I think it's a little simpler than that. If the rooms are publically available for booking then the University can't go discriminating on viewpoint, regardless of how nutty or objectionable the group in question, and the conference should be allowed to continue.

If however, the bookings are restricted to those associated with the University, such as the student group in question, and the conference was arranged by decieving that group (and harming their reputation in the process), then the conference should absolutely be cancelled.

There's no longer a need.

A kind comment is superficial Internet validation enough.

They're basically banking on being the Walmart of the Internet.

The advantage they have over Walmart is the Internet scales better than the physical world. So they can theoretically reduce their margins even further.

The disadvantage they have over Walmart is for any given shopper Walmart only has to compete against other local retails, but Amazon is always competing against the entire world.

You're half right, though the issue might not be genetics but eipgenetics. Malnourishment while the mother is pregnant seems to affect the development of the feotus and make it prone to obesity. This makes a lot of sense from an evolutionary sense as ethnic groups will go through many cycles of bounty and famine through the generations, the best strategy isn't to chase an oscillating target, but to optimize your current build to whatever the most current conditions are.

It does make sense because not all traits equally heritable.

Say a mad dictator killed all the people named Bob. Now the name Bob isn't very heritable. So while environmental factors will have completely altered the population, if the dictator and all his followers then got stuck in a grain elevator and died the next generation could return to its previous and unfortunate levels of Bobness immediately.

Height on the other hand is highly heritable, so if the dictator also killed all the tall people then the next generation would be much more environmentally friendly and convenient to store.

So for the last couple months I've been working on a start-up idea in my spare time. The thought process "I know I can do X. But to do it, I must do A, B, C, D, and overcome obstacles I, II, III, and IV." is a bad idea that turns me into a quivering blob hiding under my quilt.

The long term obstacles are certainly achievable, but they're also a ton of work and extremely daunting since I can't do anything about them for a long time.

If I want to get work done the key is to think of the long term goal but only the short term obstacles. I know X is still a very long way off, but I also know I can subtract a tangible Y and get closer to my goal.

I can also berate myself more effectively for being lazy, ie "to get closer to X all you have to do is a bit of Y, so why the hell are you wasting your time posting on /.?!?"

I suspect the optimal strategy is to dwell on the success just long enough to convince yourself the goal is achievable and then switch to the mindset of "ok, now I need to make it happen".

Too much thinking about the positive and you feel like you've already won and lose the motivation to put in the work.

But if you only dwell on the negatives your task seems impossible and you again have no reason to work.

"Profit marrgin"?

Is that calculated as gross booty - total cannonball expenditures?

It's bad in Africa because they have terrible heathcare. Instead of seeking medical care people get care from friends and family who don't know what they're doing, thus they become infected themselves and the disease spreads.

This guy having spread the disease on the train is possible, but very unlikely.

They are screened but the virus has an incubation period.

A travel ban is a terrible idea, people will still travel from West Africa but they'll do it from other countries so we won't know to track them. A 3 week quarantine (outlast the incubation period) isn't much different due to its huge burden.

There is one good idea though, remember that saying about terrorists, "we fight them over there so we don't have to fight them over here". Well that's exactly the right approach for Ebola. If you want to protect the US from Ebola then you need to send US medical personnel and other resources to West Africa to help fight the outbreak. The risk to the US isn't a random few travellers from a handful of countries in West Africa. It's the disease continuing to flourish in West Africa and eventually popping up in India, China, and South America.

Whatever the ability of the US to handle a few lone cases it would be much worse for Brazil or Mexico. And whatever you think of the difficulty of keeping sick Africans out of the US it's far harder to keep out sick Mexicans.

If you want to stay safe then make it easy for US doctors to help in West Africa.

It's neither.

You still can't get it through the air, it has to be contact with the fluids of a sick person. But once you contact those fluids transmission is very easy.

They got it by treating very sick people who were covered with highly contagious fluids. Unless you've never made an error in your work I'm not sure you can rightly call them morons/

Isn't that the job of congress?

Besides, creating a Czar isn't about concentrating power, it's about appearing pro-active. If anyone asks what they're doing to fight Ebola they can say "hey, we're taking it so seriously we created a special position just to oversee the response!"

Well sexism was already in the fight so it might as well take a beating.

Anytime you have a single gender crew it's always male. But for this mission this very sensible set of metrics suggests the standard composition is completely wrong, I think that's worthwhile pointing out.

On a general point I don't agree it's sexist or racist when the traditionally oppressed gains an advantage. The problem with *isms isn't that they filter based on a characteristic, it's that they give a big unfair advantage or disadvantage to a group based on that characteristic. If you apply that filter in the opposite direction then you're reducing the size of the problem.

That's a good point as to the the drawbacks of the "do one thing and do it well" principle.

The individual tools get simpler, but some of the complexity pops up when you try to make them interact. So instead of complex programs we end up with complex and esoteric configurations that end users have to descipher.

I'm not a fan of everything involving systemd, but the idea of shoving a bunch of complexity into a well designed and reliable blob doesn't strike me as an intrinsically bad idea.

The fact it's been a success doesn't mean it's been as successful as it could have been, nor does it mean it will continue to succeed in the future. The key to maintaining a successful project is to continually evaluate it. The current culture may work great, or it may be driving talented devs away from both the kernel and other projects that have followed its lead.

No one is doubting Linus' contributions, but that doesn't mean things can be even better.

I think there's two factors. First successful comics consist of a long running series. Even the best science fictions stories are pretty niche on a society level, how many people have actually read Caves of Steel or Ringworld?

But as for comics, even someone like myself who never read a comic book is familiar with every character listen there besides Shazam and Cyborg. Every comic movie already has a huge potential audience already familiar with and sympathetic to the source material, it's hard for books to match that.

The second factor has to do with the nature of the form.

A great book for adults requires compelling ideas, these are generally communicated through dialogue and introspection.

A movie has to communicate ideas though visuals and emotion, to make a great adult book into a movie you have to strip out what made it great and try to communicate that in a completely new manner, it's possible (2001: A Space Odyssey) but it's hard. Asimov was mostly discussing ideas and dialogue, do you really think that will translate into a great movie?

It's no mistake that almost all the successful science fiction book adaptions have been from the young adult market. Young adult fiction requires a lot of action and easy philosophy to keep the interest up, the exact same formula that creates a smart action film.

Comics on the other hand are a visual medium already, they're written to communicate using similar amounts of dialogue and action, movies are even filmed with the aid of story boards that aren't much different from a comic. To translate a great comic into a great movie is mostly just a task of translating the style.