Not speaking to the overall rightness or wrongness of your post -- BUT -- you got some basic facts about coal plants wrong in your last paragraph:

"Not a single coal fired plant currently operating on the planet existed when I was born (1959), every one of them has been built (and often rebuilt) in my life-time"
30-40yrs (the working life of a coal fired generator)

This links to a list which contains 37 coal plants in the US alone which have been in operation from 1938-1950 (the list stops at 1950 but one can reasonably infer that there are additional plants which were built between 1950 and 1959).

Again, not speaking to your overall point but you may want to consider how to incorporate this data set when making future posts...

And here is where I post simply because I've had the same signature for over ten years now on Slashdot and it certainly applies to this sub-thread...

I wonder if it's actually possible to commit suicide by swallowing placebos? Or is there some limit to the nocebo effect's severity that'd prevent that?

It can certainly lead to you hearing your neighbor's dog talk to you.

...um... And here I thought I was just upgrading to a newer release, not drinking Kool-Aid or proving I am a slave or whatever.

10.8 is a nice dot release. I am VERY happy to have AirPlay mirroring to my AppleTV. I travel and give presentations to small groups and in meetings, knowing that I just lost my tether and will be able to sit anywhere around the table instead of right next to wherever the monitor cable happened to be is kind of nice. I also appreciate the integration with my reminders app on my iPhone.

I dislike the fact that they removed Podcast Publisher. This means I am going to have to find a workaround for what (had been) an easy workflow for me. I'm sure I'll find other little annoyances over the coming days and weeks. And I'll adjust.

All things considered, I'm pleased. More than that, though, I guess I'm just really confused by the us-vs.-them mentality in the above post. I happen to use the OS I do because it seems to be the right tool for the job. I also run Windows 7 (via Parallels) so that I can run Visio and MS Project and a few other programs that I need. Sometimes my smartphone is the right tool (happens to be an iPhone but I've seen similar functionality on Android phones and Windows phones) sometimes my tablet... I don't feel "locked in" to any of it any more than I feel locked in by the choices a television network makes for their fall lineup or the choices my state has made for when and where road construction will occur. There are projects in life that are bigger than one person and choices are made we don't always agree with.

Jeepers. I had no idea I was drinking Kool Aid or stifling dissenting thoughts so as to stave off madness. I've been coming to Slashdot for over 14 years. I appreciate a low 4 digit UID. But really, does a content free screed about how open source is the only right path posted minutes after the article hits the front page really further the discussion about the OS X Mountain Lion review?

but does anyone have an example where one caused noticeable impact?

You mean noticeable like this or perhaps like this?

Not only that, but training is different from experience.

Not only that, but people often muddy the issue by confusing the terms education (attending a class, studying to pass a cert test) with training (hands on, real-world experience).

To help clarify the difference, a colleague of mine once put it this way... if you are having trouble drawing a distinction between education and training: Just think of your teenage daughter and how you would feel if her school offered sex education vs. sex training...

A bottle of rubbing alcohol costs 99 cents. Lasts for years. A tiny dab on a microfiber cloth and that sticky residue is history. Takes about 30 seconds. Leaves your laptop looking nice and bare.

I had some major digestive issues that I was about to go to the doctor for. My girlfriends grandmother took out some oils for me, i took two drops with a glass of water every night...never felt better. No doctor, no HMO, no government healthcare, no co-pay and I didn't even have to pay for my oil. Just one smart resourceful grandmother.

I have a couple of thoughts about this. Not sure which reply to post so I'll post both of them (with links, of course):

(1) Placebos are effective. Or, more precisely, the placebo effect is real and measurable and billions (with a b) of dollars are spent in studies trying to demonstrate not just that new treatments are effective, but that they are more effective than the placebo effect. What's really fascinating is that in the last couple of decades, the effect is increasing (Wired Magazine Article on the phenomenon here...)

(2) Correlation does not equal causation. Just because you took the oils and then felt better does not mean that the oils were what made you feel better. (Helpful illustration here...)

I read the summary thinking, Cool, this is a new form factor, I wonder what putting a million smart monkeys together and thinking about it might come up with... That's why I read Slashdot. I mean, anybody can just DISMISS something. It isn't that there is anything wrong with people summarily rejecting it and saying things like This is _______, nothing more ... it's just that I suspect there is a place for something like this. I'd be curious what that would look like. JUST an etch a sketch? ONLY kids?

Even if the form factor isn't perfect out of the gate, there will be some people who recognize this is close to what they need for an outstanding problem. Perhaps a problem they may not even know that they face until the solution comes along. (I often think the Nokia 800 fanbase is like that. I read Slashdot daily and so of course I KNOW that there are people out there who swear by that device. It's the wrong form factor for me but then the introduction of it -- and the wider recognition in the market of the demand for portable browsing devices -- ultimately led to a $300 netbook that I adore...)

When something sort of new comes along, I like to pay attention and think about what the children might be like.

No offense to the original poster.

Totally offtopic -- but I've got karma to burn and I love this thing...

I own an Acer Aspire One 751H (not the model mentioned in the recall) -- it is my favorite laptop of all time -- And I've had around a dozen.

It has a 11.6" screen, 1366x768 resolution, a 160 GB hard drive, comes with an internal webcam and mic and mine came from the factory with 1GB of RAM -- (a $20 DIMM later and it had 2 GB.) The 1.33GHz Atom processor only overlocks to about 1.56 GHz but doesn't feel slow at all. It weighs 2.9lbs and with a 6 cell battery, I can go for 6.5-7 hours on full brightness before needing a charge. I love this thing. I am able to have the computer on for four hours in a meeting in the morning, take it to the airport and use it for an hour at the airport bar playing poker while I wait for my flight, work on a report on the flight and still have juice to surf Slashdot from the couch when I get home... all without ever feeling like I am crimped or on a "netbook" -- And it was under $300 (!) Yikes!

I don't get off on hardware, but it has found just about the perfect sweet spot in terms of size / power/ specs, at least for me. The ONLY downside is the Intel GMA 500 integrated video (Windows 7 drivers are good not great. The poulsbo drivers are not quite there yet... or at least forced me to learn a lot more about the command line in Ubuntu than I was comfortable with). Everything that I do for work doesn't feel slow at all... but the first time I tried to play HD video in You Tube, I was in for a shock...

Sorry... just had to rave. Having been in IT during the mid-90s when Acer = Packard Bell = trash, I was skeptical but this thing is rock solid and gorgeous.

where do you get a data sim for $29 / month?

T-mobile. And posting from my iPhone on that very plan...

I can't help by be reminded of an article from just a couple of days ago about a similar mindset. One could argue that if you spend decades and decades with your focus being "generating public interest" in a program without finding a way to make it profitable or solve some genuine pressing outstanding problems, it will become harder and harder to justify spending tens of billions of dollars each year. Eventually, you're just stalling.

I suspect that until we find a way to make this whole exercise profitable or meaningful in a way that resonates with most people... well, you're going to have some great people on your team and put out a great demo every few years... but eventually you'll become a cautionary tale...

I think the vast majority of people would have actually no problem understanding news that is expressed not in Libraries of Congress, but in proper SI units.

I'm blowing an earlier moderation to a post so I can comment on this. I think that perhaps you overestimate your fellow members of society. The tolerance of most people for anything even remotely resembling detail is pretty low. You can test this by trying to have a discussion with family/friends/people on the bus about why firewalls are important or why running everything as root/admin may not make for the most secure model. Eyes will glaze over. Quickly.

They could be using, omg, hyperlinks to connect the topic to the relevant terms and field of science.

Here's the thing: There is no they. "They" is really us. "We" could be doing any of this. But the fact is, our mainstream culture ISN'T that way because for the most part, WE aren't that way. In the meantime, there is a wealth of information out there for us outliers to FIND that information. Forums like slashdot where you CAN find the relevant terms, links to the paper, etc.

There is sensationalism because sensationalism sells. Sensationalism sells because that is what people WANT. They vote what they want with their wallets and their eyeballs. The "vast majority of people" want exactly what they are getting and the market delivers it to them.

It could just be that, evolutionary speaking, there wasn't much to do at night and thus we rest half the day to save energy.

Circular reasoning. Doesn't fit. If we didn't have sleep in the first place, there would be plenty to do at night... (and plenty of mammals/birds/fish have adaptations to demonstrate that it is perfectly reasonable to function during the night.)

Think of it differently: if the evolutionary driver for sleep was simply that there "wasn't much to do at night" -- well, that doesn't make sense since animals that didn't sleep would have things to do. There needs to be some selection pressure in a population to drive an adaptation to such nearly universal adoption -- and unless it provided a significant advantage, mutations that would eventually arise would find wide niches to exploit.

>> I would have to say that explosives are the most abused technology in all of history.

> I'd go with blunt instruments, myself.

Well -- here we get into the question of scale vs. scope...

If you look at the SCOPE of history, you are undoubtedly correct.

In terms of the scale of abuse ... I may disagree.

*grins* Mmmmm, Slashdot, my secret outlet for being pedantic for an audience who cares...