Most importantly, we want you to know that Classic Slashdot isn't going away until we're confident that the new site is ready.

I have a better idea. It can be accomplished by deleting the last nine words of the sentence: "Classic Slashdot isn't going away."

It ain't broke. Don't fix it.

Oh, it's even more fiendishly perfect than what you describe.

See, at the end of the 10-year repayment period, the remaining balance does, in fact, get wiped, but the amount that's wiped is treated as taxable income. So if you've "racked up all the debt you want" and have $100,000 worth of forgiveness, say hello to a $35,000 tax bill.

What's that? You can't pay the tax on your newfound "wealth"? Well then, men with guns will come to your house, seize your property, and put you in a cage.

It's not feudalism, it's something rather worse.

I'm a little drunk, so I read that as "the efficient conduit for the transmission of God's word to earth". Which still kind of works.

I haven't much to say, other than from one New York lawyer to another, BIG UPS. Keep doing your thing, Ray. You'll wear the bastards down eventually!

How will this shiny new tax be collected and enforced?

One option is to put the onus on the retailers to maintain a database of all the different sales tax rates in the country, so they can collect the appropriate amount on the purchase. At least in New York, sales taxes vary by county -- the State takes 4% and the county takes anywhere from 3-5%. That's 62 lines on the spreadsheet, just for New York. I think NYC adds a point or two as well. This would have to be correlated with a ZIP code table, so the retailer would know which ZIPs are in which jurisdictions. It's tedious, but not impossible. Perhaps the IRS could spend some of our money to draw up the tables and maintain them.

Another avenue is to put the onus on the buyer to calculate and remit the appropriate taxes to the authorities. If I were a sociopath, I'd like this method better. It doesn't burden the retailers and it provides a delicious means of social control, not to mention a wealth of interesting information on what people are buying. Let's take a non-Amazon company as an example, since Amazon has bought exemptions from State sales taxes:

NewEgg is contacted by the NY Department of Taxation and Finance and ordered to turn over their NY sales records. No warrant is required, since the request is for tax compliance purposes. DTF runs the records through their computer system and looks up the tax records of each NewEgg customer. If the customer didn't report the sale, they're in big trouble. If it's a significant amount that they didn't report, or there's a pattern of non-compliance, off to private prison with you!

Cue the naysayers saying I'm a paranoiac and Our Glorious Overlords would never do something so fiendish...

Once you're a made member of the club, scrubbing your data and enjoying some privacy is a [perk].

Along with being able to turn off the telescreen?

Right. I think people are getting hung up on the GP's incorrect use of "duress". There are a bunch of reasons why a contractual clause might get thrown out: there's the public policy rationale, as you note, there's undue influence (though judging from Wikipedia, that might not work in the U.S., as both cited cases are Australian), and there's my personal favorite:

Unconscionability. It's a two-prong attack:

1. You have to prove that whatever your employer offered you in exchange for signing the contract (viz., a job, at a certain rate of pay, for certain hours) was so grossly inadequate compared to what you had to give up, that to enforce the contractual terms would be unfair.

2. You have to prove that your employer leveraged his greater bargaining power to get you to sign the contract.

Essentially, you have to prove that both the terms of the contract and the manner in which it was negotiated were both grossly unfair. #2 is a lot easier to prove than #1, given the state of the economy and the desperation of many job-seekers, but #2 alone isn't sufficient. In order to break a contract on unconscionability grounds, the terms have to be really, really onerous, on the order of "you agree to give up your firstborn for indentured servitude to this company" or "if you quit, you agree never to work within a fifty-mile radius of this company ever again".

It is by coffee alone I set my mind in motion. It is by the juice of the arabica bean that the thoughts acquire speed, the hands acquire shaking. The shaking becomes a warning. It is by coffee alone I set my mind in motion.

Planes and Ships don't rely on GPS.

If you have a license to pilot any of them, you have learned how to navigate without.

Right you are. My sextant, watch, Nautical Almanac, and H.O. 249 Sight Reduction Tables laugh at these puny exploits. Let me know when researchers have found flaws in the apparent motion of the celestial spheres.

In that case, you could use one of the manual ones at diybookscanner.com and turn the pages yourself, trading speed for safety.

29,025 and presumably climbing. I say, great. Good riddance.

Fifth Amendment, maybe? "Private property [shall not] be taken for public use, without just compensation." It's certainly arguable that patent rights, as a form of IP, constitute some form of "private property". If one takes the position that IP does constitute "property", then it's possible that abolishing existing patents (essentially, releasing those ideas to the public domain) would be considered a taking for Fifth Amendment purposes, requiring compensation. It's iffy, but possible.

I thought you'd said "autism is the new red-headed step-child" and was very confused upon reading the article.