This kind of goes to show that a thread can go on here without getting locked if there is enough interest in keeping it alive. Maybe that is the key then to keep a topic going: you have to to raise enough intrest in it somehow.

For bambams...

I wouldn't like to say whether I'm agnostic or atheist. However, I think I have two key characteristics that brought me to my current view. The first is that I tend to think very precisely; natural languages are as rigorous as programming languages for me. With this, I noticed contradictions and inconsistencies where perhaps others let it wash over them and instead noticed either a confidence and safety in the way things were preached, or a safety in numbers because enough other people believed.

The second is that I consciously notice psychological effects things have on me, and at church, I felt shamed and didn't find that acceptable.

So, despite having gone to church in a time of loneliness and misery after years of rejection, and having wanted to give it every possible chance, and despite the congregation being full of nice people, the actual church experience as I underwent it pushed me away.

This is despite definitely having been brought up in a Christian culture. I went through infant school and came out with no clear distinction in my mind between bible stories and (do I need to say 'non-biblical' here, Edgar?) history.

Relatedly, I always wanted to believe in ghosts but couldn't honestly say I'd ever seen one, nor compelling evidence of one. In this case I find it unfortunate, since some of the best stories are ghost stories.

Back to agnostic vs atheist: certainly I believe that every possible religion we have on this planet was created by people and is subject to survival of the fittest just like animals: if a religion is popular, it's because it contains mechanisms that help it spread. This could be positive (they offer a lot of value) or negative (they brainwash, or they were forced upon people by dictators or some such), but either way, it's clear to me that these things are a human creation and have nothing to do with why the universe is here or other philosophical questions like that. So I'm atheist if we are talking about world religions, but agnostic in the sense that we don't actually know why the universe is here and we shouldn't just say there's nothing to it beyond what we can see.

I dismiss all other "gods" because they're not worth worshipping. I know from experience the only true God is the LORD. I fully believe there are other "gods" out there, but as far as I'm concerned they're simply devils in disguise. Satan himself disguises himself as an angel of light.

This goes out to you too, Bruce. Your experience in church was less than positive, and for that I am sorry. But you don't have to go to church to worship God, or to find acceptance. And you find God by seeking him with all your heart, and he will reveal himself to you. He sent his Son Jesus, his Living Word, to testify to himself. God is found in the Bible, and only coincidentally at some churches.

If you feel shame, it's either because you've done wrong, or because you haven't forgiven yourself for doing so. Jesus taught the forgiveness of sin upon repentance, and where sin is forgiven, it is no more, and should no longer weigh upon you. Jesus came to set us free, not to put us in chains.

You use Windows 10? Well, I won't be able to play with whatever you built with UWP because I'm still on 7

Ok...Guess I'll pretend that I never talked about UWP and that it does not exist xD, seems no one else cares about it so it is not worth the effort.

Move along people, next subject please. Thread will not remain open by itself

Call-home functionality

On a more serious note, here are some of the benefits I noticed upgrading to Windows 10:

• All Windows 10 editions will use some number of TB of memory if you have it (contrast with Windows 7 Home which refuses to use more than 16 GB).

• When you edit environment variables containing lists of paths, you get a nice editor with a list and Add/Edit/Remove/Browse buttons and whatnot. However, you can also get this on Windows 7 by installing something like RapidEE.

• You can have multiple desktops, although it felt a bit weird to me.

• I think there's a 'disable all notifications' mode, and although I can immediately see the benefit, I didn't really get into a situation where I wanted to try it out. You can also deal with this in Windows 7 by closing the programs that are notifying you (mainly e-mail).

That's all I can think of at the moment, and I think the final straw with Windows 10 was when I tried to copy and paste a number out of the calculator in 'programming' mode, and it put left-to-right directives in the copied string, which Visual Studio didn't accept and also didn't make visible. Well done Microsoft. For completeness, here are some more gripes I had with Windows 10:

• Ugly. I don't want everything to be rectfill();.

• Resizing windows: the cursor has to be within the window outline at the top, but outside on the other sides. It's just not consistent. There needs to be a visible border for dragging.

• Too many places where Microsoft shoves content down your throat. My computer's job is to help me do what I want to do, not serve as a portal for Microsoft to push me around. Incidentally I have this gripe with much of the modern Internet and if anything, it has taught me the value of time off the grid.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Universal_Windows_Platform#Use_as_gaming_platform

*cough*

The only use for it is as evidence that nothing has changed.

To merge several PDF files into one:

• Go into your account settings.

• Set Posts Per Page to Unlimited.

• Save as PDF once more.

Just sorry to hear you spent so much time saving 29 separate PDFs before you discovered this option

Happy birthday! \ö/

Turns out posting to this particular thread from my ageing Android phone is quite a challenge ;o

Dear "Thread locks too soon", I'll never give you up.

Gull, was that a rickroll?

OnlineCop - I want your keyboard <3