They mean "at a very minimum, smart enough to read the FAQ so people know what they mean by smart."

It seems like it would only be fair to collect the names, phone numbers, addressess, friend lists, family info, credit information, and general background info along with as much dirt as possible on all of the employees of Social Intelligence Corporation, starting with managerial/executive level ones. Place a few ads offering to sell said information to anyone who wants it, particularly targeting those who believe they were fired or weren't hired as a result of this SICk company's 'service', et voilà: karmically sublime $profit.

...in thinking that it's way past time for Sony's leadership to commit ritual seppuku?(*) Failing that, a simple dissolution of the company's assets and returning them to shareholders could work. I mean, sheesh. (*) I seem to recall such a thing slightly helping Toshiba's once badly soiled image in the wake of a certain 3-axis milling machine/espionage incident. Not that I've forgiven Toshiba yet...

Set 'X' equal to at least 50, and don't forget to include spinoff companies. That way, chances are that if you've accumulated enough power to cause significant mischief, you won't be able to cash in until after you're dead. Not that that would stop everybody...

*snort*. I think the seriously bright minds were more likely bright enough to google around a bit and learn about things like the Interplanetary Transport Network.

Speaking as a generally liberal person, I'd have to agree with this. While I believe there should continue to be a strong separation of church and state, I don't think see anything at all wrong with students being encouraged to examine the question of whether or not there should be. After all, the whole point of a "liberal" education (in the classical sense) is to encourage dogma-free thinking (including the freedom to examine the pros and cons of dogma-free thinking).

Martin, If you dig just a little bit deeper, you'll find that this bunny burrow goes a very long way down. Hypovitaminosis D has been implicated in just about every disease under the sun (so to speak). Not surprising when you learn that our ancestors were making 5,000+ units per day in their skin, back before we all turned into residents of air-conditioned caves who smear on chemicals to "protect" us from sunshine on those rare occasions that we do venture outdoors.

The key to understanding why vitamin D is so important is to know that it's actually not a true vitamin at all, but rather a pre-hormone; the active hormone (calcitriol) is involved in a myriad of regulatory pathways all over our body, most significantly in the immune system as well as in calcium regulation. Calcitriol is also essential to normal growth, including neural development; deficiency during pregnancy is associated with autism in children.

Deficiency during childhood is associated with many autoimmune diseases including type 1 diabetes and multiple sclerosis.

Deficiency during adulthood is associated with coronary artery disease, hypertension, diabetes, dyslipidemia, vulnerability to viral infections (including influenza and the common cold, which are far more prevalent in the winter months), vulnerability to certain bacterial infections (most prominently including tuberculosis), and at least 17 different types of cancer, most notably including breast, colon, prostate, and (ironically enough) melanoma.

If you start to look into diseases that are significantly more prevalent in dark-skinned people (who are more protected against the rays of the sun but unfortunately also not so good at making enough Vitamin D outside of tropical environments), you can begin (but only begin) to understand the extent of the problem.

The current RDA for Vitamin D has somewhere between zero and nothing to do with actual human requirements for the substance; fortunately that's actively changing as the medical community gets more aware of the situation, but in the meantime you can consider current amount of Vitamin D supplementation in food to fall into the "near homeopathic dose" category.

Current official medical recommendations are to take enough Vitamin D to achieve measured serum levels of at least 30 ng/ml of 25(OH)-D (calcidiol), but a growing number of doctors who have looked into this a bit further (including myself) think that the goal should actually be somewhere in the 60-80 ng/ml range, particularly for cancer prevention.

Try taking 5000 units of D per day, not per week, and seriously consider doing that for the rest of your life unless/until you move someplace at least semitropical where you can get a good sunbathing session in every week. And despite what your doctor says about "just make sure it says Vitamin D on the front of the label", you (a)probably want to make that Vitamin D3 (cholecalciferol), not Vitamin D2 (ergocalciferol), and (b) probably do NOT want a formulation with extra calcium in it.

Although low wages might interfere with job satisfaction, relatively high wages are no guarantee of quality or emotional investment. Trust me, I'm a doctor.

"Ignore" is not quite the same as "disbelieve". Stalin had good reason to disbelieve, because it didn't make any sense for Germany to take on the Soviet Union while they were still heavily involved with the U.K., and he quite reasonably didn't think Hitler would be stupid enough to invade before 1942. He was wrong about that. And it wasn't exactly "insane dictatorial policies of the Communists", it was more like "insane dictatorial policies of a megalomaniac named Joseph Stalin, who was quite willing to kill/purge anyone and everyone whom he (probably rightly) believed might be a significant personal threat." When it comes down to it, Stalin's purges of the Russian communist party leadership also killed any chance that a more idealized form of actual communism might have ever had there. What remained instead was an apparatus of terror, manipulation, and dictatorial control that remained communist in name only, and it concentrated power in the hands of one man whom even Lenin had come to fear.

You're absolutely right--he must be some kind of a slacker moron, because in his copious free time he doesn't even bother to keep up with the latest gizmos. He's probably wasting his time figuring out useless crap like how to make the planet a better place for his children or some shit like that. I mean, really, what kind of fucktarded N008 can't even be bothered to surf over to pirate bay to rip off his own music?

Damn. There I was, thinking it was only a picture of Satan.

Or posting about it on slashdot, for that matter...

"Obvious" is often a lot more so in retrospect, or once someone has already pointed something out. We'll see.