What are the ways this community can keep alive the classic Slashdot...if not today, tomorrow some sort of 'improvement' will be forced up on the site and it will be too late.
What about a new website following open source ideals? Or what about a fund to buy Slashdot from Dice? Or bribe the managers and PHBs so that they keep the classic version alive?
There should be a way out.

India recently announced a National Electricity Grid with southern grid joining, the north, east and west. So its a single grid which is supposed to do all sort of wonders (which I don't know much about, but sounds good anyway.)
Plus Rajasthan borders Delhi and Gujarat...two of the most industrially developed states which will consume any electricity thrown at it, and Madhya Pradesh - one of the backward states - think of Appalachia - where your contention "what air-conditioning in India" rings somewhat true.
So me thinks the people behind the planning and execution are on to something...and definitely they know better about the local conditions than we on Slashdot.

Ban coffee and make brewing coffee a felony and you might actually see such behavior!

I don't think so. Exposure does not mean an automatic path to misuse or addiction.
The percent of the population who are truly alcoholics will remain the same whether alcohol is banned or available. If alcohol prohibition does not work, how do you expect banning/prohibiting drugs will work? Banning/prohibiting will help only the criminals and the LEO types who get their paycheck from 'drug war'...not anyone else.

L word? You mean Clapper is a lying Lesbian?

Whether useful or not, or evil or not, Facebook is a technically solid platform and they have created an ecosystem around its content. Its far far more advanced than MySpace (which I believe was some sort of band-aid using ColdFusion), its like Google compared to Yahoo.
The sophistication of Facebook I see whenever I buy ads on the site...I can pinpoint ads to a narrow user-base, and this will be more on the spot than Google AdWords/AdSense.
Facebook is a decent platform for a group discussion or following a specific topic and so on. I agree 99% of the content is someone's children's stupid photos.
And Facebook is needed to counter Google. Else Google will be the only evil corporation, you need more evil corporations battling each other so that they will leave the proletariat in peace.
Will Facebook die? Probably not as its useful. But it may not be worth the crazy valuations and inflated stock prices.

I think you are too harsh on Lenovo.
I am using the Thinkpad X series and T series for the last 12 years...from the IBM days to the current iteration. I am yet to see a significant drop in quality on those two lines after Lenovo started rebranding. I am not sure about their entry models though.

Me thinks it was a backhanded plan by Snapchat founders/promoters to get someone interested in the company. Then it did not work as they wanted...they probably expected a bidding war.

No one likes glassholes, FBI or AMC. And to top it, this glasshole goes to watch 'Jack Ryan, Shadow Recruit'!
May be its punishment for choosing to watch that picture.

Do not go the Virtualbox/virtual OS path. Even if you have a good amount of RAM, your machine is not fast enough to seamlessly run two operating systems side by side, and use it for serious development.
Partition the HDD and install the OS in the new partition, and install the apps/servers/IDEs.
Do you have an SSD? if not buy a 64 GB cheap SSD...its worth the upgrade and install the OS/apps/IDE on the SSD.

Geniuses, or the really talented and focused artists and creators do not care about the vultures. For the last few centuries vultures - aka 'agents' - were needed, without them it was difficult to propagate your work. At least in the field of arts (except for cinema) it has changed with internet. You do not need an 'agent' anymore to propagate your work. But the flip side - even in 2014, without an agent, your work may not achieve the acclaim it deserves.
But then Geniuses are not concerned with material rewards. I don't think a real genius cares too much about the square feet/number of bedrooms in their house, or the car they drive. As long as these basic necessities are taken care off, they will be happy in their environment. An 'agent' will increase your revenue, they won't better your output, and mostly they will be a distraction. As such a majority of 'agents' are glorified pimps.
A genius will never talk about their work, they will let their work talk.

Have you ever tried to disable Chrome / Chromium auto-update? I had to find the 'task' and make sure it does not run, there is no other way to block. This is beyond the capability of a majority of users. It seems Google wants the auto-update to run no matter what.
Other than 'feature bloat' - and may be closing few security issues - there are no great advantages to a newer browser anymore, at least on the desktops.

I have been following farmer suicides in India for a long time. The reasons are complex. They include crop failure at an inopportune time, non-seasonal and extended droughts, and inability to pay debts from unscrupulous moneylenders and so on. Monsanto or its pricey or unaffordable seeds directly causing a farmer to suicide - you might be able to find one or two examples, but that's not the norm.
Monsanto is famous (or infamous) in India for their GMO Bt Cotton https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bt_cotton. But Bt Cotton is only cultivated in the state of Maharashtra...suicides happen in many other states too. And given the options for cotton seeds, BT Cotton may not be that bad an idea.
I agree Monsanto is borderline evil and creepy. There are valid reasons to argue genetically modified crops are a bad idea (or a good idea), but you should not add Indian farmer suicides to make a point. That's FUD.

This is a problem the world over. Probably smaller Scandinavian countries and few smaller European nations are immune. Some form of nonsensical religious puritanism exists all over the world. Even Buddhists - the generally gentle crowd - are not immune, they are going ape in Sri Lanka and Myanmar (former Burma.)
The good development in 2013 is Pope Francis. He might change the discourse of Catholic church and the rest of the world will get some ideas.

Spot on. They are all bad versions of each other. They don't realize that, that's all.