One reason I'm rooting for an Altcoin is I'm worried about deflation if Bitcoin wins.

A limited amount of inflation is a good thing, if the cash sitting in your wallet gets progressively less valuable you have a motive to spend it and generate economic activity.

But there's a finite amount bitcoins, which means at some point they'll all be mined. At that point as the economy grows each bitcoin will represent an ever larger portion of the economy. People will be reluctant to spend bitcoin because they'll be forgoing those future price increases and the economy will suffer.

I'm not sure how well any Altcoins solve this problem, but I'd prefer a currency where the money supply grows in pace with the economy.

To me the problematic part isn't the risk, it's the relationship between the family and the people in the war. He's essentially treating the war and the people suffering it a bit like an educational exhibit and it sounds uncomfortably similar tourists who visit warzones for the experience.

I'm not saying he shouldn't have done it, and I think both his kids and the people they visited will benefit from the exchange. But there's still a slight dehumanizing aspect to the exchange.

Not exactly. It should be legal in the USA if the clip is really short, but there are no guarantees. Neither lawmakers nor courts have ever explicitly defined what "Fair Use" means, so if someone says "it's Fair Use" and a copyright holder disagrees, it takes a court case to rule on who is right. And as I always say, if you go to court in the USA, literally anything at all can happen. One court might rule that a 10 second clip is clearly Fair Use and another might rule that it's clearly a copyright violation. I know of a case in recent years where a local court got admonished by an appellate court for making up the law they used in their original ruling so literally anything can happen in US courts.

My friend, things are very different in the USA. I have higher insurance coverage for damage to persons than the average American. I have this based on the advice of my best friend who is attorney. My coverage tops out at about $1 million US dollars and while I could get more, to achieve your levels would be cost prohibitive. Again, note that I said that my coverage is far above what a typical American has. Here you can indeed have damage to yourself covered by car insurance. Because of the messed up way that medical care works in the USA, we actually need this kind of coverage as our health insurance may require co-pays that could bankrupt someone who isn't rich if they got into a serious vehicular accident. In fact, prior to "Obamacare" (or the Affordable Care Act if you prefer) it was quite common for health insurance to have payment limits that could easily be reached in serious accidents. Automobile insurance makes medical payments all the time here.

I find Snowden to be a typical pampered, ego-centric product of his generation. If he actually surrendered himself to US authorities unconditionally, I'd think he just might be insane. So I totally get why he is in Russia. I'm not saying I approve of what he did as I don't, but I get why he felt the need to hide under protection to do what he did. But he undermines his credibility with statements in the article like this:
I told the government I'd volunteer for prison, as long as it served the right purpose,” he says. “I care more about the country than what happens to me."
Yeah. Right.

From the parent post:
There is rich detail about this matter that will come out during litigation. Please don't criticize until you understand all the facts.

When has knowing the facts ever stopped Slashdotters from criticizing? Sounds like somebody doesn't understand how things work around here.

How I wish I could share in the pleasures of the simple folk.

We of the 300+ crowd find that somewhere in the range [263.4, 267.2] the nipple stroking becomes intolerable. The harmonic frequency of the human nipple bears a subtle, but undeniable, relationship to the cosmic background radiation. The resulting vibrations enhance our awareness of the approaching heat death of the universe while heightening our sense of ennui.

Unfortunately the only body part we can massage without distress is our left pinky toe. As such we tend to spend much of our time practising yoga to maximally extend our remaining toe stroking years.

Or society A breeds people who are tough but have low tempers because being a violent person in a violent society is a great way to get killed.

I don't know which just so story is right, probably neither, but it's all pseudoscience without real evidence which is what the book seems to be.

This is just simply not correct. I know. I worked for Uncle Sam for a while. While it is difficult to fire federal workers, it's not impossible. Firing for cause can happen, although the more time a person has working there, the harder it becomes. And spare me the "they're in unions" argument. Unions do exist for federal employees, but at least where I worked in the Department of Defense, unions are a waste of money for most people. By federal law federal employees cannot strike (see Ronald Reagan vs. the air traffic controllers) so the union can't really do a lot in terms of collective bargaining. The only benefit I knew of that the union offered where I worked was that they had a supplemental insurance plan you could get through them that would pick up the consumer responsible charges of medical insurance and if you had a very expensive need, like major surgery, with such insurance you could get out of it paying nothing. I know of a case where a unionized worker was going to be fired for just cause. I don't remember what the guy did, but it was really bad and there was no doubt that he was guilty. The union called for hearings and drug their feet where it took a year to fire him but in the end the guy was fired. So other than giving you supplemental insurance or delaying a firing, that's about all a union could do where I worked. The majority of our workforce was not part of any union.

He's a reporter, he wasn't claiming to be doing "original research", he was claiming to communicate the existing research.

And just like he's allowed to write about, and misinterpret, their research, they're also allowed to call him out for misrepresenting their work.

The ridiculous thing is that in animal breeding we can control for environment and culture. With humans that's impossible.

African societies are more violent. Is that because of climate, religion, economic development, genetics, a culture that hasn't had an enlightenment phase, dysfunction from colonialialism, etc?

The evidence against a genetic basis is actually fairly strong. Wade basically talks about black people like they're a race, but that's scientific nonsense. There's actually a huge variation among black people, all the skin colour signifies is their proximity to the equator. Everyone talks about blacks being good at running, but which black people and which running? West Africans are amazing sprinters, but terrible distance runners, East Africans are terrible sprinters but amazing distance runners. If they're so different in this capacity why assume they share the same behavioural genetic traits? The fact that these violent tendencies vary by skin colour and not actual genetic subgroups suggests that the origin is cultural, not genetic.

A truth that is politically incorrect will encounter extra resistance from scientists.

That doesn't make political incorrectness and scientific resistance to be evidence of truth.

Different kinds of story.

Star Trek at its best was short fiction told in space. The main characters left to themselves would be fine, but external events turned them into foils against which the actual story unfolded. After the story they'd generally reset so the next episode could tell a new story.

B5 was a character drama told in space. The main characters left to themselves generated the story. They had to evolve in order for the story to advance.

I'm not opposed to the idea, but it's important to remember that it's no guarantee of success. Consider all the elements that can cause a TV show to fail, cast, characters, writing, concept, plots, etc. With the reboot you're starting out on familiar ground so you avoid a lot of potential pitfalls, but you still have a big risk of making a dud.

The original B5 was great, but to be honest it's not doing anything anymore. The people who watched it have already extracted all of the joy they can, and the small minority of people who will watch it in the future will be thrown off by the clunky 90's style writing and special effects.

If there's a chance they can take the concept and try to tell it again, leveraging on the mythos of the old story, I say great. It will probably fail but even if it does I don't see it doing any harm.

So no threat to border nations. As long as Russia doesn't decide their nation isn't valid.

No they didn't.

No it wasn't. Crimea was part of Ukraine in the USSR (though it was part of Russia before that).

So the USSR wanted some of Finland and Finland refused so the USSR attacked them.

And somehow you think Finland is the one to blame?

So another pair of border nations Russia doesn't really recognize and would like to invade but currently can't do so safely.

The Tartars who got expelled from Crimea by the USSR, came back when it was part of Ukraine, and are overwhelmingly against this recent annexation.

Except of course Ukraine.

Canada has bigger territorial disputes over the Arctic with Denmark and the US. No hostility there. And Canada isn't hostile to Russia, we just strongly disapprove of fascism and wars of expansion.

Russia assisted the independence of South Osetia and Abkhazia, along with Transnistria in Moldova.

You spent a lot of time pointing out Russia wasn't a threat to nations it had good relations with and no claims to. Well of course they aren't a current threat to those nations. But the moment Russia's mood changes, or they feel they're owned some of the land, you've demonstrated that Russia will simply try to take it. By your own story Russia is a massive threat to bordering nations.