Yes, but isn't this potentially just a matter of these individuals choosing not to use the agnostic label for themselves?

I find that most people I talk to are confused about the differences between agnostic and atheist. Many get the terms completely reversed or believe they "mean the same thing". At what point do you simply accept that more people get the basic idea of "atheist" (as one who chooses not to practice or participate in any of the organized religions) than agnostic, so you use the label more readily understood?

I once talked to a self-proclaimed agnostic with what I thought was an interesting take. He said being agnostic was about "simply knowing that it's impossible to know" any specifics about a god/creator. So essentially, he was agnostic because he felt there was no compelling reason to accept any one religion as more likely "correct" as another. To him, atheist didn't fit his views as neatly, since atheists tend to take a more pessimistic view about a creator or god. Perhaps not an absolute "There is no god!" statement, but a "I won't believe one exists unless new evidence comes to light and compels me to do so." attitude.

I feel the same way, but for a different reason. TomTom has utterly failed to release a quality product that works as-advertised, IMO.

I've used quite a few in-car GPS systems over the years, and used them pretty extensively, as I worked as a courier for a while using one, and used others to find customer sites while doing on-site computer service work.

Here in St. Louis, MO, for example? We have a lot of zip codes, and a lot of municipalities. The TomTom's I've used barely have ANY of our zip codes in their lookup tables, so when you try to enter an address starting with the zip, it's worthless. Additionally, I've entered street addresses that don't come up on a search either. Without the ability to narrow it down by the right zip code, I'm left trying various city names. (You'd think "St. Louis" would do the trick as a "catch all" around here, but again -- there's no telling with the way TomTom has things arranged. Sometimes I have to guess if perhaps, the address is indexed as being in Arnold, Fenton, St. Louis, High Ridge or Mehlville.) Sometimes, I never do get it to locate the street I need -- and I have to resort to scrolling around on the map with my finger, until I find it on the screen. THEN, when I tell it to take me to the location I tap on, it *finally* displays the street address it couldn't locate at all on a lookup!

To be fair, I thought that "S'more Maker" was a clever little device, for only $15 or so. I don't really know anyone who wanted to make those on a BBQ grill in the first place? But doing it the old-fashioned way, over an open flame with a stick of some sort, always leads to messy s'mores with random tree bark bits or other junk on them, from the stick you used. It might be a way to do it pretty well on a grill, and I'd probably try it just for the heck of it.

Most of that other stuff seemed pointless or too expensive to me.

The best advice I could give a wanna-be cook using a grill? Buy yourself a Weber kettle type charcoal grill (the model that's around 22" in diameter is the perfect size, IMO). I like their "Performer" series the best, because it integrates their classic grill with a rolling cart that gives you both a place to hang the lid of the grill when you remove it, a place to hang 3 grilling utensils/tools, and a swing-out bucket to store your charcoal. But if you're on a budget, just go with the regular old model for $100-150 less. I've owned a number of grills over the years, and 90% of what's for sale at your typical hardware or home improvement store for under $500 is not going to last more than a few years without rusting out or getting all rickety and clunky, with loose/bent hinges or parts that break/stop working. The Webers are built to last, by comparison. If you want proof? Just look at what's left outside, chained up with bicycle chains, at your local Home Depot or Lowe's store. You'll quickly notice that the Weber grills still look pretty good, while a lot of the other stuff has rust spots developing already, or cranks to raise/lower the grilling surface are getting squeaky and binding up.

Your typical Weber kettle type grill has a decent thermometer built right onto the lid, and for most grilling - you want to let it get to around 400 degrees. If you didn't load it up with a whole lot of charcoal and it seems to be hovering around 300-350 and just won't get quite to 400, you may simply need to open up the vents in the bottom of the grill (assuming you've already got the top ones open).

To grill such vegetables as asparagus? Again, get the grill to around 400 degrees, but grill them with the lid off, turning them several times to get an even BBQ'd look to their entire surface. 3-4 minutes is all they should need.

Other than that? I'd recommend avoiding lighter fluid if at all possible. What works well instead is placing old newspaper or paper towels under the pile of charcoal and lighting it. Lighter fluid is a pain because you really have to ensure ALL of it burns off completely before any food is placed on the grill. Otherwise, you get a lighter fluid flavor in your food ... and it can take a pretty long time to get all of it burnt off, since it tends to soak into the charcoal immediately upon using it. The briquettes that get hot enough to turn white may not have any fluid left in them, but you've usually got those outlying ones around the edges of the pile that are still black ....

I agree with the people here saying the remote thermometers and such aren't all that useful. I got a cheap one for Xmas last year as a gift that does everything that iPhone ones does, for a total cost of $20 or so -- so that's probably the smarter thing to buy if you really must have one. But IMO, the more important thing is keeping an eye on the time things are cooking. If you've got an iPhone? Good ... set an alarm on it to remind you to flip your burgers after 5 minutes or what-not, but just use the grill's own thermometer to make sure the temps are ok.

From my experience in hospital environments, radio reception is often VERY poor. You've got lots of metal in their construction that tends to block signals. Doubtful you'll have any luck receiving a time signal via GPS unless you plan on running antennas all the way up to the roof of the building.

As I posted already, NTP is a perfectly good way to solve this problem. You simply have ONE system designed to be your time server, which synchronizes over the Internet via NTP, and then all the firewalled off devices behind it that DON'T have Internet access can update their NTP time info from your local time server.

I don't get why people (like the parent poster) are blowing this up, out of proportion?

You don't have to expose all of the hospital devices/systems to the Internet, just to ensure they all have the same, accurate clock time!!

All you need is ONE device permitted to access the proper port for NTP protocol through a firewall, to set its own clock as the master, and then have it redistribute the date/time info to the remaining devices on the hospital's LAN!

It's not like the hospital doesn't already have Internet access and a firewall in place. They probably offer free wi-fi in the waiting areas, if they're half way modernized -- and even if not? They surely have Internet connectivity in place for at least a few needs.

I know you're just trolling, but seriously? I can say "It's just a stupid ..." about practically anything people enjoy watching or participating in. (I'm often tempted to say it about major league sporting events, myself. It's just a bunch of adults playing a game originally designed for kids, kicking a ball around, and getting paid huge salaries for it. How stupid! Can't people get a life?!")

Others would surely tell all of us to get a life, because we're sitting around reading stories on Slashdot.

I'm not really a TV watcher myself, but I've seen a few episodes of Fringe, and thought they were pretty interesting. I started downloading more episodes as I was able to get ahold of decent copies of them. I haven't really had the time to watch more of them, but it's nice knowing I have them on my hard drive, so I can eventually get around to checking them out if and when the opportunity arises.

The point I guess I'm trying to make is -- people can't constantly be in "go, go, go" mode, trying to actively do or achieve things. We all need downtime too, and I'm not just talking about sleep. Entertainment is crucial to a fulfilled life, and it takes many different forms. Not everyone likes the same things, but that's why there are so many options around. I find that half the time, I'd rather play a video game than watch a TV show -- but others get *nothing* out of gaming. So someone following these shows (and probably discussing them with friends too) would certainly be motivated to get new episodes in a timely manner.

How about an apology from the multi BILLION dollar industry centered around weight-loss and dieting? You know ... all those asshats trying to guilt people into paying $79 plus some outrageous shipping charge for the "ab lounger" or "thigh blaster" or whatever piece of crap they're hawking on late night TV, and every knucklehead gym rat who decided to make a living with a concoction of powder or pills that claims to "add muscle" and "burn fat"?

What's "normal" is constantly evolving, my friend. If most people today are a little bit heavier than they were 50 or 100 years ago? Then that, indeed, might just make "chubby" the new "normal". People have definitely gotten taller than they used to be, on average. We have a transportation museum in town with lots of old locomotive cars and engines, and it's amazing to sit in the cab of one of those old steam trains and realize how little headroom it had, and how small the seat was for the engineer. Back then, they considered it enough room for the average person.

To all the people complaining about the "outrageous" price of $99? I'd have to point out that Microsoft doesn't make their own computer hardware, so their stores aren't able to stock pre-made "restore" discs to bring their systems back to a "clean" state as people bring them in.

Unless they're making it a requirement that you supply the proper recovery discs for any system they work on, $99 isn't really a bad price for what's typically involved.

It's not that often I can simply wipe a hard drive and load a copy of Windows 7 on a given PC, and have everything on it fully functional. That tended to work out the best when Win 7 first went retail, since MS tried really hard to incorporate drivers for everything they'd encountered up to that point in time. But as new PCs have been manufactured since then, we're seeing everything from oddball proprietary webcams to newer video chipsets that don't have their drivers in Windows 7 itself. Sometimes, it can automatically download the correct driver, but just as often, that doesn't work and you have to go get it from the appropriate vendor website.

Plus, you've still got all the other things that require updating, post-installation, like the anti-virus software (which I would *hope* you'd include as part of your clean Win 7 install for someone).

I know when I do on-site PC service work for people, I bill $75/hr. for my time, and I'm one of the cheapest in town at that price. (Most I've encountered want $85/hr. and up). It takes me well over an hour to load a new Win 7 on a machine, make sure all the applicable updates are done, and all the right drivers are installed.

Yeah... especially with online banking, it seems as though someone had a very poor idea for password security that got foisted upon ALL the major online banking sites - just when some were starting to come up with much better and more practical solutions.

I remember one of my banks started playing around with the idea of having you select several images from a gallery, in a specific order, as a secondary part of your login. You'd still sign in with a password you selected, but there weren't many limitations on it (other than it having to be longer than, I think, 4 or 5 characters), but you also had to match up the image sequence.

I thought that was a pretty good way to enhance password security without people resorting to using difficult to recall passwords that they'd wind up writing down on post-it notes, or constantly forgetting and locking themselves out of the site.

But that quickly vanished with a website revamp -- replaced with the same maddening stuff I've seen all the banking sites doing recently. (Basically, they ask you to select from a few security questions and key in responses, which you have to randomly answer in the future. They're always really poor questions like, "What was the name of your first car?" -- where you're likely to say something like the make and model initially. Then later, when asked, you forget if you keyed in just the make, the model, make and model using all lower-case letters, make and model capitalizing both words, or what? And yep -- locked out again! And the password itself always has some requirement of having numbers and a capital letter in it, and being more than 8 characters -- ensuring you'll wind up with something you can't remember.)

I wouldn't say Facebook's global nature is the problem either. The fact that the majority of its users are outside the USA doesn't mean any fewer USA based users are viewing a given advertisement. I'm sure FB even allows targeting the ads to the extent where you can restrict them to only be viewable by people coming from particular countries. (I remember trying out a bit of FB advertising myself, for my on-site PC repair business, and I believe it even let me target the ads down to within so many miles of a specific zip code. Either that, or it was effectively doing something similar when I asked it to only display it to "local" users.)

I think GM is correct, that Facebook ads simply aren't a very effective way to sell new cars to people. Everyone I know who becomes interested in a new car purchase switches from a mode of ignoring all the advertising out there to paying a lot of attention. So that means, first of all, advertising really does very little to persuade someone to buy a car they didn't already decide they wanted. It's simply too big of a purchase for most of us (unless you're someone like Jay Leno, maybe!).

When a person decides they DO want a new vehicle (likely motivated by such things as expensive repairs they had to pay for on their existing one), they start doing some information gathering. For car enthusiasts, that might include reading all the available articles on the vehicles of the type/class they'd like in magazines like Car & Driver, or reading reviews on Consumer Reports or the Edmunds website. Others are influenced more by what they like, styling wise. (I know plenty of women who only get interested in cars they think look "cute". Then they narrow them down by tangibles like price, cargo space, seating, etc.)

Advertisers can actually market "cute". Look at the Kia Soul Hamster ads, for example. I guarantee you those sold a LOT of Souls. But Facebook ads don't really work well for that... You can't get in someone's face as they're watching something on TV, and "hook" them for 30 seconds. All you can do is pop up a link for them to optionally click on, with such a limited amount of info in the initial link or blurb, it can't convey an abstract like "This car is cute and fun!"

And because the Internet is more of an active experience, throwing ads in people's faces while they're trying to use it is a big negative ... much more so than TV commercials.

But I'd argue that I believe it's not really accurate. It sounds like exactly what the pro-bailout folks want you to believe....

For starters, when you speak of Ford as the "uninvolved party" and the good guy? That's not quite reality. Ford's CEO petitioned Congress in 2008 to authorize a credit line of up to $9 billion for Ford in case the economy got worse and the company needed it. Ford also received $5.9 billion in government loans in 2009 to retool its manufacturing plants to produce more fuel-efficient cars, and the company lobbied for and benefited from the cash-for-clunkers program. Ford was also entwined in the situation because almost 25 percent of Ford’s top dealers also owned GM and Chrysler franchises.

All of the "Big 3" were to blame for mismanagement and a "we're too big to fail" attitude. Ford was just lucky to be in a little bit better place, financially, at the time everything really came apart at the seams.

Meanwhile? We're in a situation today where an "American car" is often American in name-plate only. "Foreign cars" are often assembled 100% right here in the U.S.A. as well. Hyundai's plant in Alabama is one of the only non-union auto plants in the nation, and is doing incredibly well. They hire a lot of people who only had low-paying jobs in the restaurant industry and the like, before starting there. They receive training for an actual career job and pay that's at least 80% or so of what their unionized counterparts receive ... and Hyundai claims they get employees with more positive attitudes and more willingness to do the job well. Sounds like win-win to me.

Meanwhile, what has GM done with those bailout funds lately? I see Cadillac is going to build their new hybrid electric vehicle and their flagship XTS over in new assembly plants in China. Is that what you were hoping those tax dollars would be spent on?

But I feel like in recent years, it's gotten exponentially more difficult to do so!

For starters, computers have gotten so commonplace, it's nearly impossible to find someone who doesn't own one at all anymore. (That was often one of the best customers for older, working machines. People who never "took the plunge" and bought their own PC would give it a shot, if you were selling everything they needed for a low price. They didn't care if it was "slow" since they were just learning anyway, and they liked the fact if they didn't wind up using it much after all, they weren't out a lot of money.)

But another growing problem is with the places to advertise them! Craigslist is starting to get dangerous these days. Where I live, we've had at least 6 incidents in the last month or so where sellers agreed to meet a supposed buyer, only to be held up at gunpoint. eBay is just getting expensive, with a required use of PayPal for payments and PayPal taking a cut, on top of listing fees AND fees on a percentage of the final sale price. When you add in your time and gasoline (and cost of packing materials) to get things ready and off to a shipper, it's hardly worth it in some cases. Last time I went to buy something as basic as a package of 6 rolls of clear shipping tape, it was something like $14! Yet buyers still throw fits if you charge even a dime over the actual cost of postage on shipping!

And Amazon auctions? Don't get me started .... They're a great place to BUY things, but it's a hugely lopsided system in favor of the buyer, by design. Amazon is proud of the policy in fact, and basically feels you''re privileged to have the honor of selling merchandise on their glorious website. You should bend over and take any and all abuse from buyers, or go elsewhere. I practically got banned permanently from selling there once, just because my g/f moved in with me and decided to sell something of her own up there. (They have a policy against more than one individual selling from a given mailing address.)

A lot of retailers seem to be popping up with "trade in / trade up" services, but those don't do much for me either. The only items they pay anything for are still new enough that you're usually better off continuing to use them than trade them in (especially for what they pay). I have a feeling that quite a few of the trade-ins they receive are only from people who have no reason to *care* how much they recoup on the initial purchase price. (EG. Broke college students who got the items, initially, as gifts from mom and dad. People who stole the items in the first place. Etc. Etc.)

I agree with much of what you said here. But the problem I've always had with the idea that a "good" I.T. worker being one who is constantly learning new things and adding items to a resume is, it's not that realistic when one works for a small to mid-sized company. (Even more unrealistic given a slow economy.)

I've been pretty much self-taught and self-motivated to try out new technologies and computer solutions since I got into this stuff in the mid 1980's, but I've never been the type to hop around from job to job. Most of my job changes actually came about only because the place I worked for closed up. (I started out working for several "mom and pop" type computer stores, for example, all of whom eventually went out of business.)

The problem is, my peers in I.T. who were basically "in it for themselves" without much regard for their employers racked up more impressive resumes than me, especially in the dot com boom days, when it was possible to accept a position, stay JUST long enough to claim you were responsible for X,Y and Z (cool new technologies of whatever type the place happened to be using), and then jump ship in the middle of a project for better pay at the next place needing someone who used those same technologies before. Lots of burnt bridges behind them? Sure -- but there are plenty of companies out there, especially for the young and single who can move from city to city if and when it's needed.

I, on the other hand, honestly hated the stress and uncertainty of job interviews ... and just wanted a stable job doing what I enjoy.

So where did that get me? Well, I was able to ride out much of the commotion from all the failed start-ups when the dot com era went bust, so that was a plus I guess. But the places I've worked for 5+ years in a row always stuck with the same "tried and true" technology. Sure, we'd do incremental upgrades on such things as Microsoft Office, or migrate Windows Server to newer versions eventually. But there's really only so much "resume building" one can do by staying at the same company, when their budget doesn't allow for buying lots of new software or hardware -- and they're (rightly, IMO!) trying to avoid high costs of re-training people on all new ways of doing things, once they've got something in place that's effective.

I guess what I'm trying to say here is -- it's not necessarily "resting on one's laurels", just because one hasn't added all sorts of new products to a resume. But I really do think recruiters and hiring managers look at it that way, most of the time. If a business paid me for 5-6 years to take care of the same set of technologies for them, that likely means those were good, solid choices that really got them their money's worth. There's no negative in having a deep familiarity with such solutions, vs. the next guy who can list of 5x as many technologies -- most of which were failures, so got removed after money was WASTED on them.

In my experience, getting a good ground is sometimes the toughest part of home electrical upgrades, period!

Twice in a row now, I'm moved into homes that were built in the 1950's or 1960's, and didn't even provide 3 prong grounded wall outlets.
In both cases, I tried to hire an electrician to upgrade my home to properly grounded outlets, and after they did a few basic tests, essentially told me they weren't willign to go through the trouble it would take to do it. (Basically, they decided the only good way to accomplish it involved sinking a rod into the ground outside and wiring the main buss to it with an underground cable.) Either they were too lazy to do it, or simply thought it would take too much of their time to be able to quote me anything like a reasonable price for the project.

Well, actually, yes - someone *is* likely to tell you, in such a situation, that the criminal who broke into your house has a life worth "more than yours". That person is likely to be another family member of the criminal in question.

We see it on the news all the time... the crying mom with the story of how "Junior was always such a good kid." after he's arrested on charges of theft, assault, etc.

The point here is, most people think their own lives, and those of their own friends/relatives/family are the "most important" to protect at all costs. I agree with you, that the "It's just stuff. It's not worth a life!" thing often gets taken way too far. But I think the "value of a life" question itself has an answer that ALL human lives have equal value. In extreme cases, some individuals have managed (IMHO anyway) to reject their humanity and live as animals instead. Those are the ones who tend to wind up as candidates for death row in our prison system. But usually? The only difference between you and the criminal who steals from you is that the criminal made some bad life choices that led to his perceived need to stoop to that level to obtain something he wanted out of life.

Really though, Castle doctrine isn't about the idea that your stuff in your house has more value than the life of someone who wants to take it. It's about the idea that a person wiling to break into your occupied residence is presumably willing to do bodily harm to you, and you have the right to defend yourself in such a scenario. (If they only wanted the stuff in your home, why wouldn't they wait until you weren't home and burglarize it instead?)