I ran several hobby sites around the turn of the century, they cost a whopping $15 per YEAR. IIRC they even had a blogging-like template you could use, although I used my own HTML and javascript.

The difference between a hosted blog and a hosted server is you're paying for the server, even though the costs are miniscule. About the only way you can lose your site is a DMCA takedown, which can't happen if your host isn't in the US, or if the hosting company goes bankrupt. If that happens, you simply get another host, change the DNS values, and upload the site. Your visitors will only notice a few hours downtime, the site and URL remain the same. With a blog, a new host means a new URL and a different site design.

On the other hand you quoted that nice poetic section of Ecclesiastes immediately after referencing us to a section in which YHWH commits one of his minor genocides and punishes a woman for the grave sin of checking over her shoulder.

Look at the context. You are to God what a program you wrote is to you. The "genocide" is akin to your looking at some code you wrote, saying "man, I really fucked that up" and deleting it. Lot only escaped because he did what his programmer told him to do, when Lot's wife looked back, that particular program didn't do what the programmer wanted it to -- she was buggy code. As to the incest, that was the fault of the daughters, but perhaps those buggy programs were spared because the programmer wanted to reuse some of the non-buggy code.

Of course, if you're a painter rather than programmer, substitute "painting" for "programmer." If you're a writer, substitute "chapter".

It's hard to avoid mention of it, but note the buzz about which bible Obama used was history, not religion.

Not that most self-described Christians actually read it, or behave like they've read it.

Indeed. Look at Newt Gingrich as a perfect example. I believe Pat Robertson has converted more Christians to atheism than Richard Dawkins could ever dream of.

A virus scanner will only detect known viruses. The hack you mentioned could do anything it wants and no scanner will detect it, because it isn't a virus, it's built in. The only way I could trust it is with a third party checksum like Linux distros use, and the hack came as source code you compiled yourself.

I agree with you about pricing and piracy, I felt really ripped off paying $125 for XP that was a must-install because I lost my driver disks and no W98 drivers were available after my daughter installed XCP from a Sony-BMG music CD she'd bought from the record store she worked at (she's at gamestop now and looking for a different occupation, she thinks gamestop is dying and she's probably right). That much cash for an OS that lacks features other OSes have, even previous versions of Windows, is a double ripoff.

After paying that much for XP and the first upgrade download replaced a perfectly functional LAN driver with one that was completely nonfunctional was the straw that broke the camel's back and drove me to Linux. Of course, if my occupation was fixing customers' Windows PCs like yours is it would be quite different.

I actually plan to do just that. I backgraded to kubuntu 10 because I had an install CD handy, but have been planning to migrate to Mint for a while. Everyone seems to love it and I haven't heard anything bad at all about it.

No, own your own WEBSITE. That's the only way to be sure. The downside isn't cost, you can get hosting for $15 per year. The downside is nobody will read it -- but they don't anyway.

Me, I just use slashdot. It's good enough for my purposes.

Wow, such willful ignorance. That's equivalent to reinforcing your roof to withstand a nuclear bomb, moron.

They have a doomsday religion and believe in it fervently.

Only if you consider history, geology, paleontology, and math to be religion. Face it, those who are born always die. We will become extinct some day, probably either by our own hand or by our lack of action.

You, on the other hand, worship at the altar of ignorance. Or maybe under its bridge.

This one comes to mind. The difference is, Lot saw that one coming, this time we were completely off guard.

And, you know, you only have to "endure" the bible if you actually read it. There's a lot of wisdom in that book.

To every thing there is a season, and a time to every purpose under the heaven:

A time to be born, and a time to die; a time to reap, and a time to sow;

A time to kill, and a time to heal; a time to break down, and a time to build up;

A time to weep, and a time to laugh; a time to mourn, and a time to dance;

A time to cast away stones, and a time to gather stones together; a time to embrace, and a time to refrain from embracing;

A time to get, and a time to lose; a time to keep, and a time to cast away;

A time to rend, and a time to sew; a time to keep silence, and a time to speak;

A time to love, and a time to hate; a time of war, and a time of peace.

If that sounds familiar to folk music fans, Pete Seeger Plagairized almost all of it in 1959; The Byrds popularized it in 1965. There are reams of similar wit and wisdom in that book.

Fool me once, shame on you. Fool me twice, shame on me. It just isn't beneath them -- nothing is.

It would be most dangerous to a recovering alcoholic. A hangover is actually physical withdrawal, and addicts often relapse. When they do, they usually relapse hard. Now, if their liver is almost gone this could save their life.

I recently installed Windows 7 on two machines. It took 5 hours on both machines to download, setup all patches. It restarted itself about 15 times.

I recently reinstalled kubuntu 10.04 because 12 sucked. It took half an hour, only one reboot. Strange that a free OS is so superior to an expensive one.

I'm one of those "sympathisers" here who doesn't loathe Microsoft... For goodness sakes, just release SP2 already you bastards.

My head just asploded.