"OpenSimulator lacks support for many of the game-specific features of Second Life (on purpose), while pursuing innovative directions towards becoming the bare bones, but extensible, server of the 3D Web."

Sounds cool, but not for the purpose at hand.

(and: PDP-11 FTW -- I was part of one of the efforts mentioned in this Strange Birth article)

Tell me about it; my thinking was the same "another site to register at?". But you still managed a 3 digit ID; I delayed a couple weeks I think, when IDs were introduced, and ended up at 4 digits.

IBM is (AFAIK) not especially evil anymore, but they were deeply evil and hated in the 60s and 70s. Microsoft took over from them like a runner taking the baton in a relay race.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fear,_uncertainty_and_doubt#Definition

Of course it does. That's like saying that digital electronics theory works for you, no need to bother with analog electronics theory.

True, yet digital is nonetheless based on analog.

I'm by no means the biggest advocate of string theory, but obviously it is intended (regardless of its current incompleteness) to be a deeper level of description of the universe than is the standard model.

Even if string theory (or loop quantum gravity or spin foams) eventually succeeds at being a good theory of everything, it is quite possible, even likely, that it will continue to be more practical for most purposes to work in terms of a modified standard model.

We still make heavy use of Newtonian physics, after all.

But that doesn't mean that a theory of everything is pointless; its purpose is not identical to that of simplified working models.