Second. I think that theology should be taught independently of morality. Some things can be reasoned to be good or bad without getting God involved, and metaphysical discussions need not be concerned with right or wrong. Plus, such an arrangement would be far more ecumenical. Atheists can never stamp out religion no matter how good their arguments, so this sort of arrangement would really be good for everybody.

I am not sure which position you are trying to support. I won't disagree, but since most of us are programmers, I thought I'd just mention... When you accept a) that the universe is mathematical in nature and that you are nothing more than an abstract formula that exists of its own accord, and b) that all the experiences, spiritual or otherwise, of a mind are the result of a mere computation, you will come to terms with your own immortality.

I am amazed you were able to take that pun as far as you just did. Wow.

Well, I have to admit most of the people I work with now are also in technology, which tends to mean lower infection rates than "regular" users, but I still haven't even heard of it happening, which says something. My last employer used industry standard safeguards, and PCs got infected on a daily basis. Now, I just don't hear about it anymore.

Yes, the XP SP2 strain.

Rats. I got distracted and hit submit without typing in the message about Firefox being individually licensed. Oh, well, that will teach me not to reread my post before submitting.

Funny, but (fortunately) not the best analogy. I'd say it's more like having a screen door inside the bank vault. We have a lot (and I mean a lot) of precautions in place, some of which I didn't even know existed until I started working there. I actually think the easiest way to get past them all would be to physically force your way into one of our buildings and remove it that way. Come to think of it, I can't think of a single instance of malware infection since I started working there.

Another funny tidbit, though... There is an option to install Firefox on our workstations, but most users are not allowed. It's just what the software says because it doesn't know how to say anything else, but I always thought that was funny, too.

I work at a big company that takes an enormous number of precautions to secure and protect the confidential information of millions of people. And we still use IE6 with no sign of changing any time soon.

Cheers, I was curious if anybody else picked up on that. Holmes = House. Watson = Wilson. Cocaine = Vicodin. C'mon it was obvious.

ndiswrapper probably isn't necessary. The software was most likely VZ Access Manager, which is just a modem dialer. Ubuntu recognizes the modem, so you only need to tell it what number to dial: #777. I'm a total linux noob and managed to get WWAN setup on Ubuntu.

Yes. FTA:

Funny. FYI, though, it was $300 for 100 cups of coffee. It really works, too, by the way. ;)

No, there's not, but they did mention that they polled them about a variety of questions, including their caffeine use. The control group would be the subset of those 200 people who admitted to not drinking caffeine.

I dunno. To me, "clean, sterile environment" means "no bugs."