From their point of view, people are nothing but cogs in their machinery of state to be used and abused as necessary to keep the machinery turning. A person has no more value to them than a horse or a cow...maybe even less. Moreover, this is not new. The North Koreans were doing the same thing to pows during the Korean War, many of who never returned. They invented 'brainwashing' which was basically continuous torture until the target was mentally broken. They are still holding the USS Pueblo that they illegally seized from the US Navy in 1968. The captain of the Pueblo provided graphic descriptions of the torture he witnessed while held in captivity. President Bush termed them part of the 'Axis of Evil.' They recently threatened us with thermonuclear devastation and have repeatedly launched missiles over international waters. The UN is still technically at war with the North Koreans. The latest UN report on atrocities is just another in a mountain of paper describing how wicked people do wicked things.

Slashdot has been plowing ahead with their 'beta' site despite the obvious elimination of functionality for reading and responding to comments and the predictable complaints from /* members. The comments and discussion are, after all, the ONLY reason for slashdot to even exist. They say they are 'listening' but they obviously are choosing not to 'hear' and so we have to think that that is intentional. Maybe we should consider that the problem with the 'classic' (gotta love how that word characterizes everything) site is NOT that it has an unattractive appearance, uses too many resources, doesn't display enough ads, or is too difficult to support going forward but that it does the discussions too well. You provide a forum for intelligent people to share thoughts and ideas and...guess what...intelligent people share thoughts and ideas...and for some people (governments, scientologists, corporate pr departments, etc.) that is a problem. There are very, very, few sites that offer the ability to comment and share interactive comments with others in a construction and information fashion...and slashdot is one. We should consider that the 'beta' site is just another way of snuffing out one of the last few flickering lights of informative discussion on the internet.

People need more substance in their social interaction than what is provided to them by using facebook. Eventually many facebook users will do what this user did and close their facebook account in favor of real conversations and face-to-face meetings.

"Hitler's armies famously used the slogan "Gott mit uns" ("God with us") on their uniforms, and had a cozy relationship with the Vatican."

Hitler brutally suppressed Catholics in Germany during the years of his 'third reich.' Moreover, the Nazis sent thousands of Catholic priests to the concentration camps in Poland. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Holocaust_victims http://www.catholic.com/magazine/articles/catholic-martyrs-of-the-holocaust

"Hitler's armies famously used the slogan "Gott mit uns" ("God with us") on their uniforms, and had a cozy relationship with the Vatican."
Hitler brutally suppressed Catholics in Germany during the years of his 'third reich.' Moreover, the Nazis sent thousands of Catholic priests to the concentration camps in Poland.

What is the point of a new 'Windows' version? Is it provide major new capabilities, change the user interface, help Microsoft, or what? Shouldn't Microsoft actually spend some time thinking about what its users want? Users want a) compatibility with all of their existing hardware and software, b) familiar interface, c) reliability, d) security, e) access to new hardware and software protocols, f) minimal cost. I am guessing that a 'Windows 9' will not provide any of those things except...possibly...in a limited way...e) since that's what Windows 8 provided. If that is the case, the Windows 9 is the answer to a question that Microsoft users are not asking and its very mention fills them with dread.

War is a brutal savage activity that spreads disease, decimates populations, lays waste to cities, destroys entire cultures and civilizations, will eventually destroy the habitability of our planet, and is the ultimate expression of the human desire to possess their neighbor's belongings and force them to do one's bidding. Yes, some countries have entered into agreements with other countries about the humane treatment of non-combatants and prisoners, and the limitation and use of certain horrific weapons but...in the end, the 'laws of war' fall into the same category as 'honor among thieves' as being an idealized concept to make the non-practitioners feel good but one with no actual meaning.

This we all know: the universe spontaneously exploded into existence, without any divine assistance, some 14 billion years ago and coalesced into stars orbited by rocky planets. Water condensed out of the interstellar gases and filled the earth with oceans, whereupon carbon, nitrogen, oxygen, and hydrogen reacted in the primordial atmosphere to form amino acids that then self-assembled into self-replicating molecules that then caused the self-assembly of functioning cell membranes comprised of proteins and fatty acids that then began dividing and reproducing into the multitude of life forms present today. This was all made possible by a fortuitous arrangement of rocky substrates in deep ocean trenches that facilitated the combining of the proper molecules into the proper order on the rocky surfaces. After a certain length of time had passed, the early cells began randomly forming into male and female forms to allow better combination of nucleic material than that allowed by random mutation (although that has been good enough for bacteria and viruses for that the last 4 billion years). The creation guy doesn't have a chance.

Making nuns provide other people's contraception is like requiring orthodox jewish to provide bacon or forcing atheists to pay for the gideons and their bibles. It's just wrong.

Pitting the two legal 'sides' against each other in a figurative battle and commenting on the results (as TFA does) is missing the point completely. We live in a time when the technical capabilities and resources for surveillance have become so much more powerful than those of privacy than, in effect, window blinds and draperies no longer exist and we are all unintentionally parading around in front of uncovered windows without any clothing. To put it another way, governments will monitor all communications for no other reason than that they can. Even if the NSA is stopped, you can be sure than every other country in the world either has its own program underway or is in the process of rapidly doing so. You should assume that someone somewhere is logging your calls, surveying your internet traffic, gathering your voicemail data, recording your online banking profile and purchases, and so forth...because they can. This situation will not change until the technology available to defend yourself from digital intrusion catches up with the technology already available to the offense...and that might be a while yet.

Make of that what you will.

The point (apparently) of this rule is to drive people to make the 'right' choice (i.e. non-incandescent bulb) by eliminating the 'wrong' choice. Of course, as TFA says, if the no-incandescent choice were really so obvious, no rule would be needed. I was enthusiastic about cfl bulbs but the enthusiasm died really quickly with real-world experience. CFL bulbs are dim initially, slow to power up to operating temperature, expensive, release dangerous waste mercury powder if broken indoors, create toxic waste when discarded, have a much-shorter life than advertised, and grow dimmer as they age. They probably also consume more power than advertised (based on all of the other false claims) but I have not measured that. Undoubtedly, though, they produce more light per watt than an incandescent bulb but even that comparison is not completely correct. If incandescent bulbs are in a heated space, then the 'waste' heat that they produce is still used by offsetting the amount of heat that must be added from the room heating system. For home use, incandescent bulbs still have a place, as many consumers know, and THAT is why they need to be banned, because otherwise, people would still use them. So, now that we have the George Bush ban on incandescent bulbs, we can look forward to more household toxic waste (much of it probably improperly disposed of...when did you last see your local hardware store collecting spent cfl bulbs?), more toxic dust released in living spaces, more spending by consumers on light bulbs, lower lighting levels in residences (leading to less reading, more eyestrain, etc.), and lights left on more to avoid waiting while the dim cfl bulb warms up after being powered on. Sounds like a typical federal government program...wasteful, ill-advised, unwanted, unneeded, and expensive.

Good question. Drone economics: Each drone will cost $1,000,000 to build, will have a flying life between major overhauls of 300 hours, will cost $1,500 per hour to operate, and will deliver one package per hour of flying time. Cost per package would be $4,833. Okay, maybe that's too generous. The Pentagon's tilt-rotor V-22 Osprey lasts for 5,000 hours and could be automated to fly as a drone for the amazon package delivery job but it's cost is $69 million and it costs $10,000 per hour to operate making its cost per package $24,000. Okay, I know what you're thinking...a smaller cheaper drone that would be almost a throwaway for a cost of $50,000 or something and could fly 100 hours before falling to pieces. Such drone would have a per package cost of only $2,000 but would also be a greater safety risk if it failed over someone's dwelling place making its insurance cost greater. Maybe a cheaper approach would be to buy a used Cessna 172 for $50,000 and fly 1000 packages with it at an hourly cost of $200 making the per package cost only $250. However, the package would have to be chucked out of the side door by the pilot with a parachute attached to it where it would drift down to somewhere near the target address so it would be less attractive, of course, than the drone which would land next to the front door and lower a little motorized cart to take the package up the steps to the door.

It's amazing how many people are excited about delivery drones and consider them to be the 'future' when the reality is that the entire concept is amazingly impractical. Drones are 'aircraft' and that is a transportation category that is much more expensive to operate than 'trucks' or 'trains.' Those delivery drones will need expensive maintenance and repair. They will be very fuel-inefficient in terms of packages delivered per gallon of fuel (and no, they will not be battery-powered or solar-powered.) They will use expensive, complex machinery that, by design, like all aircraft, must have a very high proven reliability with backup fail-safe capabilities. Even if we can ignore all of the impractical cost and operational issues and assume that delivery drone deliverees are well-to-do folks for whom delivery cost is no object, there is an entire infrastructure that needs to be created before armies of drones can be dropping out of the sky with packages from Amazon. Navigational procedures and air pathways have to be defined. Low-level obstructions such as trees, overhead wires, flagpoles, antennas, etc. will need to be removed from delivery 'target' addresses and such an address will need to be defined as 'drone-deliverable' in some sort of national database. Insurance issues will have to be sorted out as to who will be responsible when the inevitable accidents, injuries, and deaths occur as a result of presumably frequent flights of very low-flying aircraft. FAA certification will be needed for new categories of delivery drones that will presumably be remotely-piloted. And so on. So yeah...delivery drones will potentially reduce the delivery time of those amazon packages to 30 minutes...for a cost of $5,000 per package. It would probably be cheaper (and more practical) for amazon to have more fulfillment centers and pay teens to race around on motorcycles delivering. But...I know that most will disagree with all of this and instead prefer to gaze at the sky and imagine their new hair curling set delivered in...30 minutes...while considering any naysayer such as myself to hopelessly stuck in the past. Those folks should load up on Amazon stock...at its bargain price.

...is that they are...old. Most managers want to hire people who are younger than them. The last thing they want to do is to hire someone older who has a lot of experience and will sit around sniping everything that the manager does based on that older persons presumably vast experience. Another problem with older workers is that many have serious health issues that are costly to the company, cause attendance problems, and distract the team from the mission. The best approaches for older workers (i.e. over 50) are to work as consultants where experience is sought (if they have marketable expertise), start and operate a small business, look for work as a short-term contract worker where they can be easily let go if they are not working out, work construction if they are physically able, volunteer with non-profit organizations, or run for political office.