Ha!

The problem is, most US Universities have long histories of cynically abusing their students as captive markets for textbooks and other products and services. Most people in university administration have no problem with, for example, mandating which texbooks students must use based on which will earn the University bookstore, the publisher, etc. more money rather than which textbooks are actually better for learning.

I was going to methodically criticize this sentence but then I realized I shouldn't need to. Anyone with half a brain should be able to see what's wrong with the idea that the easy remedy to this sort of thing for consumers is to "choose a different college"!

I think the point was that non-destructively scanning an entire body is a lot more difficult than destructively scanning it.

"Ask Slashdot" is supposed to be asking the Slashdot community a specific question since we're supposed to be a reasonably knowledgeable community. Somehow it always seems to devolve into these tangents instead of being useful. It's especially bad when the person asking the question is facing personal tragedy and all they get are insensitive, unhelpful and morbid suggestions.

Management came along and did something about the "underperforming" techs as determined by metrics. That is to say those techs with long call times who don't just get the caller off the phone as quickly as possible.

Or a decent FAQ or knowledge base.

And even less helpful. This is an "ask Slashdot" article. A question has been asked by someone in real need. I wish I had a real answer, but I really am not up on the state of the art in the field. I do know a counter-productive non-answer when I see one and, in the described situation, posts like yours are exactly such.

I didn't mean a ritual sacrifice. I was simply pointing out how ridiculously morbid the discussion on this is. Someone posts looking for advice for a loved one in distress and, instead of a helpful discussion of the state of the art in brain/machine interface and assistive technology, scores of posters descend with ghoulish suggestions regarding her and a perfectly healthy baby who is not the source of the problem (I suppose we can chalk that one up to complete reading mis-comprehension).

Religion or philosophy may help her in the long run (or not, every person is different), but they hardly need to turn to Slashdot for that. If the family is at all religious, I'm sure they've already received spiritual advice from whatever pastor/priest/cleric/guru they already have.

Right, because DNA testing came along and proved that a bunch of people were on death row unjustly and were railroaded through the system, that obviously shows that there's 100% certainty in all cases where there's no exonerating DNA evidence. Brilliant logic.

Do any of you people grasp at all the fact that she may not be permanantly stuck in this state?

The child has already been delivered by c-section. It's right there in the summary! Or do you believe that there's some way to retroactively sacrifice the baby to fix the unrelated brain tumour?

That might be funny if you weren't talking about coders, who _also_ have a stereotype about eating cheetos, completely independent of the stoner one.

Of course, the same judge will wisely and sagely nod along in complete agreement when the government is arguing that ubiquitous surveillance and tracking in public is ok because a surveillance camera connected to a massive computational back end is just like a patrol cop.

Actually, it's not that simple either. The 13th amendment makes certain types of slavery and/or involuntary servitude illegal in the US and jurisdictions the US controls. Basically, hereditary slavery is out. So, if you're currently a slave, your children aren't automatically slaves. The 13th amendment still allows for you to become a slave either temporarily or permanently as a result of any conviction for any crime. That includes being sold to private citizens effectively as property. The only real protection is the 8th amendment, which vaguely protects you from cruel and unusual punishment. Of course, the 8th didn't protect people who were slaves back before the 13th. There's the argument that what was being done to them from birth wasn't a punishment, therefore it didn't fall under the 8th. This same argument crops up a lot in modern times, often in relation to various lists (no fly, terrorist watch, sex offender, plus various others, some of which are probably still secret) which, although quite harmful to be on, are supposedly not punishments. Of course, that argument is in complete defiance of the 5th amendment where life, liberty and property are not supposed to be deprived without due process of law. So, anyway, hereditary slavery was basically unconstitutional _before_ the 13th amendment, but that fact was simply ignored, and the 13th amendment only did away with hereditary slavery.