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Comment Re:Headline should say... (Score 1) 786

Rising sea levels don't mean that people look out their windows and see the water getting closer year by year and then, if they are smart, decide to move. I don't think the comment you're replying to put it very well referring to millions of drowned Bangladeshis but read the rest of the article you linked to. It talks about things like increased flood risks and loss of groundwater and arable land. It would take not very much of those things to have very severe consequences for Bangladesh, in the form of many killed and many more displaced and impoverished.

The "not smart enough" comment borders on the offensive. The severity of floods is often impacted by environmental changes, particularly by loss of habitat that soak up water (trees and wetlands), many point to this as a big impact in the Katrina floods. Are these type of flood victims not smart enough because they didn't project the increased risk from a change in their environment?

Comment Re:No Surprises Here (Score 1) 172

Before Gulf War I George HW Bush said that protecting Kuwait was in our vital national interest. What was that vital national interest? What is the vital national interest that had US troops in Kuwait, Saudi Arabia, Qatar, etc before 9/11?

We already only get a small amount of oil that is actually shipped from the Middle East. However, since oil is a global commodity interruption in the flow from any of the major exporters would have global consequences, as we've seen whenever there's been a hint of conflict in the Middle East.

Comment Free Software squandered first mover advantage (Score 2, Insightful) 249

Free Software had first mover advantage over the big brother social network sites but it didn't innovate fast enough. Remember blogs? What happened? The community couldn't agree on standards for providing advanced social applications that people wanted, so the walled gardens sprang up that provided them. Seriously, remember the years of dumb ass bickering over RSS or Atom?

I personally am very sad that large parts of the social experience online are now within wall gardens, I see it as AOL's revenge from the grave. It says something about the limits of open processes that hopefully the Free Software movement and others can learn from.

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