Banning LUA because it's a munition. I did not know that - rofl - but it sure sounds like America. Just ban a language. That has already been "exported" and has many programmers and companies perfectly adept in it. Please everyone, unlearn LUA now! Anyway I'm in Central America (Costa Rica) - I was just joking about the routers. But yeah good idea to stay as far away from American tainted merchandise as possible I guess.

And they're going to do all that with Cisco routers, right? LOL

Cow farts, and suddenly we've invented cow bowling!

Considering that we have evolved all these different sensory organs to help us survive, I'm sure that if perceiving a 4th dimension granted any biological advantage at all, we would be able to perceive it. Sorry to be anthropic about it but my field is biology not physics, lol.

Math is a tool, nothing more. The universe doesn't give a damn about math - that's an abstract human model that happens to simplify things for us so we can understand abstract concepts. No, the universe follows its own set of rules and proportion, and we make math to describe it to ourselves.

Yeah, it's like chemistry. Geometry, the actual shapes of molecules, sizes and charge distribution/volume of atoms, all of these affect chemical properties. We've gotten to the point where we can easily predict certain reactions merely by thinking a little about a given molecule. One day maybe we'll find out what's behind the geometry that's forcing the basic stuff of matter to fit together the way it does.

No, "high order" intelligence discards the idea of "soul". You mean rudimentary or average intelligence, surely.

Yes and no. If it's a machine then it's a very badly assembled, and shoddily coded machine. It keeps interrupting itself, it hardly ever stays focused on a task without a great deal of training, it produces irrational thoughts and sometimes even causes its host to act upon them. One advantage, however, is that it is capable of 100% never been seen before "creativity" once in a while, as well. Code me a machine that can do all that, and I will agree you have reproduced a human brain.

I remember being able to whistle the 300 baud handshake tone, and the modem would actually try to answer me :)

I understand, and it must be a PITA for you if you absolutely must have the latest tech, bugs and all. But the software and even firmware industry now have a policy of "release THEN patch". I've always thought this irresponsible since the trend started in the 80's (before that programs were usually shipped bug free and fully tested - of course they were simpler programs too). With the advent of the internet companies got even sloppier. I mean, who DOESN'T have an internet connection to download a patch nowadays? Sigh.

So while it's not unreasonable to insist on getting value for your money, it is unreasonable to assume that the software industry responsible for your drivers will change habits that have been entrenched for many years, just to keep you happy. Their answer will be "wait a couple months and there'll be a patch that addresses this issue".

You missed it completely, didn't you? Oh well.

This is the same kind of bellyaching people do about "revisionist history". It's actually the job of historians to revise history; history isn't what happened, which of course is fixed; it's the set of *our beliefs* about what happened, which ought to change as we learn more. Likewise it is the job of scientists to incorporate new data into the scientific consensus, either by retracting part of that consensus, or elaborating part of that consensus.

This case called for elaboration, since that was the explanation that fit the facts best. Your beef seems to be that the explanation fits the facts too well.

By the way you are confusing arctic and antarctic ice caps. This year's *arctic* (northern) ice cap had a greater minimum extent than last year's, but still very low by historic standards. If you are using *last year's* minimum arctic ice extent as a baseline, that's disingenuous because last year was a historic low. This is like the way denialists try to prove climate is not warming by choosing 1998 as their baseline; that's dishonest because '98 was a record high year (it has since dropped to third place).

There's lot we don't understand about biochemistry, but we still know that arsenic is poisonous to humans.

There's a lot we don't know about physics, but we still know that a sphere of plutonium-235 around ten kilos will undergo a sustained nuclear chain reaction.

We don't know a lot about climate phenomena, but we do know that increasing global CO2 concentrations from 280 to 400 ppm will trap more energy in the Earth's atmosphere.

Not knowing *everything* is not the same as knowing nothing at all. Often the limitation of our knowledge is not *accuracy*, but rather *precision*. We know that an oral dose of 200 mg/kg of arsenic is fatal to the average human in under ten minutes, and that the fatal dose varies with body weight. That is accurate toxicological knowledge. We don't know *precisely* the minimum dose needed to kill any specific individual. We know that increasing average global CO2 concentrations to over 400ppm will cause a reduction in the total extent of seasonal ice, but not whether any particular ice structure will decrease or even increase in any particular year.

Hey that sounds like a good game still I'm sure people will manage to lose all their money so why don't we put in a feature I dunno let's call it "too big to fail" so if they lose everything we just put more cash in their account. I'd play that game.

Hey that one is almost as good as: "You guys are here talking about video games DON'T YOU KNOW WE ARE AT WAR?" Honestly if you have nothing interesting to say, why are you even here?