I'm happy to say I had only one problem with 9.10: In some cases buttons in the Eclipse GUI could not be mouse-clicked. The "OK" button would assume its "pressed" look but would not do anything. It was possible to click such buttons using the keyboard, however.

Thankfully, I was not the first with this problem and found a solution on the 'Net: You can set the environment variable

GDK_NATIVE_WINDOWS=true

before starting Eclipse and then everything will be fine. Well, as far as that problem is concerned, anyway.

I object strenuously to any allegation that I'm "hiding my racism and bigotry" behind anything. There are huge populations of people I just don't like, and I see not the slightest reason to hide that fact.

Irrespective of the reasons, these people hate our guts. All the good reasons you cite don't change that. Treating them with political correctness isn't going to make their hatred go away. Am I obligated to be polite to people who would kill me if they could? Not in my book I ain't.

That's the beauty of the thing: If we stop burning fossil fuels, we'll be creating less of a heat-capturing blanket around the planet, which will compensate at least in part for the greater amount of energy released by us.

Long-term strategies will be needed to balance the whole thing out, but fusion would help give mankind a few more decades in which to get their act together.

Energy efficiency vs energy shortage is analogous. And when these ultimately short term methods of energy production are exhausted, the poor will die in droves.

That's why we're having this discussion: Unlike the current majority of energy sources, fusion is a potentially limitless source - or as limitless as the water in our oceans. Limitless energy also makes it a little easier to grow more food. For example, given cheap energy, it becomes simple to desalinate seawater.

Fusion is difficult, REALLY difficult. But once it gets working, it will provide abundantly cheap energy with relatively few side effects. The availability of fusion will trigger a revolution similar to the beginning of the industrial age. Cheap, clean energy with no dependence on hateful towel-heads - what's not to like?

Fusion is a long-term project, so whoever funds it risks not seeing the rewards. So all those who could be funding research are holding back in hopes that someone else will do the work for them. Shareholders demand consistent and predictable profits, so the standard capitalist model of venture capitalization no longer works for powering "ventures" in the original sense of the word.

Wouldn't it be funny if they got it working in China, say, or Japan, and they'd end up collecting lifetimes of royalties from the US?

I would love to see this (both the expensive high-power stuff and the cheap off-chance research) funded much more heavily by the governments of the world.

I get the feeling some of you folks are hopelessly off the page. Most of the Slashdot crowd are familiar with the 3 Abrahamic religions and think that other religions are vastly different or diverse. Not so; while the details differ, here is the basis of every religion:

Every religion is based on faith, which is a belief which must be accepted without evidence. This central premise is the scaffold on which all other trimmings of a religion are hung, including

• worship and other rituals
• a set of rules for "good living"
• social group cohesion

The "item of faith" is almost always a supernatural being, one or more supernatural events, or both. Examples:

• There is an omnipotent being who created the world.
• You will be re-incarnated. (even in the absence of the omnipotent being above, e.g. in Buddhism)
• Some people have supernatural powers to (e.g.) heal disease, read minds, cause infertility, levitate objects or curse your family.

None of these supernatural claims are provable. Faith is belief in the absence of proof, and that's exactly what's underneath all religions. Anyone who fails to believe the unbelievable supernatural claims drops out of the religion.

Now, was that so complicated? Or do you have any good arguments or examples to the contrary?

onyxruby, I get the impression you don't understand what Wikileaks is about, and are setting up an army of straw men to wage war on.

wikileaks are no more parasites of the technology world than any other site on the Internet. Rather, they serve a useful function: It is not the purpose of wikileaks to expose the personal information of "normal" individuals, nor stuff like credit card data. They release information, where it becomes known, of wrongdoings of corporate and/or government institutions and/or employees/agents, the disclosure of which is in the public interest because these wrongdoings would otherwise remain secret and cause damage to individuals or society. wikileaks is essentially a safe outlet for whistleblowers.

Reading the rest of your post, it looks to me like "I fail to see" is the overall theme. I feel you should have at least tried to inform yourself before starting to rant.

He's looking for someone to do a relatively simple DB-related job. He's asking a few questions that should be dead simple for anyone who's only so much as worked through tutorials in a few related subjects. It ain't rocket science.

You talk about "foreign formats," about not expecting academics to have practical experience, you talk about "tailored toward job postings"... but those are all hand-waving and pretty feeble excuses for not having a clue of basic concepts of the job they're applying for. No employer should be obligated to hire morons unless it's to do with Affirmative Action. If they can't handle this kind of stuff they should submit their application to MacDonalds.

I find it hard to believe it's so hard to get a hold of people with such basic skills. But if it's true, the educational system is deeply flawed and we need fixes, not excuses.

I agree completely with Tom. von der Leyen is an idiot who has been hitched to the cart of Big Music. She's also known for her pro-Christian nutjob tendencies.

Nobody would mind if she ended up being sacrificed. The music industry, who had been among the first to congratulate her on this move, are giddy with glee about the fact that the kiddie porn wedge has deflated the formerly simple argument about Internet surveillance and blocking being too expensive. Now that the apparatus is in place, it's available to anyone willing to bribe the right people.

Oops... I'm very sorry about the inaccuracy above. Of course what I fiddled with was not AdBlockPlus but NoScript.

Hi Unitron, and thanks for the helpful info!

I had the same problem as AC, where I didn't have those menu buttons up top.

I think that (at least for me) that weirdness is a side effect of AdBlockPlus. It's not enough to allow slashdot.org, you also have to allow fsdn.com . That's what I did and the funny effects went away.

No, I was and still am hoping to see Libby, Rove and Cheney in three separate nooses, please. I'm sure that even in times of financial crisis, the US of A should have enough money to buy each high traitor to the country a rope of his own.

Although, on second thought, I'd be OK with having them hung serially with the same rope.

SmallFurryCreature, I disagree with your statements about how (summarized) this IP ban is a step on a slippery slope toward arbitrary censorship. Your handwringing is emotional but not cleanly argued. Here are my responses:

Your statement that the CoS is being shut out of Wikipedia is false, and you have received a number of responses pointing this out. In effect, Wikipedia is merely making it more inconvenient for CoS to vandalize their content. Vandalize? Yes, see the next point:

Wikipedia has instituted a process for submitting information (including changes thereto) and for keeping content as factually correct as possible, given the circumstances. The CoS has knowingly broken the rules. Stopping CoS, at least in part, from subverting the proven effective process, is not just Wikipedia's right but their obligation. Most users operate on the assumption that Wikipedia's content is factual, provable and unbiased. Their process has been shown to be effective, on the whole, thus so as not to disappoint their user's expectations, they are applying said process.

Wikipedia represents "the knowledge of the world." Unless and until they manage to "clear the planet," the world is bigger than Scientology. What they're doing is interfering with the rest of mankind documenting the current state of their knowledge. If CoS wants documentation of their own view of things, then they're welcome to set it down in a less global venue.

The fact that CoS willingly, knowingly and repeatedly break the rules must make the rest of us question their ethics. In fact, Scientology ethics do perceive Scientology to be above the laws of the rest of the world, based on the notion that the CoS is more capable of making informed decisions on behalf of the rest of humanity. It is precisely because of this self-righteousness, which extends logically to demand the overthrowal and replacement of currently acting governments, that the CoS has been declared illegal/unconstitutional in a number of enlightened countries, of which the USA is unfortunately not one.

On the other hand, the past tense of "own" is indeed "owned."

Well done, The Warlock!