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I'm not saying third-world countries are hell-holes. I'm saying that specific totalitarian or theocratic countires are hell-holes.

And no, most people don't get shot in the back of the head. They've learned to keep their head down, never to speak up, never to try to get ahead, never to try to question. It's only people who try to determine the course of their own life who have problems. Wonderful. And yeah, sure, it's not like the only thought in their heads are of oppression. I'm sure most days they just want to get home to dinner.

Does that mean they've got government they like, or merely that they've learned to avoid pissing anyone off?

I'm not advocating that everyone follows US values as you imply. I'm merely advocating that people get to choose how they want to live their lives. If they freely choose (minus unjust persecution should they decide otherwise) to be part of the religious majority, let them. But if they don't have a choice it's evil of you to imply that they somehow picked their situation. It's the new-age party line; "Interference is evil, *they* choose to live like that."

As for most people not wanting freedom of thought for others, tough. That's simply their stupidity in not realizing that their good and normal thoughts are someone else's heresy. If they want to be allowed to follow their stupid little religions they have to accept my godlessness and vice versa. Otherwise we'd be nothing but a collection of third-world hell-holes murdering each other over what flavour of god we had. Besides, I think the fact that the governments in these countries are cracking down on sources of outside information proves that the people are not happy to be told what to think, despite what their leaders would like to suggest.

I'm sure the muslim women who are stoned to death for being raped choose to be there...

You people and sixty-two million other Americans are listening to me right now. Because less than three percent of you people read books. Because less than fifteen percent of you read newspapers. Because the only truth you know is what you get over this tube. Right now, there is a whole, an entire generation that never knew anything that didn't come out of this tube. This tube is the gospel, the ultimate revelation. This tube can make or break Presidents, Popes, Prime Ministers. This tube is the most awesome, god-damned force in the whole godless world. And woe is us if it ever falls into the hands of the wrong people [...movie plot stuff snipped...] And when the twelfth largest company in the world controls the most awesome, god-damned propaganda force in the whole godless world, who knows what s--t will be peddled for truth on this network.

So, you listen to me! Listen to me! Television is not the truth. Television is a god-damned amusement park. Television is a circus, a carnival, a traveling troupe of acrobats, story tellers, dancers, singers, jugglers, sideshow freaks, lion tamers and football players. We're in the boredom-killing business. So if you want the truth, go to your God, go to your gurus, go to yourselves because that's the only place you're ever gonna find any real truth. But man, you're never gonna get any truth from us. We'll tell you anything you want to hear. We lie like hell! We'll tell you that Kojack always gets the killer, and nobody ever gets cancer in Archie Bunker's house. And no matter how much trouble the hero is in, don't worry. Just look at your watch - at the end of the hour, he's gonna win. We'll tell you any s--t you want to hear. We deal in illusions, man. None of it is true! But you people sit there day after day, night after night, all ages, colors, creeds - we're all you know. You're beginning to believe the illusions we're spinning here. You're beginning to think that the tube is reality and that your own lives are unreal. You do whatever the tube tells you. You dress like the tube, you eat like the tube, you raise your children like the tube. You even think like the tube.

This is mass madness. You maniacs. In God's name, you people are the real thing. We are the illusion. So turn off your television sets. Turn them off now. Turn them off right now. Turn them off and leave them off. Turn them off right in the middle of this sentence I am speaking to you now. Turn them off!

Atheistic humanism is as much of a religion as anything else,

If you incorrectly define a religion as "any belief system" then it can be. However, religion is restricted to belief systems that involve God or gods. I'd never heard of "Atheistic humanism." I suppose it sounds like a hateful perversion of "secular humanism." The goal of secular humanism is to teach that kindness needn't be done out of fear of going to Hell, but because you wish to creat a better world. But then, it seems that all the popular religious figures in the media fear a world where they don't get to dictate morality, so they try to pervert secular humanism to something that only godless people believe. Thankfully, I'm not so narrow minded.

You are also over-simplifying.

The real problem is that Americans tend to keep on holding on to these "friends" until they have verifiably "stabbed one in the back".

It may be fine if one of these "friends" helped in the fight against "Godless Communism" but what has he been doing for you lately.

A fine example is the Bin Laden family. Look at what good friends they still are with all kinds of high placed Americans.

Yet thet mostly all share the same religion and ideology with THE Bin Laden, Osama. To get an idea of what this means, just look at the version of Islam and the ideology that almost all Saudis follow, not only the Bin Laden family.

Do these people really look to you like friends? Or, do you live in the middle ages too?

...an atheist's god is godlessness. BTW, that makes for chaos. Not too hard to understand, really. It's why the worst philosophers are always inconsistent (at best) when talking about how to maintain an ordered society.

I was lucky enough to see a debate on this topic this past Saturday between Neil DeGrasse Tyson and Bill Nye (yes, the Science Guy) at the National Science Teachers Assn. conference. Dr. Tyson is on the GWB commission, so he was pushing manned exploration, and Nye was pushing for expanded robotic exploration.

They both made excellent points for their own side, I really came out on Nye's side... we had a "compelling reason" for going to the moon - to beat the "Godless Commies." As much as we like to think of our species as explorers, we don't generally take the physical or financial risk unless there is equal profit from it. Until we have something that will give us gain equal to the risk, there will never be the political will (driven by the will of voters) that we need to support it.

What are compelling reasons? Someone already brought up He3 - but if fusion becomes a reality and an economy forms that runs on the stuff, NASA won't need to go to the Moon to get it, the energy companies will on their own. For Mars - the discovery of current or past life would likely be a good enough reason. Nye points out that our best chance of making that initial discovery is with robots. Send people to do the more complex work that will come later.

While I disagreed with Dr. Tyson and the commission's plan, I walked away with new respect for the man (who I haven't really liked due to the whole Pluto thing). He made his case well and is fighting passionately for it. He admitted that the commission has had to so some "smoothing over" of things in GWB's speach that were "physically impossible," specifically the part about the benefits of landing on the Moon on the way to Mars. I like the idea of moving money from the shuttle towards a "space plane" or the like, but I don't like how pure science will suffer in the meantime.

If ashcroft actually cared about doing right, he would not be worried about porn or drugs, he would be trying to establish marriage counseling centers accross the nation to help couples work through their differences and to prevent the high divorce rate from going up any further!

You haven't caught on to Ashcroft's MO, I see. He would not be establishing any kind of centers except detention centers for those Godless heathens violationg his new felony crime of divorce.

...why Asscroft pushed so hard for the new "Anti-terrorist" laws. I don't think he gives a rat's ass about catching terrorists; his real objective is putting all the godless sinners behind bars.

"Let me continue for you; I've heard Zinn is a godless commie, gay and drunk therefore his books are lies"

I don't know his life. I only know his lies. The problem with his work is that he views things through an utterly invalid ideology (Marxism) and twists facts to fit it, or leaves out the overwhelming facts which do not match the simplistic Marxist worldview.

In this, he is rather like Velikovsky, who explains all of history from the actions of a magical comet. Or, imagine if Jerry Falwell wrote a book of history.

His work is as much "A People's History" as China is a "People's Republic".

IT is something that Zinn's fictions and proclamations by political pressure groups

Of all the critics of Zinn's work ive heard, Ive rarely heard bold-faced denial. Fine work, refute via ad-hominum.

Let me continue for you; I've heard Zinn is a godless commie, gay and drunk therefore his books are lies.

how's that?

Pinko commie trash, thinking that you should be able to dictate what projects a person works on.

These damn godless communists are going to destroy the world, I tell you what.

Birth defects resulting from genetic abnormalities are not typically caused by chromosome replication errors or prenatal trauma. Depending on the racial group, most humans are heterozygous for one or more genes conferring a detrimental phenotype. However, these defects are often masked because of functional expression of the non-mutant gene.

As far as "intelligent design" as a religious proposition (not scientific theory), I think you'd find that MANY scientists believe it to be quite compatible with evolution... the religious ones, anyhow. They just place the design further back in time - say, about 15 billion years further back.

Although there are scientists who believe in "intelligent design," the theory remains untestable and, I think, works as as a rationalization for those who are uncomfortable with the idea of a godless universe. The theory of intelligent design has no practical application within the scientific community, and remains firmly entrenched within the domain of religion.

The upside of this is you can't fly the mexican border smack into the side of a big building ;)

How about this for a scenario: California is has a certain dependancy on migrant workers for fruit-picking, etc. Suppose some terrorist group built a number of truck bombs in Mexico, either from locally acquired chemicals or from smuggled-in explosives. A number of young men then drive those bombs to the various border crossings and detonate them near-simultaneously, destroying the checkpoints and killing a large number of migrant workers as well as border guards. Just how badly would California's economy be screwed-over?? Even if the National Guard reinforced the remaining Border Guard it's likely that the migrant workers would stay home.

Or how about an airplane being hijacked in, say, Vancouver, being dropped into Seattle. or (please, God!) into Redmond?? Or suppose someone like the "American Taliban" had sailed a yacht full of explosives into San Francisco harbor??

My point is that it's all very well pissing off your own population with draconian security measures, but that still doesn't secure you from a fanatic who expects to die in the attack and doesn't care as long as he takes a few of the godless heathens with him to guarantee his 64 virgins in the afterlife.

I think most religions do not insist on literal interpretations of their texts.

Worse, they tend to insist on interpretations by an approved "authority" within the religion. In short, they then make up shit like "the Earth is the center of the Universe" or "homosexuality is an abomination before God" or "aliens are Godless animals". Then someone comes along who isn't talking shit ("Earth Orbits Sun, says Galileo; "Your Own Priests Fucked Me" boys say) an instead of admitting a mistake of Godly proportions, the authorities covers things up and insists on a holy war to destroy the non-believers.

Dear Redubyacans: Carefully read the essay below before you starting quoting The Bible. Thanks in advance,
Kilgore Trout

Where Is My Gay Apocalypse?
Over 3,500 gay marriages and, what, no hellfire? I was promised hellfire. And riots. What gives?

By Mark Morford, SF Gate Columnist
Friday, March 5, 2004

I have been waiting patiently.

I have been staring with great anticipation out the window of my flat here in the heart of San Francisco, sighing heavily, waiting for the riots and the plagues and the screaming monkeys and the blistering rain of inescapable hellfire. I have my camera all ready and everything.

There has been nothing. I see only some lovely trees and a stunning blue sky and my neighbor walking by with her pair of matching chow chows as a pained-looking woman struggles to parallel park her SUV. Same old, same old.

And this is San Francisco, gay-marriage HQ, Sodom-and-Gomorrahville, debauchery central. We are supposed to be careening off the nice, safe road of social acceptability right now, welcoming chaos, exploding into a fiery hellmist of our own sick godless depravity and dropping off the disgusted planet any minute now.

Where is my raging apocalypse? This is what I want to know. Where is the social meltdown? The moral depravity? I was promised an apocalypse, dammit. What am I supposed to do with all these tubs of margarine and confetti and kazoos?

There have been more than 3,500 gay-marriage ceremonies in San Francisco so far. Hundreds more are just now kicking up a storm in Oregon and in beautifully rebellious little burgs around New York state. And, yet, nothing. No chaos. No reign of terror. Not even a lousy heat wave. Sigh.

Some homosexual couples have been married for more than three weeks now, living in utter godless sin as they drive their cars and shop and laugh and cry and go to work and pay their taxes and wonder about their dreams. Lightning has not struck them dead. The Hellmouth has not opened wide its gaping maw, hankering for some of the City's trademark Sourdough o' Sin. I am dumbfounded.

After all, gay marriage is supposed to ruin the nation, is it not? Induce actual rioting and civil unrest and shirtless anarchy as millions of stupefied citizens pray to a bloody pulverized Mel Gibson-y Jesus for redemption, as they suddenly begin questioning whether ogling the Pottery Barn catalog for more than 10 minutes might mean they're gay.

"It's anarchy," some guy named Rick Forcier, of the Washington state chapter of the Christian Coalition, actually whined. "We seem to have lost the rule of law. It's very frightening when every community decides what laws they will obey." Why, yes, Rick. It's total anarchy. Just look at all the screaming and the bloodshed and the gunfire. Run and hide, Rick. The gay people in love are coming. And they've got tattoos and funny haircuts and want to get married and celebrate their love and be left alone. Hide the children.

This was -- and still is -- very much the right-wing sentiment. It was almost a guarantee: Same-sex marriage spelled the instantaneous end of all that is good and righteous and edible. Insurrection was imminent, apocalypse nigh. You could see it in their eyes -- they could hardly wait.

Hell, even Governator Arnie went on "Meet the Press" recently and proclaimed, semicoherently, that he was actually worried about the riots and deadly mayhem should S.F. continue with its brazen lawlessness. And look. Nothing. Not a peep. Not a single rabid spitting demon to be seen. Unless you count Lynne Cheney. Which you never, ever should.

I believe I have been misled. I was told repeatedly in extra-glowing terminology by multiple raging Bible-quoting drones that The Good Book expressly forbids gay marriage and gay sex, and to engage in either spells imminent doom and instant social bedlam and there are specific verses all about it.

Is this true? Are there actual verses decrying gay marriage? Are they anything like thos

Given GWBs much publicised stance on sex/pregnancy/religion , I'm sure this is the first step in outlawing anything even vaguely in the direction of sex-education/family-planning/etc on the grounds that it merely encourages the godless masses to have sex outside of marriage and without intention of producing offspring.

Essentially it's a move by the religious puritannical few to control the masses of satan-worshipping lustbucket countrymen.

Then again, this is the United States of America, said contry never having recovered from its heritage of Religious Puritans.

Seriously people, in some ways America is as much a religious freak as some of those nothing-but-sandy-deserts-and-oil countries that are so muchly in the news these days.

I know because I got to speak with George Bush, our President and one of our nations greatest leaders. He told me that he wouldnt let the liberals take over the nation. He told me he had a plan. He said that the godless, child-molesting liberals would never again rule the white house because the average AMERICAN is too smart. Too smart to believe the child rapist's lies. Out President knows that Satan works through the liberals, liberals like John Kerry who is pushing his homosexual agenda. Homosexuality is important to them because it undermines Families, and that's what they want, that's what Satan wants. George Bush is not going to let Satan win, he told me himself.
I have to get back to hitting my bong now, thanks for listening!

What kind of godless commie pinko are you??? Advertising is good. Do as your corporate masters say or you get the the hose!

Dude, people in the world don't like anything RELIGIOUS PEOPLE DO. You know what scares us godless commie europeans most? Religious wackos with nukes. Like America.

I think the most important thing is not usability as an earlier poster claimed though that is important but maintainability. Owners of small businesses with a dozen employees can't afford to have a full time network or systems administrator. So the responsibility usually falls on someone who is an engineer or administrative assistant but who is more interested in computer stuff than their average co-worker. If you put together a package that requires them to call you back in at $120 an hour everytime something strange happens, it will put the brakes on adoption. Make your money and your reputation on doing installs and never needing to come back. Make your product and service the AK-47 of the SOHO world. BTW, if any readers don't know, the M-16 has better range and accuracy but jams when not cleaned regularly whereas the AK rifle can be dragged through swamps and get sand and mud in the chamber yet keep on firing happily, at least that is the reputation. (If any godless communists with personal experience with it want to correct me, feel free.)

As for specific cool ideas... Take the voicemail to email one step further: maybe you could get voice recognition software to translate the message to words (or just phonemes when it is unsure of a word), send that to email, and act as a proxy allowing a reply email from, for example a two way pager, to be translated back into speech by voice synthesis software, then redial the original number found by callerID, read off the reply and ask for a certain touchtone or the word 'confirmed' to be said if the correct recipient got the reply. Like this:

(Metallic Voice): Hello Grandma... This is Peter... I am running late... Will be there after I pick up the kids at the YMCA...
(pre-recorded voice): If you are... Grandma... and you understand... Peter... 's reply, please press the '5' key or say 'confirmed' now.