"I'm sorry, I can't find anything for monogamy. Perhaps you'd like to research transsexual group anal sex orgies instead?"

Public shaming is how we destroy people, not encourage good behavior.

If you want to end DUI, end alcohol culture. That requires fixing social problems and giving people something to live for.

Of course, doing that will require more systematic and structural efforts.

The Antares rocket's engines are based on old soviet designs from the '60s.

We're just kicking around the same old ideas, trying to make them better. No real new direction. But my fridge can post to Twitter.

It is a political term, and nothing more.

Generally it is used for those who resist the idea that the third world must be imported into the first world, reducing the first world population to a third world hybrid, thus destroying culture, heritage and values and making it more tractable by the twin parasites of government and industry.

See here:

http://slashdot.org/submission...

It spreads distrust and destroys social standards in common.

Thus, paranoia is an inevitable reaction.

The problem with the internet is that if you add commerce and a clueless general population, you get behavior that is only appropriate in dive bars.

Make the same internet, put an IQ test on the door, and let in 120s and up and you'll have someplace worth attending.

Don't expect support-contract-like behaviour from a list - remember they're volunteers, there's no "SLA" and they don't work for you.

Ah, the old "bad behavior exists, therefore your example must be of the bad behavior"!

No.

I've (repeatedly) seen people go on to these lists, ask a polite question, and receive STFU NEWB or analogue response very quickly.

Generally, the more difficult the question the more likely it is to receive this response.

Ever wonder why Stack Overflow is so popular? Volunteers there get imaginary internet karma points and so have incentive to answer questions.

You usually get a better answer at Stack Overflow than from the official lists.

But few businesses want to rely on a software plan that begins "And if there's a problem, we know this INTERNET FORUM..."

Investors will panic and flee the room, with good reason.

You only need one 9/10 to organize the project and avoid pitfalls.

Everyone else can write the bog-standard code that doesn't improve between someone with a 5/10 and a 10/10, or at least not by any metric measurable for business logic.

So they offer the 7/10s half what the 9/10 makes, and hire on a 5:1 ratio.

"No support contract."

Thus what they see is the possibility of problems that take days or weeks to resolve, while getting told STFU NEWB on some mailing list.

That's the experience many clients have had with FreeBSD, for example.

These tendencies are general bureaucratic tendencies and can also be observed in private industry, but generally only when the inbound money is so huge that bloat is an affordable luxury.

Some government offices work better than others.

Others... yeah.