Bullshit.
They aren't selling the fact of a license plate number (that is the state owned information). They are selling the fact that I was at the Southridge Mall in SouthCity from 1 to 4pm on Tuesday, and that I am a regular customer there spending an average of 3 hours a week at the mall over the course of a year.
Does it matter to anyone? I dunno.
But it damn well IS MY INFORMATION.

Am I the only person who's first reaction was to think "AHA! So mining these rare earth metals are what will awaken Godzilla"

Note to self: Ignore people who are incapable of responding without an insult.

Your probably right, but I could see a survey looking at the discussions around granting student loans asking whether or not anyone has talked to them about using student loan money to buy crypto-currency, then someone misreading the article.

How much good are our advocate journalists doing right now? Is it solving much? How hard is THAT to understand?

News should tell me the facts, not how I should feel about the facts.

Oh for the love of God. You are just as bad at "facts" as our president. Making it all caps doesn't make it more true.
The fact is that the Russians TRIED to influence our election. There is tons of proof of that. What we dont have proof of is that their attempts changed the result of the election. Not saying it didn't, just that its not something that has been "proven." Im completely ready to believe that we legitimately have enough idiots to vote the man in.

Prediction: The moment that the Republicans get trashed in the midterm elections the Republicans will start screaming about how Russian meddling has screwed up the mid term elections.

I agree with everything you say, except the part where you miss that the whole point of this is that they are privatizing _instead_ of decommissioning/deorbiting. It doesn't change anything for the operational life of the ISS so there is no cash grab here.
The only question is whether anyone can find enough value in it to balance the costs of support and upkeep for a system past its warranty date.

The real problem is that people have gotten so lazy that they are fine just assuming that everyone on "the other side" fits into a single category and we are all in complete agreement with anything thats said or done by "our side."

That sort of mindless pigeonholing make it impossible to hold adult conversations.

In all the time I've been reading SlashDot, this is the first time I have ever seen the first post get a 5: Insightful.
Congratulations!

I think everyone is missing the point of the EC.
News flash.... We are not a Democracy, we are a Republic with democratic principles.
The original colonies got together for mutual defence but were very concerned about other colonies not telling them how to live their lives.
Thus, each state would hold an election and send representatives.
Sure, some of it is bogged down in the technology of the era (how else do you do this back before even telephones,) but at the root is the fact that the people arent electing a president, the States are.

And personally I think that is a good thing. Its one more "inefficiency" the founding fathers baked into our government to prevent "the Tyranny of the majority."

... and Helium.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/National_Helium_Reserve

The problem here is that everyone has a different interpenetration of what is unspoken here.
Conservatives assume that this is obviously Obama whining about loosing the election and making an (unspoken) claim that its because the Russians interfered.
Liberals assume that it is because there have been accusations from other sources that the Russians were trying to hack our electoral system.

There is no claim implicit in the order to investigate that the attempts to hack the system actually resulted in a change in the election results. Although I'm a liberal I actually don't think that was the case. I think Trump won fair and square. I hate it, but there it is.

But if the Russians were trying to do something, we should find out, and try and prevent it from happening in the future.

Everyone just needs to calm the fuck down.

Wow....
You realize that your just kinda... making that up, right?

You don't think there is a difference between HFCS and sugar? Try being in the car (or any closed poorly ventilated space) with me for a couple of hours after drinking a regular Coke. Then we will see who's the idiot.
Mexican coke made with regular sugar? no problem.

Im not arguing FOR sugar, just against the idiots who insist they are "the same damned thing."

Wooooooowwww....
I have no idea why Im continuing this, but I feel compelled.

Do you understand that there is a difference between the underlying rules of the universe, and our understanding of those underlying rules?
Do you understand that 200 years ago we had "scientific laws" that turned out to be wrong?
Do you honestly believe that mankind is now so smart that we know everything and our understanding of science exactly matches reality? If so, then there is no more need for science, because we are done.

If that does nothing for you, which I'm sure it wont, then I give up. Yours is obviously the superior intellect.