Sweet reason, or even simple politeness, doesn't work with the kind of self-righteous ideological nutballs who make up NCPPR. "Fuck off" is the only kind of response that will get through to them.

So: can anyone come up with a cost/benefit analysis, please ?

For the NSA/CIA, the Koch-brother sponsored right wing zealot groups, etc. the cost benefit analysis is quite simple.

Does it benefit the NSA/CIA/Koch Bro groups and their agendas, directly or indirectly, even a little? If so, do it. If not, don't. There is undoubtably a risk analysis component (how likely are we to get caught?) but the general pattern seems to be to do what they like and rely on their ability to destory the reputation of any people of good conscience who stand up against them, much less report their malfeasance.

What is particularly disturbing about this is the lengths to which they are willing to go, the degree of negative-sum activities they are willing to engage in (they don't mind engaging in massively destructive activities against others for very modest, even minor gains, where the negative impact to their oponents, society or the world dwarfs their own miniscule gains), and the degree of silence from otherwise "good persons" who nearly always opt to do (and say) nothing. It reminds me of the old post-WW II adage which concludes "and when they came for me, there was no one left to speak out" (paraphrased).

Have you considered that people approve of Google when it does good things, and disapprove when it does bad things?

Yeah, I know. [sigh]

I thought I was being obviously over-the-top, but Poe's Law strikes again; it's impossible to satirize people who actually think that way.

This is just the free market fighting back against heavy-handed socialist regulation. We should all cheer a scrappy little company like Syngenta for their struggle for liberty against Hayes, who like all government "scientists" is just a shill for the multibillion-dollar environmental lobby.

Yep, pretty much that.

Oh, and AC, in case I don't see you again, let me thank you for your contributions to /. over the years. You've been by far the most prolific poster, and although you often troll or spam or just don't make any sense, you've also written some of the best posts I've seen anywhere. Honestly, I don't know how you do it, but wherever you end up, keep up the good work. Take care of yourself, okay?

Depends on how you define "human." The people who left these footprints would probably be recognizable to us as, well, people, i.e. genus Homo, but would also recognizably very different from any people living today, i.e. Homo sapiens sapiens. The vast bulk of evidence points to successive waves of hominins arising in Africa and migrating outward, with the last such group being us. And since Homo is about two and a half million years old as best we can tell, there's was plenty of time for members of the species that left these footprints, probably Homo antecessor, to do just that.

The "jollyforcongress.com" site: (a) doesn't ask for money, (b) immediately redirects to a page that has "floridadems" in the URL, and (c) looks nothing like Jolly's actual campaign site. So please stop pretending there's some kind of equivalence here. There isn't.

The point is that the NHS has existed for decades, but this "push-button access to everybody's medical conditions" is new. It's not inherently a single-payer problem; it's a government-not-respecting-people's-rights problem.

If your favorite restaurant were about to go away, wouldn't you want to have a couple of last meals there? Preserving the discussion system is what the protest against beta is all about; we might as well enjoy it while we can.

I'll happily join in the "Slashcott." (I suspect I'll get more work done next week as a result.) Until then, I'll post about the story at hand, about the awfulness of beta, or about whatever else seems appropriate.

http://www.google.com/search?q=slashdot%20karma%20bonus

We'll network about that murder strategy of yours, X. I think it has potential for impactfulness, but we need to cover all the modalities for rapid corpsification.

(I'm really hoping to get a job with Dice.)

I'm in the "never attribute to malice ..." camp; I don't actually think they're trying to kill it, although it may well be that the higher-ups don't care much one way or another.

Altslashdot.org looks interesting, but I have to admit I'm not holding my breath for anything to come of it. I'll keep checking back in, though.

They'll swear off computers forever.