...and he still pushes Microsoft products, even when he's being "charitable".

He wants to help other countries, but that help often includes Microsoft products, even when there are cheaper alternatives that meet all the requirements. He says he wants to help schools, but that help often comes with the expectation to buy Microsoft products in exclusion of other solutions. He wants to help scientific research, but you're less likely to get that help if you're labs are currently based on Apple or Linux systems.

Is he evil? No. Is he doing this all in the the Greater Good? No. He's a benevolent door-to-door Windows salesman. I like some of the things he does (fighting idiotic vaccine people), strongly dislike some of the things he does (improving schools so they can better address the plight of the rich, white children), and find the rest to largely look like a rich guy throwing his money around at causes he likes. I'm not saying that it should be outlawed. I'm just saying that in the end, he's still no saint. Carnegie did it right. Gates.... is no Carnegie.

Other true statements

Profit-seeking capitalists have done far more bad things to the world than philanthropists.

Profit-seeking capitalists have done far more bad things to the world than good things for the world.

Profit-seeking capitalists do harm to the world even when they are unsuccessful.

Profit-seeking capitalists are far more likely to be unsuccessful than philanthropists.

On being dicks? Now, granted, Sony has done a lot of innovation in the field, but I still think that Microsoft has better prior art.

Either way, I don't know the details of this supposed patent on Dickery, so I can't speak with authority, but I assume that the legal team at Microsoft pays enough attention to the news to realize that Sony isn't the only company that's been a dick to consumers. Ubisoft and EA have been publicly flaunting their dickitude for a decade without legal action from Sony. Microsoft itself has been dickish for at least that long. I don't know what grounds Sony would have for suddenly trying to push legal action against any of them based on their being dicks to consumers.

By the looks of the market, I'd almost assume that if Sony had patented Dickery, they've already signed licensing agreements with a dozen other companies.

That's your interpretation of the intent, not the stated intent. The second ammendment actually says:

A well regulated militia being necessary to the security of a free state, the right of the people to keep and bear arms shall not be infringed

The stated purpose of the freedom is to allow for the security of the state, not to arm the populous in defense against the political leaders of the state. In fact, the Constitution outright criminalizes the waging of war against the government.

You can make good arguments about the necessity of guns for the protection of freedom against abusive government. I myself have argued that the most important part of the Second Amendment is that it bars the government from ever trying to completely disarm the populace. However, I also argue that the far-too-common reading of "Everyone gets to have guns so they can overthrow the government in the future" is utterly wrong. If you want to make the argument that you have a right to shoot anyone you feel is a tyrant, then you're going to have to support that argument with philosophy, not the Constitution.

In the end, the Supreme Court gets to decide what it really means, and how its intent should impact law. And while you might have the natural right to declare whoever you want to be a tyrant, everyone else has the right to disagree with you, and kill you for trying to overthrow their government.

You shouldn't rage about things you don't understand.

No one is being put into a walled garden. The new planet added in the expansion is not "gay-only".

A new expansion is being released. It contains same-gender flirt options. That is all. The article is biased and the title is worse. Your reaction just puts you in the same room as Fox News. Research before you insult.

Yes, it's important to avoid thinking that this proves North Dakota is racist. That's an unfair assessment of the people of North Dakota.

The majority of people in North Dakota dislike black people. But they also dislike people from India, Pakistan, China, South America, Mexico, Japan, Morocco, Australia... pretty much anywhere that isn't North Dakota. Minnesotans have some degree of reciprocity. Heck, they don't even like people who grew up in North Dakota, lived in a city for a while and moved back.

Put more plainly: North Dakotans are xenophobic. Small town friendliness is only extended to people within the small town, and anyone who doesn't look like the majority of the rest of the people in the area isn't going to be all that accepted. The fact that the president has an appearance that immediately identifies him as "Not North Dakotan" (compounded by the amount of "book learnins" he's got) is enough that I was never under the impression that he'd ever be liked by the state (in general).

Now, there are plenty of counter-examples, of course, but after twenty-two years of experience, I can safely say that North Dakota is the least tolerant place I've lived. Does it equal the warmth, and openness with which everyone of all ethnicities is welcomed to rural Mississippi? Dunno. Never lived there. Now, does the data in TFA actually model that? Nope, it does not. Sadly. In my mind, North Dakota does deserve to be right up there with Mississippi for doesnt-look-like-us hatred.

Was that a joke?

I grew up in the Great Plains, a land that votes crushingly Republican on a bi-yearly basis. And yeah, the rich people there voted for Republicans. But the poor people voted for them, too. The major demographics that voted Democrat were the young (18-24... before they finished college and moved to other states) and those with Masters degrees.

Now, remember that pretty much all of those states exist due to constant government-based welfare in the form of subsidies and infrastructure funds that the states absolutely cannot cover by themselves. In Northern Virginia, when we need to improve a road, we pay higher taxes. When South Dakota needs to improve a road, they whine to the federal government, and everyone else pays for it. And while they do that, they lower their own taxes because... well... taxes suck and they all want to keep their money.

Thus the irony of the squishy middle of the US. They love to trumpet how important they are and how the rest of the country/world/universe would suffer if they weren't there, but forget that the rest of the country is paying them for everything they produce, and propping them up with federal tax dollars.

If Iowa ever decided to secede, the proper response would be to treat them like any other country we trade with. Put up tariffs and make them negotiate for trade. Six months later, its population would be wailing about immigrating back to the US to flee the starvation and poverty of an independent Iowa.

You'd be wrong.

And while I'm not an Influenza researcher now, I was one for five years, and there's a pretty good chance I helped supply a good deal of the data being used to work on this.

The human immune system doesn't do bitwise comparisons with the viral genome. It does more of a heuristic match against the functional shape of the created proteins. The problem is that very minor changes in the viral genome can produce functionally significant changes in the shape of the proteins. One of the easier-to-spot mutations was in the length of the Hemaglutinin "stalk". A simple change in the number of repeats in the genome (a simple and fairly stable mutation) will change this length and render antibodies against one version ineffective against another.

Remember, a vaccine is not some sort of program that tries to identify a virus. It is a primer that is designed to trigger the body's immune system to produce effective antibodies. You don't get to redesign how antibodies work. The idea behind vaccine design is to find the right protein fragments to present to the immune system such that it produces antibodies that are effective against the greatest variety of viruses. The part that you think is clever and revolutionary is already being done in your body right now. Everyone in immunology already knows this. Instead, imagine you had a computer that already had a self-learning, heuristic-based virus detection system. What code would you show it to teach it what is a (computer) virus and what isnt? Now, imagine that you didn't have the ability to see what the code actually did, but you could only work with how the code looked. The problem gets harder and your suggestion... doesn't really apply.

Not to sound like a dismissive jerk, but your idea is both old news and largely non-applicable to viral immuno-response.

Yeah... exercise is the best thing to do when you've got a 102F fever. That'll fix you right up.

Are from a different Slashdot than I am? I thought one of the core values of the Slashdot crowd was never reading (TFA).

First off... anyone making $19k a year isn't paying income taxes. I think the standard deduction/independant income line is somewhere around $24k. So anyone who thinks that 19k is an upgrade, is already paying $0 in federal income tax. The people who are expressing envy over the lack of income taxes, are the people who are making $30k. I don't know many people who would drop their $30k/year job to for a $19k/year job just to avoid income tax. If they exist, then... I guess they're free to make that jump and reap the loss of what... $7k a year in spendable income?

My mom would have gladly paid a couple thousand in income tax if it would mean that her salary would jump to $30k. And, yeah, she could have paid $1 in income taxes. But what is the point? Let's say that the 40% of the country that pays no income tax were forced to pay $1... no, wait, let's make it $500 dollars. Now, for many of them, that would be a significant, painful increase in taxes that would hurt their standard of living. That would generate... $75B in taxes. That's significant... except when you realize that the Bush tax-cuts-for-the-rich dropped tax revenues by $1T. So, if given the choice, should we impose a painful tax on the poor and generate a small amount of money, or a barely-noticeable tax on the wealthy and generate 13 times more money? If you still want to talk about income tax levels of $1 or $10, then the amount of revenue generated is so small that it's only there to poke the poor and make them feel bad. No, it doesn't hurt them, but it doesn't help the country either.

And finally, I love people who complain that these "parasite" poor people aren't paying for the use of common services. Understand that without that 40% of people, many of those common services wouldn't exist, largely because they wouldn't have workers or the infrastructure they need to function.

And in case you think that I'm just biased... I make way, way more than my mom. I pay taxes. Quite a bit, actually. And unlike most people who complain about income tax rates, I've seen both sides. I gladly pay my taxes because I realize that if I pay even an extra $1000 in taxes, it won't really affect me, and that would mean that there are ten families out there that won't lose $100 in food or clothes.

And that is totally independent of the discussion of how to spend revenues. The whole point that a large portion of the country doesn't pay income tax, because the income disparity is so wide. And that income disparity is wide and growing because far too many of the wealthy (or nearly wealthy like me) are driven by selfishness and greed and would rather buy a new car for themselves than help other families feed their children, and they make themselves feel better by telling themselves that there are loads of people who are trying to keep their income low so they can live off the handouts of the wealthy. The reality is... different. But it's sickeningly common for the wealthy to be completely unaware of how the majority of the country actually lives.

I've never seen anyone who refers to Obama as BHO who wasn't a racist/bigot/whackjob-extremist.

Using it immediately labels you as someone who is dissociated from logic.

Everyone who works pays Federal taxes on their wages.

Not everyone pays Federal Income taxes, because Income taxes are only supposed to be paid on wages earned over a certain level required for some standard of living.

Example: When I was in college (which I paid for, unlike so many of the welfare-children who drank away mommy & daddy's hard work), I worked part time and made about $12k/year. Between standard deductions, student tuition deductions, and student loan interest deductions, I paid $0 in federal income taxes. However, I still paid FICA (and a couple other small taxes, I think), and that wasn't an insignificant amount, considering that I was paying my own way through college.

Another example: My mother (one of those greedy, money-grubbing teachers) raised three children on $19k/year. She also paid no income taxes, but still paid a decent chunk in FICA, property, and state taxes. I've heard people complain about how pissed they are that some people don't pay Federal [Income] Taxes. My response has always been: My mom would have gladly traded spots with you. She'll pay income tax, and you can sleep in a cold house because there isn't enough money to keep the house any warmer.

Forget future historians, in 600 years, when Hobbitism rises as the worlds newest major religion, the coins will be used by fundamentalists as proof that Hobbitism is the One Truth, and encouragement for the furthering of their grim beliefs.

A large sect of Hobbitics in Western Europe will base their entire world view on the belief that there was no allegory or symbolism in the Lord of the Rings, and thus Balrogs do have wings, foxes are sentient, and that if you become suitably evil, you'll turn into a floating eyeball. They'll lobby the Grande Bankocracy of America to force the teaching of Ainuism as an alternative to Evolution. In late November, they will gather together in a large field with a bucket of these coins, separate into five groups, and then murder each other until someone spots an eagle. Then, the group with the shortest individual gets all the gold.

Why don't people think about consequences when they make commemorative coins like this?

[/far-too-much-tolkien-knowledge]

Difference of opinion, I guess.

Anti-Science Movement? Intelligent design in schools. Portraying scientists as "academic elitists" who shouldn't be listened to.

Backwards Rights for Women: Cutting availability of contraception and childcare at the same time. Insisting on extremely invasive procedures before legal medical procedures as a method of discouragement/punishment/humiliation. Removal of regulations for equal pay for women. Allowing employers to cut medical care for women based on religious beliefs (which subjugate women).

Marriage is a contract. The ability of all people to enter into a contract is a Civil Right. The guarantee of Civil Rights is a federal issue.