You applaud them for their efforts in making DNT useless? You need to understand -- If they do this, it won't help privacy, it will just make DNT meaningless (since no one will support it).

Because their job is to help standardize browser features?

No, they're right on this one. No on is required to implement Do Not Track (advertisers could choose to ignore it). Right now they're going along with it for PR reasons, because it doesn't really cost them anything (people who click "Do Not Track" wouldn't click their ads anyway). However, it everyone sends DNT headers, how make ad companies will willingly support that?

Like other people have mentioned -- if Congress wants DNT as the default, it needs to be required by law. Otherwise, making it the default means making it meaningless.

I think you're reading too much into my statement. I didn't mean to imply that there are no good scientists, or even that a large proportion of them are, I just disagree with the assumption that because reasoning skills are required for science, that all professional scientists have good reasoning skills. Scientists are also in an interesting position, because political pressure means that being extremely bad at science can help you get certain jobs (like say, studying climate change for The Heartland Institute, or studying geology for the Institute for Creation Research).

And you should note that I'm thinking in terms of "people who claim to be scientists" or "people who work professionally as scientists", because this thread was about measuring reasoning skills. If you define scientists as "people with good reasoning skills", then the test is kind of pointless.

It may be required to be a good scientist, but not to get a job as one.

Yes, I assumed that would be the case. However -- how many theaters will actually run 2D + 48fps when the same projectors can do 3D + 48fps (and they can charge more for the tickets because 3D is EXTREME).

This brings up an interesting point -- will I be able to see this in 48 fps *without* gimmicky 3D?

Are the theaters really complaining that they'll have a new gimmick to sell? After the whole charging double for a headache and annoying effects thing (3D)?

Or in our current system: Company A wants to do something environmentally destructive, there's a low-key bill for it, Company A encourages all of its employees to call/email their representative for it... they win. This happens most of the time.

Alternate version: Company A just pays off said representative (in a legal way, like donating to their campaign).

This is obviously a problem, but I don't see direct democracy making it any worse.

And what's worse about this plan than how we're already doing things? The main differences I see are that you can change bad decisions more quickly (instead of waiting 4-6 years) and he doesn't have to guess what his constituents wants.

Apple isn't an acronym.

Also, you seem to be assuming Apple users are the only ones who are willing to trade features for a smaller laptop. This is not the case.

Atlas Shrugged -- How middle/upper class white men convince themselves that doing anything for other people is morally wrong.

Chat bandwidth is so minor, it might as well be. There's plenty of people willing to run IRC servers for free.

In GNOME, you click "Activities" (which is in a giant start-menu shaped bar, where the start menu traditionally goes). I eventually learned the shortcut (windows key), but it wasn't necessary in the beginning.

Like I said though, I was comparing KDE to how I currently use GNOME. A more fair comparison would be KDE4 vs KDE3, where KDE3's start menu is significantly better. I feel like for KDE4's start menu, they tried to make it look cool vs making it work well.

Thinner => Lighter / Smaller => More portable

Seems like a reasonable thing to want in a laptop. If I wanted a machine that did everything at any cost.. I'd get a desktop.