6 is nervous, because 7 8 9

Hint. Say it out loud.

If you run a restaurant, and you serve soft drinks, you can serve Coca-Cola Products or Pepsi products.

Many years ago (before 1997) some restaurant chains objected to Pepsi products because Pepsi owned restaurant chains including Pizza Hut and KFC, and cross promoted its drinks with the restaurants.

Back then Pepsi would pay restaurants to use their products in stead of Coke. So they were able to overcome some of the competitive objections to using their products. Coke never paid.

In the late 90s, Pepsi solved the problem by a corporate separation of the restaurants and the drinks. The restaurant company is now called Yum! Brands. I assume they stopped paying restaurants to take their products.

To me Google vs Yahoo resembles the Coke vs. Pepsi situation. And, it is just as important.

"Average life expectancy has actually been going down recently, at least in the US."

That is very interesting. Can you cite a source for your statement.

Here is what I read recently:

Life expectancy in the USA hits a record high by Larry Copeland, USA TODAY 3:54 a.m. EDT October 9, 2014:

Life expectancy in the USA rose in 2012 to 78.8 years - a record high.

That was an increase of 0.1 year from 2011 when it was 78.7 years, according to a new report on mortality in the USA from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention's National Center for Health Statistics.

As Umberto Eco wrote:

"G K Chesterton is often credited with observing: "When a man ceases to believe in God, he doesn't believe in nothing. He believes in anything." Whoever said it - he was right. We are supposed to live in a sceptical age. In fact, we live in an age of outrageous credulity.

"The "death of God", or at least the dying of the Christian God, has been accompanied by the birth of a plethora of new idols. They have multiplied like bacteria on the corpse of the Christian Church ..."

The more information you add to the process and the more people who review the information the more subject the process is to manipulation by the operators. Not that the current admissions system completely in the hands of the colleges who play how ever they like for whatever their goals are -- which are mostly to keep the system running with lots of rich kids who can pay the freight.

A lottery subtracts all information and leaves very little room for manipulation. Unqualified kids in the lottery? They will go home after English 101 and Calculus, and be replaced by a new group.

The lottery does not discriminate by race, sex, religion, or national origin. It is completely fair.

I won't eat octopus, because chewing on octopus is like chewing rubber tubing. It is not a pleasant experience.

Think Pads, now made by Lenovo, are still good, still solidly built, and very difficult to break. They are my go to advice for Windows laptops.

"They also don't think there's any chance the NFL will move its games to pay-per-view."

ROTFLMAO.

What are they smoking? The NFL will go PPV, ASAP.

Book it.

"Germany's Energy Poverty: How Electricity Became a Luxury Good" By SPIEGEL Staff on 09/04/2013:

Germany's agressive and reckless expansion of wind and solar power has come with a hefty pricetag for consumers, and the costs often fall disproportionately on the poor. Government advisors are calling for a completely new start.

Groan

rimshot

They still do in San Francisco.

From the lead article:

"In May, China banned government use of Windows 8, Microsoft's latest operating system"

It seems to be a needless gesture. Even in the US, no one uses Windows 8.

Information Warfare: Running For Linux January 9, 2011

For a decade now, China has been trying to get business and government users to adopt Unix (and later Linux) as their operating system. Yet most Chinese businesses, and many government departments, continue to use Microsoft operating systems. They do this because Microsoft Windows is widely pirated in China, and there's a large amount of pirated software you can use only on Windows systems. Another critical reason is that more games run on Windows machines, and that is important, even in China. Finally, the Chinese government is more resistant to complaints from Microsoft than Russia.

* * *

China has tried to get around this by subsidizing Linux training for Chinese engineers and computer technicians. The government also subsidized the development of the Kylin Unix based server software. Kylin is shareware, and anyone can download it. Kylin is also designed to be very secure, much more secure than Microsoft server software, and most other similar products. China has had more success in getting users to adopt non-Microsoft server software, but the real battleground is PCs.

I can see from reading this thread that there is a lot of righteous anger about this issue. The question is, what are you going to do about it?

Just mouthing off on slashdot is not doing something. You need to let your elected representatives know that this issue is important to you and that they should not toe the party line on immigration just because Green and Zuckerberg, and their ilk are laying down big bucks to the the parties and campaign funds.

Writing your congressman and calling his office are just baby steps. What you need to do is vote incumbents out of a job. Eric Cantor, then the House Majority Leader lost his primary to a guy who campaigned on a mere $50,000 because of Cantor's support for immigration "reform" (i.e., letting loose the flood gates). That sobered the House Republican leadership up real fast.

Tech people have for too long wasted their votes on trivial social issues, or have not voted at all. You need to find candidates, support them, and get out the vote to oppose Zuckerberg, et. al. That is the only thing that can save your hides.

Allow me to conclude with a short poem by the great German playwright and poet, Bertolt Brecht*.

The Solution

After the uprising of the 17th June, the Secretary of the Writer's Union,
Had leaflets distributed in the Stalinallee,
Stating that the people had forfeited the confidence of the government;
And could win it back only by redoubled efforts.
Would it not be easier in that case, for the government
To dissolve the people, and elect another?

* You may know him best as the author of "The Three Penny Opera" from which the song "Mack the Knife" was taken.