You think it would be different if Sarah Palin was president?

Linux? I don't think so. My workplace at one pointed decided to get on the GNU bandwagon and within a few months we were re-installing Windows back on some of the workstations. Linux is not ready for the primetime as a desktop terminal.

I feel like the NSA and the rest of the intelligence apparatuses have gotten to a point where the security of this nation trumps any man made law. If this nation is of and for the people, who the hell is the NSA working for?

I was gone from Slashdot for almost a year and this is what I'm greeted to. It's a shame things are continuing their downward spiral.

Right. Well, I guess my closed-source education has ruined my career as now I can only make ends meet by supporting cash strapped corporations locked into their closed-source software. Not. Computer literacy is computer literacy. It doesn't matter whether you used C# or Java to gain an understanding of the fundamentals of programming. A good, motivated individual will learn the platform regardless of its origins. It's people like you who make open source altneratives so hard to swallow for the enterprise.

Yes, let's gamify war. That's just what need in the military.

It's a lot easier for a drone pilot to push a button that would likely kill people thousands of miles away. You've overlooked the entire point of my response, which was to highlight the fact that drones are making it a lot easier for pilots and the military to brush aside civilian causalities, which is currently hovering at 400-800 according to Wikipedia.

A tip goes out about a possible Al-Qaeda target somewhere in Pakistan, and a few days/weeks later, a village is reduced to rubble. The U.S. can wash its hands clean of the incident and no Americans were harmed during the operation, which is the *most* important part, right?

Meanwhile, some kid who has witnessed all this is just loving the democracy and freedom that the U.S. raining down on his village. I'm sure he'll grow up to love the United States and perhaps even become a productive member of society because of it.

/sarcasm

For the pilot of the drone, it's just a matter of pushing a red button on a dreary Monday morning. What we don't see is the brother, mother, husband, or son whose flesh was blown to bits by the drone. Bombing someone with a high tech manned aircraft is one thing, but the moment we abstract ourselves further and further from the hell that is war, we become the very monsters we're supposedly out to stop. I predict the drone strikes, the occupation in Iraq, and all other activities in the middle east we've been undertaking are only going to bite us back in another tragic incident like 9/11. Remember 9/11? We forgot 9/11 the day we let ourselves got lulled into two wars. We're breeding a new generation of terrorists who are growing up to fear and hate the drones, controlled by none other than the United States of America.

Some work requires you to read the emails. There are times where I jumped into a conversation because I had something to offer to the discussion, all because I happened to be caught in some distribution list. Why do I care? I get paid for my 9-5 job regardless of how many emails I read within that time period.

I'm sorry, but what? Depending on who's on your "founding fathers" list, many of them not only supported slavery but owned several, sometimes ranging in the hundreds, of slaves. I'm not going to question your upbringing or education, but whitewashing a somewhat embarrassing side of history is ridiculous. Call for what it is.

Former glory? If the founding fathers had their way, I would still be considered a property. Kindly shove your ideology somewhere else.

HTML is best learned through trial and error. I never really understood the concept of the CSS or HTML until I began visualize a web page as just a stack of transparency paper that is moved around by CSS. Learning the tags alone won't do any good. You have to interact with the elements produced by the tags to really understand how HTML works.

Healing !== Regeneration Those are two different biological processes. Ignorance won't get you nowhere in life.

Don't mind the miserable pessimists here on Slashdot. I think the medicinal breakthroughs will have more of an impact on humanity than all of the shady applications for this innovation combined.

You don't say...

This is a good example of the type of ignorant, knee jerk comments that are ruining Slashdot. You know this is a technological advancement. If quadrupedalism is perfected, we could have ATV sized vehicles that can practically tackle almost any terrain. Besides the military applications, I could see these things being autonomously sent out to send medical kits and supplies to remote or war torn regions. I would normally tag this as redundant and move on, but since I'm all out of mod points, this long-winded post will have to suffice. Good day.