Ahh, but the interpretations are just fancy wrapping around what is actually the theory: the mathematical framework, and the bits you measure. I would argue that interpretations are completely irrelevant: you could say that an interpretation of Newton's theory of gravity is that angels are responsible for pushing bodies towards each other as a proportion of their mass and inverse proportion on the square of their radii.

It's a daft interpretation, but doesn't change the maths.

Although the assertion "only evolution occurs" is dodgy science, there still is not a single fact about the shape and nature of life as we observe it which is not explanable by evolution.

So you might say that the default position is to assume that only evolution occurs, because no other mechanism has been found to be necessary.

A theory is more than that, though: it must explain completely, or to a very large extent some phenomenon. Evolution explains the diversity of shapes obeserved in animals, the tree-like hierarchy of similarity between species, dead and alive, clarifies the notion of species (offtopic, if some expert can tell me what a species if when talking about prokariotes, I'd be fascinated to hear them).

String "Theory" purports to do the same thing, though I am thinking it may not qualify as science at all...

But the point is that yes, a theory may not have overwhelming evidence in its favour, though well established ones do. But the important thing, and that which I suspect is so grating to the fundamentalists out there, is that as a theory, evolution explains pretty much all about life, which does away with the notion of some creator god. Yes, yes, it is not abiogenesis, but it lays a path from some really simple proto-life to, say, elephants, and soon enough, this proto-life will be recreated in the lab.

The point is that Trolltech was very approachable, and would probably have agreed to have developers "try out" their kit. But this was never what the whole controversy was about. Also, it is completely unenforceable to prevent people from using the free version to develop their apps and buy the nonfree one at the last instant. It never was a real problem except for freeware and shareware developers (who are slightly scummy from the point of view of free software anyway).

The controversy on licensing was about whether the trolltech licence was GPL compatible, and whether it was in fact legal to distribute the free version of Qt. This was eventually corrected/clarified, but the greater point remains that this was largely a pretext to start GNOME, because had the license been the real problem, reimplementing Qt 1 was clearly the easier way.

As long as you were not going to redistribute you soft, you could use the free version. And then, what do you know, buy the commercial one, pretend your developers are magic and it's done. TT was not going to stop you...

It's just that "free" is somehow infinitely better than "really, really cheap". But even then TT worked pretty well.

If you could not recoup 2000 E from gained productivity per developer over a year, the toolkit would have been no good, and you have no business in commercial applications. So it made a lot of sense.

I suspect even without the licensing thing, there would always have been a problem with a core of people wanting C and not C++, and a strong NIH syndrome at RedHat... Had it been only a licensing thing, there was this project to recode Qt called harmony which was pretty far along.

You could make Unity as a Plasma containment. It would take about 5000 loc (all of a week's work for a dev). But then, I guess all the gnomistas in Ubuntu would cry foul.

So for the peace of their community, they went the stupid route.

in .kde/share/config/kdeglobal, you can change the value of

ButtonLayout=1

This will change the button order. This is one of those things that should never have a GUI option :). But this is KDE, so an option there is!

Ahhh, so you are not a believer -- or at least not a Christian of any major denomination, because that requires the belief in the literal death and resurrection of Christ -- but you are very keen on explaining away absurdities as "symbolism", because long ago in the rarefied spheres of theology -- a non-subject is there ever was one -- educated people with too much time on their hands have realised there was a fundamental problem with the factual accuracy of the Bible. Not that they told anyone outside the Church.

And that did not stop debates on whaether the virgin Mary stayed literaly a virgin while she was giving birth.

Of course. I mean, The Bible was forbidden reading for Catholics for the longest time. But this is completely irrelevant to what people believe. If the Catholic Church wanted its follower to stop believing in literal miracles and see themsymbolically, I am not sure they would be trying to find miracles so they can canonise a new batch of saints...

And the Catholic church is "science friendly".

No, you believe Christ is dead and resurrected. Literally. Otherwise, you are not a Christian belonging to any major denomination. Of course bits of the Bible are symbolic, but many of these bits were first written as literal accounts of the truth. For centuries, the illiterate European peasant was told by his semi-illiterate priest that Christ slept as an infant in a manger, and believed it literally. Never mind the symbolism.

What makes your faith superior? Were this peasant and his priest mistaken? Were they not both good Catholics?

Why, if the bible is not the source of some material truth, would you try to calculate the age of the Earth from it -- and that was mainstream! Why would the Church care whether the Sun turned around the Earth or not if it were just symbolic? Why would people that routinely burnt people for sorcery find that the miracles were suspicious?

Again, what makes your faith superior? That you know there is no such thing as sorcery? Despite the Bible telling you so explicitly? Why is this bit about mixed textile perfectly reasonable and the next bit about sorcery not?

Augustine was a very clever man. And he tried to make sense of scripture using reason and could not -- make no mistake, post hoc "symbolism" is the ultimate cop-out. Had he been born in more recent days, he would probably be some godless atheist toiling in some laboratory...

The problem with this is that the Bible is largely not symbolic. It is written as an account of actual facts, that really happened in the real world. And this is how it was taught for many, many centuries.

And then comes along to Age of Reason and Enlightenment, and suddenly people demand consistency, and somewhat sound logic. And proofs. And the Bible was from that point on seen as more and more symbolic. And the parts which are truly Evil reinterpreted to fit the evolving morals of the time.

So now, it turns out, you are "Christian" but believe completely different things from people who called themselves Christian for 90% of the time there has been Christians. Anything you believe that is relevant, as in, makes some physical difference in the world depending on whether it is true or not will be explained away eventually.

You seem like a good person, so why call yourself religious at all? Why believe in irrelevant things which you deep down know are not true, and just live you life as best you can. Because life has meaning: the meaning _you_ give it.

Dude, better anything than Rogers basically requires you to exist and not try.

I am not a lawyer. But clearly, this is equivalent to allowing people to sign blank cheques in exchange for potentially nothing, without them explicitly agreeing to. How such clauses would be conscionable mystifies me. If the laws in the US allow that, and people are not outraged enough that some member of congress will find enough colleagues to put a stop to that (because a super-popular law is worth a lot of votes -- and this compensates potential losses in contributions), you guys deserve it.

Although frankly, No one deserves the North American telecom companies. Seriously. No one. I gave up on having a mobile phone at all, because I refuse to give them a single cent.

Right. This is what I meant. I have some bizarre conception in my head that education ends with you getting a PhD, and Bachelors being some sort of drop-outs.

That'll be at some point in the future, I guess ;)

There is exactly one Ponzi scheme which works: immigration. This is the real source of the US's riches. Generations upon generations of immigrants building their lives and enriching the country. Why do you think your country is rich? Natural ressources are good, but you are not Saudi Arabia, and that's a good thing too. The institutions are good but not great, although they are extremely stable. The infrastructure is pretty crummy. The primary educational system has pretty dismal outcomes. But new generations of immigrants bring in their skills and motivation.

Higher education is good, and the spillover in new industries drive the new economy, but you know the joke: "what is a Russian professor teaching Indians and Chinese students -- A US University classroom". Immigration is the key there. Again, it is a Ponzi scheme, new generations generating the wealth to sustain the older ones.

But this is a good and virtuous one! Embrace it: it makes the US vibrant compared to Old Europe, and I say that as a European rather found of my continent!.