the Open Source community is full of a#@&oles, and I probably more than most others am one of their most favourite targets.

So he's a troll who specializes in trolling trolls. Why are we feeding him?

Do Not Feed The Trolls

The government hasn't shown that there is any actual harm caused by the model that folks like Comcast intend to use

Yes, we have. We have tested it with telegraph, and telephone, and physical carriage. Your insistence that we haven't only shows that you have not studied the history of common carrier.

Living On a Carbon Budget: The End of Recreation As We Know It?

Oh my god! Whatever will we do?!? We'll have to come up with some way to allocate scarce resouces based on competing wants! If only there were a science that studies economic activity to gain an understanding of the processes that govern the production, distribution and consumption of goods and services in an economy. If we had that, then it would imply we already have an enormous, global system for handling this exact problem.

Not that it doesn't need tweeking, and we need to internalize the cost of carbon emissions, but this isn't just a solved problem; it is one of the most intensely studied and tested fields of sociopolitical theory that there is. And it doesn't mean we banned recreation. As it turns out, some recreation is actually good for the system, because it increases productivity.

And can we produce five times as much energy? Ummm, yeah. Real easy. There is a shitload of energy falling out of the clear blue sky at all times. If we have the resources, we can grab more of it. So that completes the whole "productivity" loop back to increasing production of energy.

it has an obligation to show that such control is the least burdensome method of achieving a compelling state interest. And - frankly - it's not.

Yes, it is. See common carrier. It has been tested empirically for more than a century including physical carriage networks. The empirical testing has shown that when carriers are prohibited from discriminatory behavior, the resulting increase in competition among merchants and manufacturers who use the carriage networks results in greater overall economic expansion. It is why FedEx is not permitted to negotiate preferred carrier status with one manufacturer to inhibit shipments made by a competing manufacturer.

Anyone else think this is simply an attempt to let the issue calm down and be forgotten by the public?

I'd toss in that they're probably negotiating the sequence of events; they have to kill net neutrality soon as well. And, expect the announcements to be timed for minimal coverage, so Friday afternoon. They might even hold the net neutrality announcement to the Wednesday before Thanksgiving.

What do you expect?

Informed consent; a condition not satisfied by something buried in dozens of pages of legal boilerplate. "We're watching everything you do" is not something that falls into reasonable expectation, even for an early test program. Requiring consent as a condition of use may be fine; failing to place a large, explicit notice on screen is utterly disrespectful to the user and an unconscionable violation of the most basic security practices.

I'll also add that our Director of Events is fairly convinced a new Marriott property in Washington, DC is doing this right now.

Has your Director of Events considered not doing business with Marriott, or at least putting them on the "only if nothing else is available" list?

Democrats: The New GOP.

Hey, come on, now. That's not fair. The old GOP was not nearly as militaristic and bankster owned as the current Democrats.

I'd feel better if some smart people from the CDC or WHO or USAMRIID were trying to figure out what us different this time.

Good post and all, but on this specific point: Go ahead and feel better. All three are. The people there with the right expertise are probably working extensive overtime, owing both to the vigor of their superiors and their own intense desire to beat this thing. We know they are; we intentionally imported two victims early on, so we could get more data to work with.

the term "collection" as redefined by Executive Order 12333 to allow basically every information dragnet, provided no-one looks at it. "Collection" is now defined as "collection plus action." ... This leads to the question of aging off collected data/communications:

No it does not. Do not go gentle into that good night. There is no reason whatsoever for us to accept the giant leap into unconstitutional territory and debate the fine points left to us, settling for scraps of liberty from dictators who have derived no just power from the consent of the governed. Rage against this machine until you die or it does.

"Ferris Jabr reports in Outside Magazine that every year, more than 500 Americans are struck by lightning. Roughly 90 percent of them will survive, but those survivors will be instantly, fundamentally altered in ways that still leave scientists scratching their heads.

Yes, sure, it has some unpleasant effects, but keep it in perspective. How much resources should we as a society be dedicating to lightning strike victims? Nearly ten times as many people die drowning every year as get struck by lightning (including non-fatal strikes). In fact, you're only about twice as likely to get struck by lightning as to die from a terrorist attack, which a statistical non-risk. And we don't go running around panicking about terrorism... oh, wait...

So, is Google's non-tax based public school funding

They pay billions in profits to an empty office in the Carribbean so they don't have to pay taxes, and give a small portion of that money back through school funding, and take that as a tax deduction.

In the process, they get enormous influence over the educational agenda. It is largely in a direction Slashdotters can agree with, but imagine it was a church doing this.

Like Al Capone giving some of his money to the Chicago slums, it may be better than if they weren't doing it, but it hardly gets Google out of the crooked, lobbying megacorp set.

That this is a widespread social problem and not something restricted to just the nerdy professions. Project much?

That's what I was trying to figure out how to say. Thanks for being more eloquent than I. Though, at the same time, there is the issue of the scare quotes around the word "problem" in the OP's post.

I think that while your statement about this problem not being isolated to nerd communities is dead-on and an important point, I also think it is reasonable to interpret OP's post in the way Jawnn did.

And, perhaps most importantly, it seems like the adversarial thing (yours and Jawnn's) isn't going to help any of this. It's not going to help Jawnn understand that nerds aren't the bad guys (though there are bad guys among nerds), and it won't help Rinikusu (OP) accept that there is a problem overall.

Feminists and nerds should be working together. Nerds have been subject to prejudicial sterotyping, too. That should (and I think does) make us more understanding of the problem, not less. Instead of sniping at each other, let's bury our hatchets and work the problem.

Phrasing of the questions in a survey is important to fully understanding the problem that is being examined. Here are the study questions. Two of the most relevant questions are these:

32. Have you ever personally experienced inappropriate or sexual remarks, comments about physical beauty, cognitive sex differences, or other jokes, at an anthropological field site?

39. Have you ever experienced physical sexual harassment, unwanted sexual contact, or sexual contact in which you could not or did not give consent or felt it would be unsafe to fight back or not give your consent at an anthropological field site?

The PLOS ONE document itself is very thorough, and worth reading through to more fully understand the issue.

How do you know what the growth rate in the 50s and 60s would have been had the tax rates in the US been lower?

I only deal in empirical evidence. The warnings about higher taxes killing GDP growth are demonstrably false by comparing observed results over the past 70 years.

What's that about being ignorant?

Imagining things that might have been does not count as presenting evidence.