because the seller is not so easy catch if they decide to commit a crime. This is exactly the same as the difference between mugging someone in a public place ("leaving a bank") and luring them to some place private before mugging them.

You're saying "it can't possibly work, because scams". I'm telling you it does actually work here. The concerns you have raised are simply not a significant problem in actual fact. The system I've described is not some theoretical idea, it is how actual business is actually conducted in the country I live in. Not sure how I can say this any more plainly.

Someone dealing in cash can just as easily be robbed by the seller.