The exact predictions of course do not exist because, with current level of knowledge, they cannot be done. It has been said however, that number of extreme conditions will increase and it did although possibly not in US. It is of course appropriate politically to talk about single aspect of huge and complex thing and pick an exceptional area as US surely is and then claim - 'lies and bad science' as the GP did.
Arguing with this lot is pointless. Not because we know all about how weather patterns change and why, but because the nut cases do - there is a huge number of them out there claiming, that burning fossil fuels at steadily increasing pace and cutting the forests of the world does not make any difference at all because they 'know' weather does not change or if it does, it is some external force, we cannot control, thus nothing can be done and we shall not even think if we have something to do with it and/or more importantly, if we can do anything about it.

It is not bakshish that is stopping doctors from prescribing generic in this case. It is rather the law on what is to be prescribed - generics if the same branded drug exists. If you stop production of old drug on which patent expired and started production and marketing of a new slightly different under different brand then this rule does not apply, generic makers lose out market share and new brand which is only slightly different from older one (as you suggest) can make bigger profits again. BTW: the issue as per linked articles is not with lack of profits (they made more than a billion on this drug alone last year) but production facilities (or so they say). If they cannot produce the shit then they should release the old patent - sell it to generic maker or make it free for what I care. That is not what they want - they aim at market share to maximize profit. This would be OK in anything else or rather it would go unnoticed but in medicine costs are so high and demand is forced by suffering of patients, that this makes courts decide so. In other words court does not think company should be in business of riding IP laws but in making and selling medicine.
This is a sidetrack but still important one I think. The way free market was alleged to function is to provide cheapest goods for the customers and biggest profits for the businesses. That is inherent conflict that no market can resolve as big profit is there only for limited time and product becomes cheap over time. Companies ride the patent war to increase profit knowing very well that patients are forced to take medications by their suffering. Come to think of it unholy aliance of IP rigihst and privatized healthcare is worse than racket schemes mafias of different origins have run trough cities of the world since ?

First of all the 'no profit' argument that is used here is a wrong - the company still makes a profit in this particular medicine and decision to stop production was made only to stop generic makers from being able to continue from the point the patent expires.
This said one can imagine that (possibly oversimplified) analysis of options available to company and society (and its arm called state) gives: either produce the drug till patent expires or if you cannot then you declare bankruptcy and pass over to for instance: generic producers (which as per actions and motivations of the company were just waiting for it anyway).
So all the bollocks about what the owners have to do is pointless. They are not obliged to do anything under normal conditions. Possibly a court can force them to do things like it does to us all to follow the laws, pay taxes, serve in the army if need be etc. But I think we are far from that point as the drug still brings money.

I still think that US is exceptional. All other nations use torture in a way that is less effective and not done according to scientific standard. I see millions of US taxpayers money spent effectively for a change. Looking at the opponents of the greatest nation (that would be almost everybody else except maybe UK but who knows what future brings) we can see that their torture chambers are just fun places made up for power trips of their sponsors unless of course they are rented by US authorities because standard scientific methods of extended interrogation do not suffice to satisfy the needs of said authorities.
What was the reason US republic was grounded again? Was it oppression and no justice of corrupted regimes of old continent or just taxes? I guess it was just taxes.

Wait a minute. They forced pureed food into detainees butts, in one case causing severe tearing and prolapse.

But hey, this Anonymous Coward says that's not brutality so we can all go back to our regularly scheduled programming.

Seriously, fuck you.

Saw OwnCloud in the title, stopped by to say that it is EXCELLENT. One of the most exciting (new) packages to hit open source in many years. Some things I use mine for:

Syncing OneNotes across multiple devices - 2 PCs, a Mac and a phone.
Automatic file sync (with binaries for Mac, Win & Linux)
Publishing documents to clients
Contacts & Calendar sync across multiple devices
WebDAV file shares offer native access for Mac, Windows and Linux.
... In a seriously slick interface with fairly simple and flexible deployment.

Seriously, can't recommend it enough. This reminds me, I should get back to submitting my patch for LibreOffice Spreadsheet previews..

Considering that ex is wearing one I should be able to agree but I have a problem with this because so many people wear them these days. I consider most of humanity slightly more intelligent than a earthworm but general standard of stupidity are much lower than mine so only some tatooed people are in fact of substandard intelligence. In general I was thought at home and confirmed that myself in life - judging people on basis of their clothing is bound to yield wrong results and people relying on such attributes are usually bad or stupid persons themselves.

Well there can be an argument for homeopathy and it can go as follows. For most of the patients coming to practitioners the best option is actually wait and see and treat only if body does not cope with common cold on its own going into complications. prescribing antibiotics makes no health sense if you have common cold but it does make financial sense for a doctor - the legal costs from malpractice charges fall away. If so one can argue it would be better to prescribe homeopathic stuff instead of antibiotics. Granted it is annoying being forced to listen to blabbering of people about how good homeopathic stuff is but it is sometimes good to have something that 'helps' /- being a parent is not always easy....

A landmark national issue and the quality of comments on Slashdot are the shittiest they've ever been.

The comments around here aren't worth taking the time to read them anymore.

you have already a capable prison industry so you can employ some and put the rest inside. Problem solved.

If they grow up they buy a gun or get elected or some other terrible thing happens. Better shoot them straight or in case your religion or ethics prevent you from doing that: hope for your preferred deity or force of nature to take care of the problem, preferably within our lifetime.

I thought that is the purpose (i.e. feeding trolls) of this site anyway? I mean intelligent trolling session are difficult to come by. There were good trolling waves here 10ya but not even that is the same as in 'ol good days. The youth of today cannot even troll properly anymore - something that may be associated with the shortened attention spans etc.

As for the reasons why you may think foreigners are more skilled than locals there is this explanation that fits best into your use case: if you look at immigrants in context of their source society you will see, that they are either over- or undereducated. The ones in the middle usually have more to lose and less to gain from immigrating. Low skilled have very little to lose and very skilled usually migrate because they have better options in other countries and not only financially. In other words, if you were looking you would have found locals of the same skill level as immigrants are but immigrants asking for a job in IT are usually filtered by the migration effort that is huge and has to pay off so mostly well skilled take that risk. This is a simplification of real process but as long as people do not try to flee natural disaster of Pol Pot proportions they usually form the diamond shape when put on mass/skill diagram.

As for lowering of numbers of skilled workers there are many reasons I would think. USA was once major magnet because the rest of the world was so underdeveloped. This has changed. Then more restrictive environment means that to get in, you have to do more or get there illegally - such conditions are putting skilled ones off naturally as it increases risk without increasing of pay off. But there are other reasons too. US society is better known to people now and not from better side. If decision to immigrate is based on information and calculation instead of myths and herd instincts, then there is ever less incentive: US society is more and more seen in perspective of great divide between have and havenots, there are riots, militarized police seems to be shooting people at random and people are shooting other people, tensions in society seem to be fixed so people in say Fergusson buy guns instead of trying to address the problems, add to this war on drugs, massive prison population and what is important for people like me who would immigrate with family: basic social safety nets are somewhat lacking. There is also another aspect - US is not seen as a good country anymore or not by majority. Take Germany - conquered by (among others) US military power and turned into ashes in a process yet people loved US after a while. This has stopped and now they are more critical but there are plenty of places in the world where people see US as only good to get some goodies AND a great danger to own society too. I do not know how many people use such arguments not to migrate to US but I would imagine the number became significant of late.

Plus today there are more jobs which you can do from home. You can do some of those jobs from home - income may be lower but risk is lower too.

As for your /. argument - I think you exaggerate hugely the influence this site has on anything. I know maybe 2 or 3 guys who know /.
If this site had any influence on general population anywhere we would see libertarian economic policy at least in US, energy needs covered by 4th generation of nuclear reactors and NSA and religion banned from the system their proponents sent to re-education camps in Syberia. maybe even some good examples could have been found of such geek based society but we would not know because this is not happening.

Selling is a good thing and various regimes of this planet engage in selling military toys to different (sometimes clearly very unpleasant) regimes. Yet in case of Ukraine there is a problem with selling because that involves paying for goods and services which Ukraine has difficulty with.

that was a princes last time and she was mine - I feel sooooo betrayed!