That's because creationist Christianity (usually evangelical) is a cult. It's not recognised as such by most because it's become so main stream; but any religious sect that preaches absolutes (e.g. the bible is inerrant) and is blind to any other way of thinking is a cult.

I'm not familiar with how Ubuntu package and push their software. Do you get everything inc the kitchen sink with each crank of the wheel whether you want it or not? Red Hat, in between major/minor releases bundle up new RPMs into errata. An errata may contain one or more RPM packages that are tested/required to be installed together, and they're delineated into three types, prefixed with:

RHBA - Red Hat Bugfix Advisory
RHSA - Red Hat Security Advisory
RHEA - Red Hat Enhancement Advisory

In our production environment, we avoid anything that's an enhancement (too risky) and consider each bugfix and security errata to see if it's application to our builds, and whether we want to install them or not, and whether the fixes would warrant a new QA effort (time consuming and costly). We're not forced to, nor are we forced to take each point release in turn if we don't want either. That's the way it should be done.

And oh so bloody convenient. I'm with hairyfeet on this one, though we're never going to know as they quickly dumped the corpse at sea. I've long believed that he copped it pretty early on in the campaign. But announcing his death at that point would have muted the ire of public opinion, and that didn't suit the political aspirations of the war mongering neo loony right in US government at that time. Much better to have his ghostly presence live on as a target for public hatred. Now, with the coffers empty and US dollars needed at home to try and right the economy, and with continuing loss of US soldier lives, it's the right time to announce his death. Something the government had to do in order to claim victory. But there are no pictures; a body quickly and conveniently disposed of in such a manner that it can never be recovered, and no evidence that can be ratified by an independent third party. This whole scenario is a work of fiction, now that the US government have decided it's the right time to kill him off.

The reason may have an element of FUD to it, but the consequences aren't. People don't buy computers to just sit there running an O/S, and the majority of HP-UX Itanium builds I used to be involved with were commissioned to run Oracle. So this is going to hit HP Itanium sales hard and HP Itanium customers even harder.

Oracle seem to be getting more ruthless in recent times. They aren't playing very nice with Red Hat either as they've killed off support for ASMLib and OCFS2 on RHEL 6. Clearly an attempt to force customers wanting Oracle RAC clusters on Linux off RHEL onto Oracle's own Red Hat clone. Small wonder that Red Hat have reciprocated by making it harder for Oracle to get a free ride on the work Red Hat put into the kernel.

Personally I think it's pushing it to classify RIM's BlackBerry as a smart phone. I have both an iPhone 4 and a company Blackberry given to me for work. The Blackberry is a clunky unwieldy toy compared to the iPhone with a fraction of the capability. I use it as little as I can possibly get away with.

I still think a better solution is to make it impossible to write malicious software in the first place

If it was that easy it would have been done already.

Maybe an in-between solution is for Google to vet apps that request more sensitive permissions.

And how do you determine if an app is going to request sensitive permission without umm, vetting it in the first place? Chicken and egg situation there mate.

Perhaps another step is to make it so that by default the app asks for the more sensitive permissions but the user has to confirm them individually

So you have a situation where the app is constantly asking the user for confirmation before doing things, kind of like how MS Vista used to do. We all know how well that was received.

I guess that Apple obviously thought this through properly before they released their product. Maybe Google should eat some humble pie and just emulate what Apple have done.

I heard once that London Irish rugby club used to get theirs shipped direct from Dublin because it was better than the stuff the UK distributors had.

It is a little extra special when it's fresh. If you're ever in Dublin visit the Guinness Museum at the Guinness brewery. At the end of the tour make sure you visit the Museum bar and sample a few jars. It's a real treat :)

Fizzy pap? How can you say that - there's nothing fizzy about draught guinness. The old conditioned bottled guinness you so fondly wax over was fizzy. It had no head and the bubbles were very much part of the drink. I remember it too as a young man, and my great grandmother (who lived to about 93) used to drink half a guiness 'n black (blackcurrent) every day and swore by it.

But the whole point of modern draught guinness is that the bubbles are designed to be tiny, foamy and slowly rise to the surface to form a nice creamy head. There are no bubbles left in the body of the drink once it's settled. It's just smooth black silky goodness.

The "guinness cold" pint is just an option; an advertising gimmick applied to a number of brand ales and beers.

No it's not: "Ireland" is exactly that. It's not called Southern Ireland or anything else that describes it as part of a whole - just "Ireland".

Northern Ireland may be on the same land mass and have the word "Ireland" in it, but today it's part of the UK, not Ireland. Different currency - GBP not the Euro. Different road signs - Miles not Kilometers, etc. And Guinness originates from Dublin, Ireland.
       

Exactly. Were you cold, miserable, broke, jealous, hungry, scared or have anxiety attacks before you were born? Nope, and that'll be what it's like after you're dead too. Nothing to worry about at all.

Guinness is an Irish dry stout, and Ireland is not part of the UK.

It's not fizzy either, so if you've been served "Cold, stale coffee mixed with seltzer water" and told it was guinness, then you've been had.

A colleague of mine used to work at Google and told me there is considerable pressure put on you to come up with something concrete and constructive from that 10%. It's not a free time to just dick about with whatever takes your fancy, it has to be for the betterment of Google.

Hopefully no you can't turn it off; because if you can then miscreants out there will find a way to turn it off for you, without your knowing about it. More to the point it won't be you that get hit like that, you're obviously intelligent/paranoid enough to notice. It'll be your computer illiterate friends and neighbors.

I remember Big, default "CDE" panel

Oh come now, fellow old timer, you can do better than that. Surely you remember MWM (Motif Window Manager) and twm (Tom's Window Manager)? All this fancy GNOME stuff; kids today don't know how good they've got it. Heck, I remember when, to get to the internet, we had to use special routers that used DECnet to encapsulate TCP/IP packets, because the latter was so new. The www hadn't been invented yet and spam only existed in tins.

Me too.