Pearo

So, he was right about some things and wrong about others. No one is perfect. If he had used the same scientific process that he used to discover electricity and applied that to his God theory, he would have discovered that there was no testable or repeatable empirical evidence for a God. If you were open minded enough to do the same, you would also come to the same conclusion.

Why is this so hard for people to understand? I perform an expermeint and observe a results. I do it another 20 times and I see the same result. Someone else does the same experiemnt, gets the same result.. Its like the old electricity argument. Cant see it, but I can assure you that my indirect observations of the buttons I press on my keyboard and the letters that appear on the screen that its a fairly repeatable indirect observations. Its the same indirect observations that allows me as an electrical engineer to design the stuff that the modern day creationists use to shun guys like me!

I have seen (and met) Laurence Krauss a few times. He would have to been one of the best speakers I have seen in the scientific world. His stuff is beyond me, I dont get any of it, but the way he explains the more simple things is pretty impressive. What is more impressive, is that he is one of those people when he speaks, never prepares anything, he just gets up and starts talking. I would love to read his book, but I think it would be over my head.

Stop trying to be rational.

Noted. My issue is cervical spine, so that's the work of a neurosurgeon apparently. Definitely interested in others opinions on this subject though, as the thought of getting surgery on spine does not really appeal to me that much. Thankfully is covered by my insurance, so I can choose where I go.

Thanks for wishes as a non believer, not a god hater ( you cant hate something that does not exist!) I am sure Brian Jones is an inspiration to many, but my injuries were not that bad. For me its a matter of prioritising getting fixed by doctors and spending some time on the sidelines or going flying. I am enjoying flying to much at the moment, so the others stuff can wait for now. I can walk, not far, but I can make the pub (500m) and back so life is good!

My New Year Resolution is to get an instrument rating, and as much as it frightens me I want to get some basic aerobatic training. The latter more so doing spin recovery and some slightly more advanced unusual attitude recovery. And whilst everyone is on the weight topic, I would love to do that too. I need an operation on my knee and spine due to a pretty bad trail bike accident a few years ago, but I know the recovery time is going to see me sidelined from flying for a while. Not keen for the couch so I will suck up the pain for now. The end result of that is exercise is virtually impossible (including walking). So in lieu of exercise, I guess I am going to have to cut back on the vino and food, so sad. Life was so much easier and pleasant when I was super active, I used to go do a 10km (running) race on a Sat morning, go sailing then retire to the pub for the evening. Ultimate goal, do some time in gliders, but probably wont happen till I get those operations done... Maybe I should just bite the bullet and suck up that time on the couch...

I would not say a terrible generalisation, but more an honest observation. I am a Microsoft developer, but I make a hell of a lot more money from the hardware I design and all my hardware runs Linux, so you think I would be religious about Linux. I also do a lot of cross platform dev with java that runs on Windows, Linux and Mac. I don't have a preference, I just use what works, and I earn an income for making stuff work for people. You want me to write software your favorite OS, then I will do that without conviction as long as you are paying me. If you are religious about a particular OS and you are paying me, I will tell you what you want to hear. But, if you want my honest opinion on something so you can make an informed descision, then I will tell you they way it is. I use and make a living from Windows, Linux, OSX, IOS, Android and some other OS's that most here would never have heard of. Opinionated nerd? Maybe, but at least I am educated and informed on the products I am discussing.

I am forced to use computers as I still make a living from them! My preference is for Win 7 as most of my dev stuff is targeted at Windows OS. For linux I run Ubuntu in a VM. Mac stuff (limited) I use a macbook. Also have the obligatory iPad for ozrunways plus android phone. For most home users, a PC has to do 2 things, browse the web, download email, and download from digital camera. The email part is mainly web based now, so that means all you need is a broswer and a way to download photos. For this, windows, mac, linux all do a perfectly good job.

Let me guess, you spent 20 years working for the same company too? I use ubuntu. They have tried to lift the UI from Apple, and they have done a bad job at it. The Ubuntu UI sucks. I dont have much time for linux as a desktop OS. I use it extensively as an embedded OS, and its great for that. I just think the UI's on offer are to clunky and not really user friendly. Like most linux devs, I tend to opt for the console.

Maybe to preserve a bit of our countries history?

An update from me, still using win 10 with no issues. Re. the updates, I am on a pro edition, so I just changed the update stuff in the group policies to prevent it from doing stuff on its own.. My business partners are complaining about some remote desktop stuff via web, as both chrome and edge have both dropped support for NPAPI plugin. Apparently firefox still works. Not sure if its possible to install windows explorer onto win 10, but that would also work. Not really a win 10 issue though, more a browser issue.

Probably the same reason so many christian priests raped little boys. The difference being that the shooter is immediately guilty , whilst the christian bodies will spend millions in court to deny, hide the facts and try place blame on the children that were violated.

Praise Be.

Funny you should say that, because that is exactly what I had in the back of my mind.

FWIW, I have the pro version of win 10. I was using a 3 modem the other day when the thought occured to me that windows has a nasty habbit of downloading updates and chewing up my data allowance. So I decided I better tell it not to download updates without my permission and... No can do. cant see an option to prevent automatic downloads, just an option to prevent automatic installation of the updates. Annoying. Have not tried to find a work around yet, but I am sure its possible somehow.

There really is no excuse for any company not to upgrade from XP. I can understand individuals, but not organisatins. It was known about for a long time, and the upgrade path was not that difficult. All the software I manage was upgraded to run on Windows 7 in the Vista days, and it mainly just required recompiling with the newer API's. If you let your software get that far out of date that it can't be recompiled, then you have already put your organisation at risk. As for not worrying about security patches, if its on a network its vulnerable, period. Its also putting your whole network at risk. I must be the only person who has not had an issue with Windows 10. I upgraded my laptop and its going great. Mind you, I am a little scared to upgrade my PC yet, mainly because I cant handle any downtime on it for now.

If you look deeper, you will some references to a total of 14 commandments.

The annoying thing about XP is that it serves most people fine but it then becomes a security risk for everyone on the internet, including yourself. XP is now 14 years old, the question is how long should companies like XP be forced to support a product? Imagine if you were unable to buy parts for your 14 year old car?

Is that a bad thing?? (Sorry, starting to sound like a linux user there!!)) IF you have grief with I tunes, mediamonkey used to be a good replacement. I dont use mediamonkey anymore because I have a paid spotify subscription, but it was a good product back when I did use it. Might be worth a try.

I have installed win 10. No problems so far

We keep on being told that religion, whatever its imperfections, at least instills morality. On every side, there is conclusive evidence that the contrary is the case and that faith causes people to be more mean, more selfish, and perhaps above all, more stupid. ― Christopher Hitchens

The pope is just marketing, trying to suck people back in to the church. He is pretty good at it too. If he was sincere, he would piss off all the Vatican wealth and actually use it to do good, Instead, they use it to pay lawyers to cover up pedophilia. Its disgusting and I cant believe people are actually falling for this rubbish. EDIT. Just a thought. I now rank the pope as the worlds biggest hypocrite. Up there I had idiots like Bob Geldof, Mel Gibson and Russel Brand etc. People who should just learn to shut their gob.

A lot of people are fooled by s116. There is no separation of church and state in the Australian Constitution and the high court has confirmed that on more than one occasion IIRC.

I have a samsung phone (I think a s4) and my wife has the HTC. The HTC seems to be a much more robust phone than the samsung offering. Years ago I was working for a consulting arm of microsoft, and we used HTC smart phones with windows OS (well before apple and android existed) and they always seem solid to me. HTC has a longer history with smartphones than most of the players out there.