So, regulation = hanging?

And you are implying that there are NO regulations about when, where, and how firefighters do controlled burns?

Who is the government?

We the people. We the people, as a community, have identified a behavior in the community that is unhealthy and expensive due to healthcare costs. Since, in this case, the community is not a small community in which members can exert direct pressure on each other through personal relationships, the community is exerting pressure in another way. If you think this is new or somehow restricted to governments, then you're not paying attention to all of human history. If you want to be free from the pressures of your community and have no responsibility to other people, you're free to live in the wilderness. This has nothing to do with government. It's fine to disagree with this, but framing it as a "nanny state" issue is misleading. Ever since humans evolved culture (and probably before that), we've developed ways to curb the detrimental behaviors of our fellow community members. People are idiots and they're addicted to sugar. It places a cost on the rest of us. I see no reason why your right to be a lardass trumps the community's need to keep healthcare costs down.

People CAN buy two drinks, but I think quite a few people won't. Humans eat/drink what is set before them without noticing. They won't be trained to desire so much soda if they aren't handed so much to begin with.

This makes me suspicious. A friend of mine supposedly has a friend whose friend dated Matt Smith and revealed that he shouted this during sex. I'm now wondering if this has entered internet myth territory. Do we have any first-hand sources for this? Or is it always a friend?

"The Free Market" is a bit like "Communism" - you never actually find either of them in practice. They only exist in theory. The market is and never will be "free." And yes, iIt so happens that those who bleat the loudest about "free markets" tend to be those who IN PRACTICE support the private power of corporations.

The AC above actually put the words free market in quotation marks, signaling that his comment was more about discourse than actual economic theory. The idea that this is an issue of "government interference" is laughable. This is corporations using the government as a weapon against individuals. I bet you support gun rights, too, yeah? Guns don't kill people, people kill people? Amirite? In this instance, the government is the gun and the corporation is the one pulling the trigger while shouting "free markets!" It's sad that you identify the government as THE problem. Though yes, its susceptibility to corporate influence is A problem.

Because those two certainly won't uphold corporate interests? If you hold your nose and vote for either of them, it won't be taken as a sign that the American people oppose ACTA. It will be taken as a sign that people want more government intrusion in their bedrooms and more rights for corporations. If you want to give more power to the women-are-sluts-and-corporations-are-heroic-people party, don't come crying when the obvious results.

Good point. If I want a text based computer game, I'll play http://armageddon.org/ (such a cool game).

Oh look, you spouted a trite cliché. Try thinking for yourself. (Maybe a better college education would help you on that front).

In the humanities, there is no alternative to academia. Take a professional historian of modern France who writes books and teaches. What exactly would they be doing if they had more "intellectual horsepower?" That's the peak of the field. There's nowhere up from there. Of course, I'm sure you think the humanities are useless, so most likely my point will fly right by you.

Actually, that's not true that they haven't spoken up. Professors regularly speak out on these issues. It's one of the reasons why the right-wing loathes and hates professors so much and demonizes them at every opportunity.

There are plenty of cases of lousy researchers who are excellent teachers and excellent researchers who are lousy teachers. However, if you think dividing research and teaching will result in long term benefit, you don't understand academia.

What we're actually seeing here is an "education bubble." Poor people have been told that if spend lots of money and get a degree, they will have access to good jobs. It isn't true.

Be careful. Some allergies, like food allergies or poison ivy, get WORSE with each exposure. Some people just have itchy throat from nuts until one day they stop breathing after eating some.

For some reason, this is the only place that it doesn't bother me to see the 10-year anniversary stuff. I can very clearly remember reading slashdot in an office when news of this began to spread.

What a terrible tragedy the event was.

And what a terrible tragedy the last ten years of response to it has been.

Yes, but if we have to account for lightsaber sounds, then we have to account for noise and fiery explosions in space.

except when such cyber warfare is directed at Iran by a join Israel/U.S. operation. Then it's just ... uh. Definitely not war.

When they invent the subjunctive.

Also, it's not inventing a language if they're programmed to do it. Let me know when the robots building cars on an assembly line start unexpectedly communicating with each other in ways that communicate concepts/ideas that were not hardcoded into them.

In any historical discussion on slashdot, it's only a matter of time until the gourd-deniers show up. Bunch of crazies. They're the only group more persistent than creationists and more dense than global warming deniers.

That their out-of-print books from the 60s, 70s, and 80s, that are currently making them ZERO money, could be sold for $2-$5 as pdfs. There are hundreds of books that I would like to buy, but since they are out of print (and weren't cheap to begin with and had small print runs), they cost in the rage of $70+. This means that I simply don't buy them. This means that no one makes money of my desire to own these books. What a waste.