I am troubled by the no concern for his vegan diet. No concern would imply he was routinely served meat with no deviation from the regular prison fare. I don’t know about Sweden, but it seems there would be plenty of vegetarian diet dishes available for religious reasons to prisoners. If he was offered vegetarian fare, perhaps that suffices, its not like we can accommodate every dietary request. My religion only allows me to eat panda or human flesh certainly wouldn’t fly.

The question here is whether any reasonable accommodation was made. Without more details it is hard to judge. Disturbing if true though. This would imply you have to have a major religion to back up your moral choices in life – which to me is not religious freedom.

BTW, that first soles was also supposed to be souls.

Seems there trouble with my soul (sole) as well.

Ummm, why does he need the names and addresses to pray for them? Sort of like “what does God need with a starship?” Surely this man's all seeing deity can take care of these wayward soles by just know this man cares about the state of their immortal souls.

Of course maybe this is a more impotent rather than Omnipotent God, in which case I guess this man has to carry God's message in person, to do what God can't.

So if we're lucky this won't be the true Higgs partilce, as that would point to more discoveries involving a fifth force dubbed the technicolor force and allow us to see particles composed of techni-quarks. Should this come to be, then that probably more than justifies the expense of the LHC as just finding the Higgs would not really give us radically new knowledge.

It’s all well and good to say our Big Bang was an inevitable quantum fluctuation in some frothy Metaverse, but then the real question becomes where the Metaverse comes from.

Whether Metaverse or not, I tend to believe the true answer is something close to Max Tegmark’s Mathematical universe hypothesis. There isn’t really any physical substance, we are the actualizations of pure math. This universe is just one of an uncounatable infinity of universes that exist because the are mathematically consisitant.

Take the equation for a parabolla, it isn’t complex enough to contain self aware entities, but if it where then it’s Big Bang is at y=0 for y=x^2. It is silly to ask what comes before 0 in the parabolla universe, similarly is is silly to ask what comes before the Big Bang, Time started at 0 because it is just a parameter in the etenal framework of math. The true Universe then is etenal and unchanging, it is math, our perception of time just the unfolding of following one particular parameter in a multidimensional equation.

Slashdot leans close to 2:1 Democrats over Republicans.

Slashdot readers tend to be college educated and with an income well above the national average. Supposedly those more well off tend to vote Republican as a matter of self interest -- so what’s the disconnect here?

What is it about Tech culture that leans Democratic (and presumably liberal), as opposed to say the comments section on Forbes, which also would be largely college educated and income above the national average?

Conservative Echo chambers would no doubt view the Slashdot community as naive. Are we?

Are there conservative leaning tech news sites I’m unaware? Perhaps the Slashdot community just evolved this way by chance and now liberals (of which I am one) just feel welcome here?

The most obvious cause I see is the Republicans apparent dismissal of science when it conflicts with corporate wishes, also their support for Fundamentalist Christian agendas which include the desire to deny Gay rights and deny women’s choice with regard to contraception and abortion. Since Techies tend to be rationalists (many atheists and agnostics) in my observation, these then could be biggest factors.

I know there are some conservative on this website and I do not wish to chase them out, but I am asking in light of my previous paragraph – how am I wrong in how I characterized Republicans in the last paragraph, or what virtues do they have, which I have omitted, that balance out and make amends for these short comings?

Held accountable for what? This total free resource I can use with no strings attached, all the while when these guys have to deal with and moderate with various personalities and entities constantly trying to pervert Wikipedia from its mission.

To me Wikipedia is a marvel to behold, a shining bastion of how not-to-be Facebook. I’m constantly amazed at the vitriol they endure when one or two contentious pages gets messed up by some self-aggrandizing a**hole. Nobody seems to stop or look at the literally millions of technical pages which get used on an everyday basis to solve real world problems – but instead focus on whether Justin Beber, Ron Paul, the Koch Brothers, or Monsanto are given a fair shake in their writeups.

I may admire the fact that education is admired by society at large in China. That said, yes their system can be very cruel and the children often have emotional issues because of it. Chinese parents here in America are often hell bent on forcing their children to study endlessly. And you know what, they do much better in school than average American children, and then go on to have better jobs. Here in Howard County Maryland there is about 20% Asian population. Howard County has the third highest average income in America – this population segment is doing something right (and things wrong as well outside of work and school).

When Chinese are sent to foreign schools they take the same work attitude.

I don't admire the Chinese school system, but I also don't think all the hard work is wasted. There is probably some ideal middle ground between what we do here in America and what is done in China.

While not praising the system, I'm also not underestimating it either. China has come a long way in the last twenty years having finally unshackled themselves from Maoist philosophy in all but name only.

What I don't understand is why you and many others extrapolate so easily that despite the fact they have come so far so fast, they can go no further. It may be their system will implode, but it is not inevitable. I dislike the fact that we Americans all seem so smug in our belief that our system is so far superior no one elsewhere under a different system could in some sense to better.

I don't not want to live in China and I especially like the freedom of speech that allows me the lattitude to write as I wish. But I don't take it as a given that will be all it takes to stay ahead of China.

It’s hard to know how to parse this. I don’t say China surpassing us is inevitable, but complacency could make it so. Are you saying American or Western cultural hegemony are unassailable?

Despite China’s pollution problems (or because of them) they are investing a much larger portion of their GDP to solving them than we are. Who knows if they will succeed. I certainly don’t.

If I where a Chinese I don’t think I would appreciate being told I’d better stay at a standard of living less (much less) than an American for the good of the world (or especially Americans).

What are your proposals to keep them down?

I use Firefox all the time, but of late all the browsers seem basically good-enough (though don’t get me started about HTML5’s implementation of draggable) or at least compatible enough.

There is always work to do, but Microsoft seems to have largely conceded the battle against standardization.

I doubt I will find Mozilla’s new browser for developers Earth shattering. I hope I’m wrong.

What really seems needed is just continued pursuit of refinement of the HTML5 standard and work towards making it syntactically regular, grammatically powerful, and user friendly.

In closing, dear God, please someone fix draggable, I want an easy to use, powerful language more than I want cross-platform tools.

Or... faith in America’s brand of freedom may be more a conceit or a faith based belief -- a flattering rationalization we tell ourselves to explain our post-WWII position in the world. I’m not say it isn’t true at all, or true to some degree, but to blindly believe freedom of expression or various other freedoms will forever keep America in the forefront on the world stage may be a bit naive.

That said, day after day, all I see is Slashdot postings that seem to point to the erosion of this freedom you seem to think gives us such a huge advantage.

It may be comforting to think China merely stole everything to become manufacturing heavyweights – it may even be true to a degree, but going forward they are becoming increasingly self reliant. They will at some point surpass us in many areas, or perhaps already have. Did I mention the admiration of academic achievement within their culture? Do you think only us good ol’ Americans have a lock on creativity and knowledge? They aren’t just building infrastructure, they are building know-how. When the Communist party wants something done they are not sidetracked by petty partisan bickering. Yes I outlined some weaknesses of theirs, but that is not to say they might not overcome or evolve past them.

We are the ones that need to start working towards the future harder. Get past the Common-Core complaints -- some are merited, some are not – and get on with it and apply what works in education. An educated workforce will be the only way for us to compete with them (or anyone else) in the future, and they have a 4-5x advantage numbers wise to cull the best from.

I’m on the fence about this one. It reminds me of Japan’s big fifth generation computer project in the 80’s – and which was widely considered a failure. China has had many great accomplishments this last two decades, they are a force to be reckoned with, but many of their gains have come through brute force methods of applying ample labor to problems, not true subtlety or production efficiencies.

That said, the Chinese admire those who excel academically and are hungry for a prosperous modern future. I have actually been to China 5 times in the last eight years and the major cities are modern marvels to behold.

But what has worked well in the past, the ruling party deciding spending priorities, may not work so well in the future. China’s bureaucrats are very controlling. They have worked hard the last twenty years to drag China into the modern world, enriching their citizens and themselves alike, but now that a substantial portion of the population is educated and middle class they have become more restless and demanding of accountability on the part of the government.

This desire for control may also not work so well in an industry that needs the freedom to make mistakes and learn from them. You can command the building of streets and bridges and skyscrapers, commanding new discoveries be made and made in such a way that are not a threat to the state and can be controlled by the state – that may be another thing.

You do NOT have a RIGHT to control your public image. A public image is something that emerges from HOW you perform in public.

You do NOT have a RIGHT to not have your religion, beliefs, politics offended.

You CAN be just as misguided, idiotic, self absorbed as you want to be as long as I am not forced to change my behaviors to accommodate your stupid world views.

The way I see it, I DO have the RIGHT to see, believe, read, write, learn, say, do what I want want if it doesn't interfere with someone else's right to do the same. If you do not agree with that, then we have a problem.

3 days you say – oh noes.
 
Let's add some moral outrage at maybe DRM involved in buggy behavior.

I am against DRM in general, but by the same token I'm not one to encourage other people to break it.
Jones_Supa gets an article posted, but perhaps is really trying to motivate the community to open this cookie-jar for him. Hidden agenda much?