Actually, many atheists would argue that there IS evidence against at least the Judeo-Christian image of a benevolent deity. This is the simple "why are there starving children?" To an atheist, there are no satisfying answers for why a benevolent deity would allow that.

Now, this doesn't preclude the existence of either a indifferent or vindictive deity, only that of a benevolent one. However, there's very little point in worshiping an indifferent or vindictive deity, thus many of those holding this belief pledge Atheism, even if they're really in a sense agnostic.

Okay, let's use your definition:

Wikipedia: "Religion is a collection of cultural systems, belief systems, and worldviews that establishes symbols that relate humanity to spirituality and, sometimes, to moral values."

Based on your comment above, you agree that Atheism is "a collection of cultural systems, belief systems, and worldviews" which seems appropriate given that only "cultural systems" is questionable.

"moral values" is behind a sometimes, so is not required to meet the definition.

So, the main open question is, does Atheism "relate humanity to sprituality?"
Atheism most decidedly DOES relate humanity to spirituality. Specifically, Atheism includes a belief that humanity created spirituality to serve its own interests. This is not the relation proposed by most religions, but Atheism isn't most religions.

NOTE: I'm unclear on what "establishes symbols" means in the context of the Wikipedia definition. If it is essentially referring to ritual, I suspect many Eastern religions would not fit this definition. The definition holds without it, so I'll choose to consider it non-operative for now. Parent also did not argue this point.

Does Atheism require a person to go to Atheist School on Tuesday mornings? no. There is no ritual in Atheism. However, many Eastern religions also have very little to no ritual.
Does Atheism require a belief in the Supernatural? no. However, as this is the defining belief of Atheism, that alone seems slim grounds to exclude it.
Do Atheists self-identify with Atheism as their religion? not usually. This is probably the best argument that Atheism is not a religion, but it won't keep others from classifying it as such, just like no matter how much Mormons claim to be Christians, most evangelicals will not accept them. The unsettling part here is that the argument is quite literally: "Atheism isn't a religion because Atheists say it isn't."

While I agree that this is probably true, consider the following:

1.) If 20% of consumers delay their purchase by six months, this may be long enough to mean that they're buying after a price decrease, or that you've lost a bunch of possible game sales. Either way you don't want to give people a reason not to buy your product.

2.) If another console maker is allowing used game sales, this may drive a significant portion of customers to the other platform. I'd happily pay $100 more to be able to play used games, and would tell my friends to do so as well. This significantly decreases the effect you describe above, as they will simply get the other shiny new console instead of yours.

3.) Many people will buy some new games and some used games. If those people choose not to buy a console, you've lost the new game sales too.

4.) Many people never connect their game console to the internet. How is this going to work again?

5.) This realistically could drive people to PC gaming, where piracy (instead of used games) is the norm. I don't think the game makers would want to trade used game sales for piracy. That would be a significant net loss as consumers would get used to paying nothing for a game, rather than $20-$30 for a used or greatest hits game.

Actually, Ubuntu LTS is supported for 3-5 years. They release every 2 years, but have an ENTIRE YEAR of overlap to allow for deployment.

This makes the yearly release with 12 weeks overlap seem downright rapid. (It's only 24 weeks if you count alpha and beta releases.)

While I admit this is significantly better than a release every 6 weeks with the prior release completely unsupported, this only moves from "completely broken" to "barely adequate" for enterprise use.

For DSLRs, there are really only 3 sensor sizes: Four Thirds, APS-C, and Full-Frame.

Four Thirds is the smallest, and I would avoid it, partially because it is the newest.

APS-C is sort of the "standard" for DSLRs. The vast majority use this, even in the "lowest end" bodies.

Full-Frame comes with a significant price premium, both in bodies and in lenses. While I understand the argument to buy lenses planning that you *might* move to full frame, I see no reason to jump to full frame when buying your first DSLR.

There are advantages in newer bodies, particularly for high ISO and video, but even the oldest, lowest-end DSLR will be streaks above point-and-shoot. I've got fairly decent glass, but still shoot with an older body. I see far more difference from a new lens than I see from comparing with a new body. My trusty D70 is still one of the best cameras for flash sync outdoors due to the electronic shutter.

The business case for opening up YOUR code is the same one any other company uses for opening up THEIR code.

Does your code increase the value of your product, or is it just an enabler for what you're really selling and providing value? Who benefits more from your competitors using your code, you or them?

A simple answer is that if you think you might be able to sell the code in the future, then you do NOT want to open source it. If you think you can sell more hardware if your competitor uses your code but you go to a customer and say that your hardware runs it "better" then it can pay off to open source.

The advantage of open code is open standards, extensibility and, if you're lucky, community involvement. You should assume that you can get the first two, but I wouldn't count on the latter.

Based on the specific case described here, it sounds like the code is providing core value, and thus should be kept closed.

Another thing to consider with open code is that if your code implements patented algorithms then you might not be allowed to open source it. The area described here sounds like it would either have some existing art that you would want to use, or you might be generating some patentable work that you should be protecting.

I agree, this is a dumb move. I want / to be a separate PARTITION.

partition /boot contains the kernel and boot-related files.
partition / contains the minimal stuff required to get a running system. This is enough to debug problems on the other partitions.
partition /usr is dramatically larger, and contains the bulk of what has become modern user space programs and libraries.
partition /home is user data.
partition /tmp is temporary files
partition /var is system data files.

Directories /etc and /root are on the / partition.

If you combine the functions of /usr and /, you run a greater risk of breaking things under a variety of scenarios.

For the average user who puts all of their data on a single partition, the distinction is irrelevant. For someone who actually cares about partitioning, there is a BIG difference.

No, you use the standard hyperthreading algorithm for when you have more cores than threads.

Schedule both threads on a single core. If either one uses its entire time slice, then move it to be alone in a core.

If two threads on different cores are each using "significantly" less than their entire timeslice, then try combining them on a single core.

You'll notice that none of these actually involve knowing anything about the processes themselves. While that may be useful for more fine-grained tuning, the simple algorithm above will cover 80% of cases in a "good enough" way.

At a secondary level, memory affinity, etc. can also drive what cores to try to put together to help with L2+ cache sharing, but this is to optimize the more difficult cases, or cases where there are more threads than cores.

Why is it so hard to believe?

1.) The world is BIG. Particularly the oceans.
2.) People are SMALL. Compared to the size of the Earth, people make up very little of it.
3.) People don't live very long (in a geologic sense.)
4.) Because of #1-#3, the affect appears to be very slow or even non-existent. It took lifetimes of global warming for people to even notice that it was happening.
5.) Because of #1-#4, it seems like a natural process. There have been lots of climate changes on geologic timescales, and people have trouble seeing the difference between "a few human generations" and tens of thousands of years. They both get lumped into the category of "a really long time."
6.) Conversely, for those who do understand the relative timescales, global warming may seem to be happening too fast. It's a bit fantastic to believe that man is doing in a few decades what takes nature centuries to do.

I can certainly believe reasonable people have a hard time believing in man-made global warming. We're so used to accepting it as fact that we don't realize how fantastic it is. People are changing the PLANET... in a matter of DECADES. We're ants moving a mountain, we just happen to be dumping that mountain right on top of ourselves.

dd is suboptimal for this because it doesn't zero out unused sectors. For linux filesystems, clone2fs is the equivalent command. I don't know if something similar is available on OS X.