The UN eradicated smallpox. What have you done lately that is comparable? It's true that the UN isn't really efficient. How could it be? It's 200 countries with vastly different cultures, ideas and goals. Getting all these powers to agree on something is bound to be hard. But that doesn't change the fact that having a common forum to talk in is a fundamentally good thing. There's also no alternative. The US has been trying to impose their will on other countries by force or political/economic power for decades, with decidedly mixed results. It's actually easier to find a compromise and get everyone to act on it. Politics is hard. Remember that the next time you can't get your family to agree on dinner.

The least they could do is abolish this insane idea of sending around cheques to transfer money.

The UN eradicated smallpox. What have you done lately that is comparable, except tying your own shoelaces?

It's true that the UN isn't really efficient. How could it be? It's 200 countries with vastly different cultures, ideas and goals. Getting all these powers to agree on something is bound to be hard. But that doesn't change the fact that having a common forum to talk in is a fundamentally good thing. There's also no alternative. The US has been trying to impose their will on other countries by force or political/economic power for decades, with decidedly mixed results. It's actually easier to find a compromise and get everyone to act on it.

Politics is hard. Remember that the next time you can't get your family to agree on dinner.

If it ends up in a landfill right now, you're doing something wrong. Some countries (Scandinavia) have recycling quotas >90% already.

To nitpick a bit, your idea might be true, but your arguments don't necessarily hold up. Firstly, the discrimination against immigrants is mostly a social problem, not a political one. The policies in most of Europe are quite liberal, but people seem to be racists. In the US it's the other way around (at least to a certain degree). Reasons for that might be higher experience with immigration, the diversity of immigrants to the US which makes it harder for them form communities closed to the outside, and a positive feedback loop that starts with integration (giving them jobs etc.) leading to wealth and education which then leads to even more willingness to integrate immigrants. The success in the US also seems to be highly divergent for different groups, i. e. asians are much better integrated (at least economically) than blacks, even though the former immigrated more recently and therefore had less time to adjust.

Regarding social security, every EU country spends more (as % of GDP) than the US on welfare, thus making cuts more likely. If unemployment benefits are cut, the unemployed have to switch to cheaper cigarettes. In the US, they die. In numbers: the unemployed in Germany get 60% of their last income (67% with children) for up 36 months. After that, they get about 400$+rent+heating+ electricity. In the US it's 3x% for a few months, and apparently not even food stamps after that.

More importantly, admitting it was a DDoS creates an incentive for more attacks, where otherwise people would just give up. Anyway, I'm hoping they're right and the script kiddies failed. The wikileaks debate should be about the better arguments, not the larger number of nodes.

Wasn't that attack directed at their services at amazon from inside S3? I seem to remember a story about someone bragging about that.

worthless leeching motherfuckers who ought to be deported

Others call them children

Using the same think of the children excuse to further my goals that I criticize when used to support privacy invasions and draconic criminal laws just doesn't seem right.

You can enter into a contract in a number of ways. Signing and paying are two of them, but sitting down in a restaurant and eating food also completes a contract without signature or payment. It's more a "meeting of the minds" that's required. If the website has a visible notice one could argue that a contract exists. But people are used to free content and therefore it's highly unlikely that they actually wanted to enter into a contract, thus no meeting of the minds.

Sad to see that even on slashdot, greed trumps curiosity.

That's quite misguided. Both Science and Nature have "magazine" parts written by science journalists that cover current research at a level suitable for a general but well-educated scientific public. The real meat is in the articles that use the traditional scientific publication method (i.e. written by scientists, peer-reviewed). These articles come from all areas of science, but they're not written to be understood by outsiders or anything like that. In essence, if the system works a breakthrough in any field will be covered in these journals (or PNAS), articles of lower importance will find their place in more specialized journals. Thus Nature published papers such as the discovery of X-Rays (physics), plate tectonics (geo) or the structure of DNA (biology).

That's not odd, that's how it's supposed to work. The editorial staff should be independent from the business side of the business. It's only after being exposed to Murdoch-media for too long that you think the owner should be the only one deciding the newspaper's opinions.

It's also possible that the owner is - shock! - able to disagree with someone on one issue but agrees on others. Or maybe he doesn't put his own interest ahead of what he thinks is good for society. OF course if you want to be cynical, maybe he wants the candidate to win so she can pay whatever he's suing for.

I've recently stopped reading the news, most blogs etc. and started reading books instead. While both qualifies as "reading", the knowledge gained from a good book stays with you for life, while Krugman's last editorial just fuels your rage and is useless after the next election.

I don't want a "range", developed with "partners". MS has repeated that mistake so often now, expecting different results every time. isn't there a witty saying that defines insanity this way?