5) British cuisine.

Primary pleaders they are called sometimes by Congress. That is people who come before committees asking for some legislation that will benefit them directly.

Justifiably they are given a great dose of skepticism (but probably not enough).

Please, no more articles based on the writings of a primary pleader.

> Without death, there's no evolution possible

Unless a species can modify its own biology, or the evolution of _technology_ or of _societies_ can be included. And in practice, it is: evolution is not just DNA biology, it involves entire ecosystems and behavior that are effective, but contained nowhere within the biology of a species.

Science fiction author "Gennady Stolyarov" isn't listed in Internet Speculative Fiction Database either, and the book's publisher, "Rational Argumentator Press" has a grand total of *one* publication, and its web presence is a section of Mr. Stolyarov's personal site. So what we're dealing with here is the self-published work by an unpublished crank sci-fi author -- not that there's any dishonor in being an unpublished crank sci-fi author. There's lots of us around.

I peeked inside the book, and what strikes me is that if you squint, this *looks* like a religious tract pitched toward children, right down to the colorful but stiff illustrations. Take a look at the cover, with it's child dressed in a blue oxford shirt, red tie and khaki chinos banishing death. This is peculiar, in a way that I applaud; an image pitched at children by someone so far out of the mainstream that she has no idea what a culturally "normal" child looks like. That's a good thing for the world, although it may not do much for the author's message. It's more important for people with an oddball streak to write books than people who think like everyone else.

This book appears to come out of the same impetus that underlies a lot of religious impulse: rage at the fact we're are going to die. It's a fact we *should* be uncomfortable with. Religion does the most damage when it makes us too comfortable with the prospect of death. The afterlife becomes a make-up session where we can do the things we put off line life like reconciling with estranged loved ones.

Anyone who regards speculation about technological singularity enabling indefinite human life extension as a "promise" is taking far too much comfort in what is, at best, an intriguing idea. But the universe itself has a finite lifespan; any being who could last to the heat death of the universe, or even a single 2 million century "galactic year" would be so far from human that calling it "transhuman" would be like calling ourselves "transprotozoans".

Whether we just disappear after a mere century or so, or survive as something unrecognizable as human, our opportunity to experience the universe as ourselves, as humans, is brief. We should make the most of it, no matter what we plan to leave behind when our human existence is done.

I was not referring to the insertion of false data: I was referring to its insistence on doing a local cache, appartnely not part of the system DNS, _after_ switching DNS servers and potentially needing new DNS answers due to being in a different DNS "view". This is common enough practice with various proxy and load balancer configurations, to have a different DNS record on the internal network than on the external network.

Inserting false DNS records is a whole _different_ security risk, one that is an ongoing problem that web browsers can do little about. In theory, it should be noticeable via SSL certificate failures. In practice, there are so many stolen "CA" or "Certificate Authority" records in the wild that can be used to sign arbitrary SSL certificates that we canot rely on a fake website not having a signed, apparently legitimate SSL certificate even for a corporate site like a bank. So poisoned DNS records, which is the problem you are referring to, are a much larger risk than one might expect. And the browsers can do _nothing_ about this. It's a failure of the SSL architecture.

Oh, my. No, I'm afraid it's "greatest common denominator". it's the standard mathematical "term of art" for the largest number that can that two, or more, numbers can be divided by, with no remainder. "Greatest common factor" may be more clear to you, but failure to use the correct label should be a troubling sign with anyone you expect to do mathematical work.

Is the iTunes Store not to your satisfaction? It's always worked fine for me. I never notice the DRM.

The tendency of Firefox to preserve its own DNS cach means I cannot use it when hopping from VPN to VPN with split DNS running. unless I configure and install my _own_ local DNS server to auto-reconfigure every time I activate a VPN. I'm afraid it's become unusable for me for real work and testing when switching from internal to external website access as I debug network and configuration issues: it's the only browser that fails this way.

That's completely correct, sir. The heavens can no longer discriminate against people who have preexisting sins. See heaven.gov to see whether you qualify for a plan that has a maximum deductible of 5000 years in purgatory before you are 100% guaranteed entrance into heaven.

In Heaven you will sit around passing a bong back and forth with God until the end of time, with occasional teeth cleanings. Gold and Platinum plans are available that include options for 72 virgins, or for your own planet to rule over, or for the next in a series of afterlives as an elephant, then as a tapeworm, then as Ted Nugent, then as a cricket, and on and on until you achieve Enlightenment with an endless supply of meth and the memory of your life as Ted Nugent to serve as a guide.

If you like your particular religion, you can keep it. (Of course that's assuming that people wouldn't tolerate a religion where their God sucks donkey balls anyway- which it turns out, is false.)

Well that's the whole point- we obviously can't rely on God to fix the situation on his own behalf. He has his own interests, and would obviously like to discriminate against atheists and heretics, and keep them from entering heaven. After all hey arrive confused and with awkward questions for Him- especially assholes like Stephen Hawking who will instantly start quizzing Him about quantum gravity. He sees it as a waste of His endless time. That's why we needed to make it a law, with a mandate on God to allow all individuals into heaven. Even guys with more money than God now have to face the fact that this is working. So folks, just remember to check out heaven.gov or go to Hell.

Well, "set a thief to catch a thief."

One of the reasons for the dysfunction we have in Washington is that all the rules that are supposed to protect the public interest have become so complicated that they actually promote crony capitalism. You need someone who knows how to hack the system to catch people hacking the system.

Go ask Saddam Hussein about that.

1, They haven't started digging yet. Still in the gum flapping stage.

2. Even if they do dig it, Nicaragua, not China will have the controlling interest. Nicaragua will.

3. China does NOT have anything like a blue water navy. There is no chance they could project force into Central America.

Next time try to get a better percentage of your facts right.

NOT Sonicwall!!! Gawd it SUX.

The less your UI has in common with that clusterfuck the better.

Given Newton's later descent into religious mania, he might not be the best example here ;)

As an older programmer, I'm fond of some very good quality, older tools such as "webmin". Not all the modules added to it are excellent, but its very clean and very flexible for many core system utilities such as BIND based DNS. It's also much more robust than any configuration tool that relies on a separate, manually configured back end database.