Granted, I installed Team Nocturnal's modded EVO Stock image. Still, the thing does everything I want, has an app that adjusts my ringer/app/etc. volume and brightness during certain times of day and when I'm geographically at the office. I rarely ever (maybe once or twice a month) have any sort of app crash. My Yahoo and work (exchange) emails both Just Work(tm). The browser does a better job than a few desktop browsers I've used. Youtube and Netflix are actually usable. Apps that are written well perform nearly flawlessly in terms of performance. It does everything I want, short of winning me a lottery ticket. It is stupid simple to backup and modify the software image. It has replaced my kindle as my ebook reader of choice; it is just as reliable but performs much better. The camera and video recording features are actually usable and yield results I'm not embarrassed to publish online (camera not so much depending on lighting but the 720p video is fine). Extended battery life runs plenty long enough to watch a few movies on Netflix or 4-5 hours of Youtube. I can push or pull data off the phone via simple USB connections. It has replaced my regular alarm clock and does a better job. The WiFi pulls up to about 25mbit and pushes up to about 15mbit (no 802.11N, only G). 4G (wimax) service where I live averages about 7mbit at 1 bar (of 4) of signal strength, which is plenty for everything I use online.

In short, I can't really complain at all about the thing. Most of the family and a couple friends have them and they have rarely had any gripes.

Software Test Engineer is NOT a subset of Software Engineer.

Just be honest in the interview. If they ASK you to guess, then guess. Otherwise, just tell them what you know. You might be a perfect fit but you might be missing the particular skills they're looking for.

Is a possible rise in sea level of greater concern than a possible die-off[sic] of a huge swath of sea life? Not sure, thus my question.

I'm also not sure how you extrapolated "denier" or "not happening" from "how would we know" i.e. "what evidence is there of similar past events and how would such evidence inform us?"

Note the large, friendly letters.

Question seems to be, has this ever happened before? If it has, how would we know?

People will believe something because they want it to be true, or because they're afraid it is true. This holds in spite of evidence to the contrary or the absence of any corroborating data.

Doubly unfortunate is that assertions like this ask the accusee to prove a negative, knowing full well that proving it would necessarily reveal source code and/or trade secrets and/or secret agreements with governments.

How do you think torture sessions go? Do you think it's multiple choice? Or even simple yes/no? "Hi Mr. Terrorist, Sir. We heard Jamiya Islamia was going to bomb Atlanta. Is this true?" No. Most of the guys doing the interrogation have some studies (formal or informal) in psychology. They know better than to ask leading questions. "You are planning to bomb Atlanta, right? ANSWER OR WE CUT ANOTHER FINGER OFF!" Well, duh: "YES YES I AM PLEASE DON"T KILL ME!" Morons.

Disingenuous at best. There's a big difference between confirming suspected intel and turning a prisoner into propaganda. There is also a tremendous gulf between broadly applied and completely opportunistic use of it and the "graded escalation" the US goes through before utilizing distasteful tools. Of course, such fine distinctions aren't exactly helpful to The Cause, are they?

http://baencd.thefifthimperium.com/

Any of the available series by David Weber, David Drake, John Ringo, Eric Flint, Mercedes Lackey and probably a bunch of others I forgot to mention. Mostly Sci-Fi, adventure/fantasy and military leaning stuff.

As for other stuff...

Vernor Vinge's A Deepness in the Sky and A Fire Upon the Deep are good harder sci-fi novels.

Terry Goodkind's Wizard's First Rule series is excellent fantasy adventure.

Brad Thor's Lions of Lucerne starts a good military series.

Vince Flynn's Mitch Rapp series is also a good one.

If people think their own government security/spy agencies aren't hacking (or coercing their way) into their own (non-US) infrastructure, then that's more a statement about their own gullibility than those mean, nasty Americans and their dastardly Patriot Act.

Dear AC,

The comma goes inside the quotes.

Sincerely hoping you don't breed,
The Rest of the English-Speaking World