They actually get fired these days? That must be new... or old... or just not what I've been seeing.

Can you explain how it's richer rather than poorer because of the expenditure he made that he could have used elsewhere? Because I can't explain it by any quantifiable means. Not that I disagree that the world isn't made better by the study of literature. I do it in my free time and it does make my life more enjoyable. But I fail to see how that makes your life better.

I'm not trying to side either way here. Just curious.

What is the proper way to pluralize a possessive pronoun? Is the proper way kids' heads or something else?

Nice straw man argument.

The point isn't that we shouldn't fund schools, roads and the electrical grid. The point is that the government has neither the knowledge nor the foresight to invest in emerging industries. Never has and never will. The best thing they could do with this loan is to invest it in schools instead of a startup, that way there will be more people capable of creating a startup on their own.

You should do a slashdot article on it.

Most of my non-Linux-user-friends are feeling the pain of Vista and SP3 and asking about "that Linux thing" because they don't want to fork out more money for MAC or a new computer.

New Years and Christmas parties?

Neither of them likes Capitalism anymore, that's for sure.

So let the rich people fund it with their own money, not force everyone through government coercion.

Wow, what an inflammatory statement. I knew I had ignorance that's why I asked for information.

At least they weren't screwing the public, like most of the people in DC.

This is the US. The 50 citizens who were previously considered 'cooks' will take careful aim with their semi-automatic weapons before the cops realize the violence they have instigated. It happened in 1776, I hope it doesn't happen in the US again, but it very well could.

Don't worry... I'm probably already on the list. But you won't be, you displayed 'civility'

I've never checked but does slashdot come in any other language than the one read by the 5%?

I didn't mean an open wiki, I just mean a Hyperlinked text so you didn't have to do all the searching yourself. Although didn't the GPLv3 get made by a wiki like process? I don't think it turned out to bad.

As for fostering understanding: Have you ever considered that more people would try to understand their government if it wasn't so painfully obvious that the government doesn't want you to know how it runs, and is rather hostile when you take an active interest?

...Maybe United States Law should be made a wiki? Maybe that would foster enough understanding by individuals to actually push for reforms that people want, instead of pushing for reforms that no-body can understand due to the limitations of the presentation media.

Disclaimer: If I were this system engineer, I'd scrap it all and start by looking at the original requirements, not all the feature creep requests.