"besides when was the last time anyone ran an applet these days?" - I did today. The best chemistry stuff on the web runs on Java applets. Jmol and Marvinsketch anyone ?

You can see the black and white widgets with Firefox 3.5.

You must only know evangelical protestants. Episcopalians have no trouble with evolution. The Presiding Bishop, Katharine Jefferts Schori has a Ph.D. in evolutionary biology. I don't think Methodists have much of a problem with evolution either.

I am an atheist with degrees in the biological sciences. I have no problem with Christians who believe that god guided evolution. The fundamental source of variation at work in evolutionary processes is mutation. This is mediated by radiation and other quantum mechanical processes. So evolution is funamentally stochastic. It can have many possible outcomes dependant on what mutations are presented when and where. A sane and scientific Christian believes that God guided it by presenting the mutations required to bring about the world He has chosen. While I interpret it on the basis of the Many Worlds Interpretation of QM.

The two of us live in the same scientific world and we are likely to agree on the same evidence and its interpretation in evolutionary theory. No my problem is with the YEC's and ID people.

The YEC's are obvious raving loony fundies, the American Taleban. While IDers try to subvert the theory of evolution by by presenting non science (nonsense) as science.

Exactly and it's a damn set easier to alter program setups in Gnome gconf that in the Windows registry.

Furthermore in a modern Linux distribution like Ubuntu no one needs to use the command line to run and administer the system. Just some experienced users with a Unix like OS background know that you can do a lot of things a lot faster with it.

Like Ghandi said about western civilization so too would American democracy be be a good thing.

bill@bill-desktop:~$ sudo apt-get install lynx Reading package lists... Done Building dependency tree Reading state information... Done The following packages were automatically installed and are no longer required: libmp4v2-0 Use 'apt-get autoremove' to remove them. The following NEW packages will be installed: lynx 0 upgraded, 1 newly installed, 0 to remove and 3 not upgraded. Need to get 1168kB of archives. After this operation, 4997kB of additional disk space will be used. Get:1 http://mirror.csclub.uwaterloo.ca/ hardy/main lynx 2.8.6-2ubuntu2 [1168kB] Fetched 1168kB in 4min27s (4373B/s) Selecting previously deselected package lynx. (Reading database ... 265683 files and directories currently installed.) Unpacking lynx (from .../lynx_2.8.6-2ubuntu2_i386.deb) ... Setting up lynx (2.8.6-2ubuntu2) ... bill@bill-desktop:~$ lynx slashdot.org #News for nerds, stuff that matters Search Slashdot Slashdot RSS Stories Slash Boxes Comments Slashdot News for nerds, stuff that matters Jump to articles * Submit Story * Help * Log In Search ____________________ Search Create Account * 17:51 (NORMAL LINK) Use right-arrow or to activate. Arrow keys: Up and Down to move. Right to follow a link; Left to go back. H)elp O)ptions P)rint G)o M)ain screen Q)uit /=search [delete]=history list

yes sudo apt-get lynx

It's open source compile it yourself, gcc still runs on OSX 10.3.9. That's the sort of fun project you get stuck doing if you don't update your software.

On Linux I once had a site try to download a .exe file on me and Wine opened it. Though it started executing a process it just hung, too different environment to do any damage.

This is typed on an IBM Model M keyboard manufactured on 21 Oct 1988. I found out that fact by turning the keyboard upside down. It sure is goddam heavy.

I got it in Feb 1989 with an IBM PS/2 30-286. This is its fifth computer in twenty years and it is still going strong. My wife who is a touch typist loves it and she considers any other keyboard substandard.

<quote><p>I've not read the whole thing yet but it sounds like they've managed to prove that if free will exists then there is no non-local hidden variable theorem compatible with the results of QM.</p></quote>

Yes

It's the Amerikan Gulag

"A couple of years ago they picked some writer in England because he was a leftist."

I take it that you are referring to Harold Pinter who won the Nobel Prize for Literature in 2005 the last male British writer to win this prize. This comment just shows how little you know about English literature. Pinter is indisputably the greatest living British playwright and in the view of many including myself, who has been seeing his plays since I was a child, the greatest living playwright in the English language. This indeed does qualify him as a leading contender for the prize which he so deservingly won.

The political controversy over the prize arose because while hospitalized by a serious infection he videotaped his Nobel Prize acceptance lecture "Art, Truth & Politics" from a wheelchair. It was a scathing attack on US war of aggression against Iraq. Any suggestion that the award was made for political reasons is both erroneous and unwarranted. The criticisms of Pinter were that he used his award as a vehicle to put forward his political views. But this comes from those whose job it is to viciously denounce anyone who condemns US foreign policy so in fact it is a compliment. What is a public intellectual for but to criticise the wrongdoings of those in power.