Scott Adams Suggests Bill Gates For President

gerrysteele writes to point out a recent post to the Dilbert blog, in which Scott Adams discusses the atheist ascendancy in America and rationalizes the need for an atheist leader. From the article: "Ask a deeply religious Christian if he'd rather live next to a bearded Muslim that may or may not be plotting a terror attack, or an atheist that may or may not show him how to set up a wireless network in his house. On the scale of prejudice, atheists don't seem so bad lately. I think that in an election cycle or two you will see an atheist business leader emerge as a legitimate candidate for president. And his name will be Bill Gates."

Comments

Re:M$ jokes aside...

[Sqwubbsy]

You should bone up on Federalism and Alexander Hamilton. Government is not a zero sum game.
The current fiscal imbalance comes from two things: Medicare expansion and the War on Terror. Both were inevitable. Medicare expansion had been a dem talking point for at least a decade. The War on Terror had been going on as well (we had troops flying over Iraq and on the borders since the cease fire of '91.)
Tax cuts were necessary to fight off the Clinton recession of 2000. It worked. Bush has had a better economic expansion that even Clinton had despite inheriting a bigger recession and having to fight a war in his first year in office.
And the fruits are coming - the deficit is going down because of increased revenues.

Governments can only exist if they borrow money. Jefferson, one of the original Republicans and a man with great hatred for Hamilton, wanted to destroy Treasury when he was elected as the first non-Federalist. Even his Treasury Secretary Albert Gallatin realized that to undo what Hamilton did would destroy the US.

Bush has extensive business experience and the debt/repayment cycle is part of that. You have to use money to make money and sometimes you have to borrow money to make that happen.

Keep sexuality away from software

[donscarletti]

Sexuality of any kind isn't really related to software (despite what the Ubuntu backgrounds may suggest). Bringing stuff like that into the movement does nothing but politicize something that already was inherently political enough. Like it or not, homosexuality is an issue where as many people will disagree with you as agree with you and you can't prove that your right nomatter what your position is. Stuff like that causes flamewars in useful communication channels just like when Iran or Palestine is mentioned on planet.gnome.org. I don't have a problem with either side as long as they don't use violence but I just wish they would keep their politics somewhere that doesn't affect Ubuntu.

Re:Keep sexuality away from software

[donscarletti]

Ok, that is fine and good, but then keep also the "straight talk" off this site...no jokes about reproductive (in)abilities of geeks

If nerds cannot reproduce it poses interesting questions about human genetics as the frequency of certain genes may change as the nerd lifestyle isolates people from methods of reproduction, procreation isn't just sexual but has wide reaching implications in human biology. But beyond that, I think talking about sex of any kind as well as porn and suggestive material is inappropriate, not just for benefit of gays but also for women who are often made very uncomfortable by such things, fortunately this kind of thing is comparatively very rare in OSS circles in my experience, most people are mature enough to keep it separate. It is also worthy of note that heterosexuality is not currently a politically charged issue for the most part.

it's a plug for a site where people with similar interests can meet each other

I think the desire to meet and discuss things with people like ourselves is common in humans, it is probably the main reason that there has been so many organizations that traditionally excluded people of different races, different genders and sexual orientations, because obviously it is harder to identify with a wider community of people who do not share our exact perspective. This is generally frowned on as being harmful to society as a whole though and there are laws against certain types. Women in LUGs (as you mentioned) is an interesting example of the opposite, I don't believe is an effort to get laid (I personally far prefer women with different interests for some variety), but an issue to address a perceived inbalance in the section of the wider community that is represented in the LUG. Personally, I think the whole thing is a little misguided in its active focus on certain groups, but it is certainly healthy to keep in mind that one should not become entrenched in a cabal of a certain narrow demographic nomatter what demographic you are part of.

it may help with technical issues unique to gay people and sites.

If you've ever been a curious teenager in a conservative family you'll know that it is not only homosexuals that have issues with privacy, it may be unwise to restrict those people who you discuss things like that with since believe me, there is a WEALTH of information amongst straight guys with strict parents. Anyway, in a world of key loggers, vnc, arp spoofing and tcp dumping, design problems in graphical clients are the least of your worries. A good rule is to keep anything that can compromise you out of environments that you do not control completely until it is encrypted. As for protecting identities of clients, I think anonymity is pretty much what the cypherpunk movement is all about.

As I said before, software issues invariably never come to sexuality.

How do I mod this?

[Zaphod-AVA]

How do I mod the article -1 Troll?

Re:End of faith

[MBraynard]

Christianity doesn't actually have a concept of big sins/little sins - a sin is a sin is a sin (pace Catholicism)

There is a problem when people like you who are ignorant of facts attempt to engage in dialogue with the belief that you do have them.

There are two types of sins in Catholic Christianity, and they can be catagorized as Big and Little. To the better educated, they are known as Mortal and Venial.

You are also factually incorrect in your understanding of the Bible as it relates to 90%+ of Christians (Catholics.) The Bible is not a literal rule book and the foundation of the Church is not the Bible but the Church organization itself - from the Pope down to the layity - and the stated basis of the Church's reasoning is... reason (though I understand 99% of the slashherd doesn't agree with this - that's fine - but I am just stating the facts of what is claimed by the organization). The closest thing to a rule book is the Catachism.

Of course, if you get your education on religion from a fictional television show that is as devoid of reality as your facts are, I can understand where you are coming from.