I wonder if wikipedia would put my ugly mug up there with "A personal appeal from wikipedia reader": "Please, pay them so they'll stop posting all these ugly mugs on the top of every page!"

http://the-scientist.com/2011/11/16/opinion-the-dark-side-of-science/

The author seems to think we live in a world of wild, unregulated research in which unlimited time and money are available for latter-day Frankensteins to create monstrosities in their labs, hidden from public view until the horror is unleashed. In reality, the opposite is true. The primary ethical concern in biomedical science is with curing disease, saving lives, and reducing suffering -- and progress toward these goals is increasingly hindered by philosophers, theologians, and politicians who inject themselves into a process they refuse to understand.

I can't help but wonder if their remote ancestors during the Paleolithic were rubbing their chins and muttering about the dangers of this new flint-chipping technology. Of course, once the hand axe was established as part of everyday life, they were happy enough to use it, all the while warning that tying a smaller, sharper piece of flint to the end of a stick was Going Too Far ...

Just got some lame phishing email with an .html attachment telling me I needed to urgently update my bank information or my account would be terminated.

Please tell me that this phisher is just a complete idiot who was too lazy to copy the bank's website onto his bpasfpapfefeepfkfme23.com domain, and there are no banks (or other institutions) that actually email users their login page...

Wasn't the UI research project that became D2 bad enough?

Do we REALLY need to have a sidebar of snide comments by trolls next to every comment?

The very first comment I see with this new system, we have roman_mir "distilling" the text "It requires fraud, misrepresentation. US Govt is not lying about where the money goes." to "I don't know what a ponzi scam is, but I will pretend I do. I also don't understand lies, when I hear them"

He's absolutely right (with regards to ponzi scheme not requiring fraud, he's welcome to prove that he's heard the government lie about what it's spending the money on), but that doesn't make him come off as any less of a complete asshole by using this distillery bullshit rather than a reply-able comment.

who needs to fix bugs when we can add new ones!

just to be sure...

https://plus.google.com/i/BTgXRan0ttU:Vj4gQOm1tvs

^^ Google+ invite link. Most of the old /. circle crowd is already there.

Some time this morning, clicking ceased to open collapsed parent posts (in Chrome). And this time they managed to fix it without making it impossible to click on links.

.

Who knows, maybe some of you can even read this line.

Thanks to the AAA toxic mortgage bullshit, we already know the credit rating agencies give out whatever ratings they are paid to give, so all three of you who are left can place your bets here on who is paying S&P for an AA+ rating.

So I herd u liek extra lines

So I herd u liek extra lines

So I herd u liek extra lines

The more any participant in an online discussion proclaims that he's being logical, the less likely it is that there's any actual logic on display in his posts.

As an American, and specifically as a Westerner, I reject the idea that culture is in the blood. The West is a distillation of America, with all its best and worst ideas, and one of these ideas is that we are who we choose to be, not who our ancestors were. Our names, our languages, our religions, even our lands: these things matter, but they do not define us; we define ourselves.

But I have to admit that there is something distinctly Russian in the way I see America, and particularly Colorado. The Motherland, the Rodina. A very old way of thinking, and one which doesn't fit particularly well with the New World.

The linguistic root of "patriotism" is "patria," that is, "fatherland" -- a word which tends to make people nervous these days, and with good reason. I am a patriot, and (says the Westerner again) I choose what that word means to me. I am far past the age when it meant beating the drum and waving the flag. I did that when I was younger, and I don't regret it, but honestly I'm not sure how well it ever fit me. Nor, with my rational modern eye, can I indulge in the idea of mommy-land; I've lived too many places (largely as a side effect of the drum-beating and flag-waving, it should be noted) and known them too well to believe that any of them is bound to me by blood.

Grown-ups love their parents too, even when they go far from home. Adult patriotism is hard to define. It's easier to remain a child, to be tough like Daddy says or run crying to Mommy when acting tough doesn't work out so well. My parents raised me with something more thoughtful and more useful than that, and in so doing earned my eternal gratitude.

I'm still working out how to apply that to my country. I probably will be for the rest of my life.

(Jumping off from the conversation here, for those who are interested.)

So far this morning I've managed to eat breakfast, read the paper, vacuum, sweep, clean cat toilets, clean human toilets, and clean the shower.

What the hell am I going to do for the rest of the weekend other than sit here and refresh varnish errors?

Odd that some things (my comments page, the front page, my firehose journal search, and journal.pl?op=edit) seem to work just fine.

BTW: If a varnish developer is reading this, you might want to think about failing in some more graceful way. If varnish ever comes up at work, the first thing I'm going to think is "Varnish? Isn't that that thing that keeps throwing up errors at slashdot all the time?"

There is deep satisfaction in finishing an elegant proof, like writing a good short poem or a beautiful paragraph, though not exactly like either of these. It is, I suspect, very much like finding the right arrangement of notes when writing a piece of music; I'll probably never know.

In writing a paper full of such proofs, there is fatigue and blurred vision and, often, actual pain. So it goes.

If either (a) it wasn't really bin Laden they killed, or (b) Obama could have had him killed at any time, and in either case the announcement was for political purposes, when would have been the right time to do it? The short answer is, "not right now."

The longer answer is, sometime in early September -- not September 11th itself, that would have been too obvious, but say sometime during the first week of the month. It could have been last year, in the run-up to the midterm elections, to give the Democrats a boost. It could have been this year, to tie in with the 10th anniversary of the event, since we all seem to like nice round numbers. Or it could have been next year, to give Obama as well as the Congressional Democrats a boost for the upcoming election.

But doing it now, as a political act, would just be dumb. Obama is, very roughly, at the same point in his (hopefully) first term as GHW Bush was at the close of Desert Storm -- at which point, you may remember, Bush the Elder enjoyed approval ratings of 90+%, a record no President has equaled before or since, and was widely considered unbeatable. And if you don't remember what a certain Governor of Arkansas did a year and a half later, I assure you Mike Huckabee does.

There is no reason, at all, at least on political grounds, not to think this is the real thing.

It appears they've fixed the issue where trying to click anywhere in an expanded child with a collapsed parent opened the parent and rescrolled the window to the parent.

It also appears that they chose to fix the issue by disabling clicking entirely within the comments section. Somehow, I can click reply, and clicking on collapsed comments opens them, but everything else... no. Can't click (or middle click) on links people post in their comments in IE9, Firefox 3, Firefox 4, and Chrome. Firefox will not even allow me to right click on them: the context menu will not open (though if I click the link, which does nothing, then I can use the Context Menu key to open the context menu).

EDIT: I accidentally submitted this journal entry as a story because of all the changes in the Slashdot UI. I assumed that Slashcode would be more intuitive than this. The following is my latest journal entry, now that I've figured out where it goes.

Hello folks, just touching base with my Slashdot journal. It's been a long time since I've written anything here and I'd like to start by saying I've made a lot of changes in my life since then.

I quit World of Warcraft, fully stocked my kitchen with fresh veggies and healthy food, joined a gym, started working with a trainer and I'm fucking happier than I've ever been! :)

My job is going well, I'm getting ready to buy a new 4wd SUV and I'm happy with my life again, thanks to my family and IRL friends. Any suggestions on fuel efficient vehicles that fit this description are welcome.

I missed Slashdot quite a bit since I was last here and just to let you know I've been over at Reddit, but that's kinda fun and stuff although it's not the same as the nerdy goodness of this fucking awesome website.

I wanna wish all you guys health, wealth and happiness.