As it turns out, my comment was premature. The site that is supposed to replace the eOpen site is broken. You can manage agreements or keys, but downloads aren't working.
$64 Moebius Question: Is it broken because of slashdot or slashdotted because it is broken?
How exactly do you propose that agricultural producers competing on a global commodities market raise the price of their goods without governmental intervention (or forming some sort of cartel/etc. to manipulate the market)?
Seriously, if you've got a solution for that you're on your way to a Nobel prize in economics. Until then you're just spewing rubbish.
Sadly you are doubtless going to be modded troll, but really, what's wrong with this? If you want to live out in the rural sticks then you should be prepared to pay the cost of doing so.
Nearly 90% of the US, by population density, is "rural sticks". By your logic, no where but the east and west coast should have access electricity, telephone service, etc except by industry alone choosing to provide service.
It will cost you more money in taxes, more money for running water (pump and septic system upkeep), your roads will be less maintained, you may not have access to cable and will have to rely on satellite, you'll pay more for energy (having oil or propane delivered vs. natural gas out of a permanent connection), more in gas money to get places, blah, blah, blah.
Funny, but most rural areas do have municipalities which provide water services, septic services, and trash collection. As well, there tends to exist cable, natural gas, electricity, and telephone services; the latter two tend to exist everyone, although the former tend to be restricted to within or near city limits. The latter is a byproduct of municipalities being able to lure in industry under monopolistic positions. Without the effective subsidy of a monopoly, many industries would simply refuse to service such areas because of the risk involved (and the inherent poverty of rural life*).
This notion of subsidizing lifestyles is really annoying. If you want cheap fast broadband move to civilization.
Is it any wonder that the east and west coast are considered elitist with that attitude?
If you want clean air and open spaces move to the country.
The former should, for the most part, be a requirement wherever you live. You shouldn't have to live in the country to avoid cancerous clouds from industry or river fires; living in the country doesn't really protect you from this, anyways. Perhaps you'd have more perspective on this if you think about China's effective lack of regulation of pollution? As for open spaces, while for the most part this is a simple factor of what defines country (ie, population density), many cities, like New York City and many European countries, have recognized the value of having open, pedestrian areas and not endless crowded concrete. Sure, it's definitely not the same as the country, but it's hardly unreasonable to want a space for people to experience life both outside of their homes and outside of their cars.
*As pointed out by others further down the thread, and you, there's increases costs of living in a rural area. This is increased with the existence of monopolies. Further than that, rural areas inherently have greater difficulty providing high paying jobs (hence the suggest to "outsource to rural America"). Much like urban city poverty, many are in a position where it's unclear exactly how they can escape this poverty (being low skilled labor, rural poor seems likely to, if in large number, to move to an urban area to become urban poor).
This isn't to say cities don't give greater advantage and there aren't many people who would benefit from moving. But, clearly, nearly everyone moving to the east and west coast wouldn't magically solve the socioeconomic problems of people. Now, whether this justifies subsidies rural people is another thing, but one can't simply dismiss the situation with the false belief that rural life is some grand choice by people who have a reasonable expectation of a better life in a city. After all, if there was such a reasonable expectation, then people in a rural setting must either be irrational or value open spaces very highly. I am quite certain the latter isn't true.
Honestly, this is exactly what I think we should do. And if it turns into a mess for the rest of the world, that's their problem. Before WWII, we weren't that powerful militarily, and we didn't have nukes. Now we do. We should just concentrate on defending ourselves, and that's it, and let everyone else deal with their own problems. If they get another Hitler, well too bad. As long as we're strong enough, we don't have to worry about him invading us, and if he does, we can unleash the nuclear arsenal.
I'm really getting sick of the rest of the world whining that America is taking advantage of them, but then complaining if America doesn't do enough to "help" them. There's less than 300 million of us, and 6.7 billion of them. They need to take responsibility for themselves and stop looking at us to be their protector and whining when we use the situation to our advantage.
From all the responses to my previous post that the other countries need to tell the USA's government to shove it when it tries to convince them to pass stupid laws, I'm really beginning to think the reason this situation exists is basically because most of the rest of the world is pussies, and they refuse to stand up for themselves. If you're too much of a pussy to stand up for yourself and take care of yourself, then you deserve to be someone else's bitch. Especially if you're too stupid to ally yourself with others and stand up as a group to the bully.
I'd be more disturbed if I got a job because I was looking up "cheerleader specific pr0n".
But, as for man CAUSING global warming - BULLSHIT!!! How many ice ages has the earth had now? And, how many interglacial periods?
You seem to suggest that the history of ice ages disproves AGW. Are you saying that, because climate is known to change by itself, it must therefore be impossible to change it through external means?
Just for the sake of argument, assume that we really are changing the climate. What do you expect would be different today than how it is? Would there be nobody to question it? Would there be some definitive proof that could convince you of it? What would that proof be?
If you can't come up with an idea of something that, in the presence of actual AGW, would convince you of its existence, it is time to start reconsidering you logic. Because that means if it really is happening, you still wouldn't believe it or act on it.
Now, you may respond with a reference to Occam's razor and make some argument about absence of disproof not being proof or something like that, but before you do that I would like to point a few things out:
Frankly, given those easily verifiable facts alone, the possibility of anthropogenic global warming being real is pretty far from unimaginable. We are not talking about a flying spaghetti monster here.
I don't think many people will be that fussed about non-friends knowing who their friends are. A bigger problem will probably be that Pages that you are a fan of are now visible to everyone. This may go against other privacy measures if for example you're a fan of your hometown, or your employer/college etc. Or something that you generally don't want strangers to know that you like...
I don't know about "automatically doubting," but people will, in certain specific subjects, assume they are smarter than the scientists, even though sometimes the full extent of their science education is the minimum high school requirement. Evolution is a prime example of this. Climate science has moved strongly that direction.
The likely, but not Slashdot-friendly answer is the lack of IP protection in China.
Someone commented on here before that it is an innovation wasteland in China because they know everybody would immediately copy anything they created.
Whether or not IQ measures "intelligence", there is no answer and you can feel free to argue strenuously that it does not.
Whether it coRRelates with proper spelling, as well, I have no idea.
However, in dozens of studies, the IQ score on any of the 4 accepted IQ scoring metrics ALL correlate with a variety of positive future outcomes, including financial, social and even physical.
I'm feeling lazy so I'll just toss some Wikipedia at you.
The American Psychological Association's report Intelligence: Knowns and Unknowns[9] states that IQ scores account for about one-fourth of the social status variance...
According to Schmidt and Hunter, "for hiring employees without previous experience in the job the most valid predictor of future performance is general mental ability."
Other studies show that ability and performance for jobs are linearly related, such that at all IQ levels, an increase in IQ translates into a concomitant increase in performance.[76] Charles Murray, coauthor of The Bell Curve, found that IQ has a substantial effect on income independently of family background.
Physical
People with a higher IQ have generally lower adult morbidity and mortality. Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder,[47] and schizophrenia[48][49] are less prevalent in higher IQ bands. People in the midsts of a major depressive episode have been shown to have a lower IQ than when without symptoms and lower cognitive ability than people without depression of equivalent verbal intelligence.[50][51]
A study of 11,282 individuals in Scotland who took intelligence tests at ages 7, 9 and 11 in the 1950s and 1960s, found an "inverse linear association" between childhood IQ scores and hospital admissions for injuries in adulthood. The association between childhood IQ and the risk of later injury remained even after accounting for factors such as the child's socioeconomic background.[52] Research in Scotland has also shown that a 15-point lower IQ meant people had a fifth less chance of living to 76, while those with a 30-point disadvantage were 37% less likely than those with a higher IQ to live that long.[53]
All said, whether or not you LIKE IQ testing. Whether or not it measures anything other than "ability to take an IQ test" - it's all totally immaterial in the context of THIS POST, because the "ability to take an IQ test" has, for whatever reason, moderate to high correlation with a variety of social and economic (and even physical) success factors.
Why? I don't know. But I refuse to throw away the data or dismiss it as "arrogant" simply because it makes people uncomfortable.
T
It's later than you think, the joint Russian-American space mission has already begun.
