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Comment Re:Quality over quantity (Score 0, Troll) 140

Israel is currently using these fine US weapons to kill as many civilians as possible. I don't think they care very much about the health and welfare of the people in the concentration camp they have established in Gaza. The US (at least the politicians) don't seem to mind this carnage.

Comment Re:GPLv4 - the good public license? (Score 3, Insightful) 140

Most wars are started when one group of greedy bastards wants to take over from another group of greedy bastards. These greedy bastards (generally politicians and their corporate sponsors) are the "elite" of societies. Since they control the wealth, they have the most to gain (or lose) by war. Everyone else is just cannon fodder and will end up worse off after the war regardless of who wins. There are a few interesting probes of this rule. I just finished reading George Orwell's "Homage to Catalonia" which is an account of his experiences in the Spanish Civil War. Apparently, the faction Orwell was fighting for (apparently by chance), POUM, did try to establish an egalitarian workers society. However, they were sold out by the Russian Communists and other factions.
I think it's really difficult (?impossible) to establish a truly egalitarian society anywhere which would actually improve the condition of the peons. The usual result in just about every political system is that you end up with a few greedy bastards in charge fighting the greedy bastards next door.
I'm not sure it would make much difference to be speaking German or Russian or Japanese or Chinese or have to profess belief in a different god. If you survived the war, you will still have the same shitty job living hand to mouth... just a different master.

Comment Re:on the other hand, they oppose building ...anyt (Score 1) 200

Nice troll but, of course, completely wrong.
You could have spent a minute and actually read the Green Party platform but then you wouldn't have been able to post your rant.
For instance, your assertion that they support big government and corporations controlling everything is directly contradicted by this statement in their platform:
"Since governments too often have an interest in controlling the flow of information, we must constantly guard against official censorship. In our society however, large corporations are a far more common source of censorship than governments. Media outlets kill stories because they undermine corporate interests; advertisers use their financial clout to squelch negative reports; powerful businesses employ the threat of expensive lawsuits to discourage legitimate investigations. The most frequent form of censorship is self-censorship: journalists deciding not to pursue certain stories that they know will be unpopular with the advertisers."
You should actually read their platform. There's a lot in there you might agree with (if you're willing to open your mind).
http://www.gp.org/what-we-beli...

Submission + - Earth in the midst of sixth mass extinction - the "anthropocene defaunation" (sciencemag.org)

mspohr writes: A special issue of Science magazine devoted to Vanishing Fauna publishes a series of articles about the man-caused extinction of species and the implications for ecosystems and the climate.
"During the Pleistocene epoch, only tens of thousands of years ago, our planet supported large, spectacular animals. Mammoths, terror birds, giant tortoises, and saber-toothed cats, as well as many less familiar species such as giant ground sloths (some of which reached 7 meters in height) and glyptodonts (which resembled car-sized armadillos), roamed freely. Since then, however, the number and diversity of animal species on Earth have consistently and steadily declined. Today we are left with a relatively depauperate fauna, and we continue to lose animal species to extinction rapidly. Although some debate persists, most of the evidence suggests that humans were responsible for extinction of this Pleistocene fauna, and we continue to drive animal extinctions today through the destruction of wild lands, consumption of animals as a resource or a luxury, and persecution of species we see as threats or competitors. "
Unfortunately, most of the detail is behind a paywall but the summary should be enough for Slashdot readers.

Comment Re:Vaccine in the 2030's? (Score 1) 170

If you had actually read the article you reference, you would see that the delay in malaria vaccine is to to the fact that the many trials have been failures and even this latest version is not very effective for not very much time. The "paperwork" delay in this case is due to the fact that it doesn't work.

Comment Re:World War Z (Score 1) 170

Can't really avoid it since you can get it from touching surfaces contaminated with the virus. Think of an airplane seat or a public shop or any public place. You can wall yourself up at home but what happens when you run out of food?

Comment Re:Coming to a plane journey (Score 1) 170

Actually, it does transmit fairly easily.
From the WHO:
"Ebola then spreads in the community through human-to-human transmission, with infection resulting from direct contact (through broken skin or mucous membranes) with the blood, secretions, organs or other bodily fluids of infected people, and indirect contact with environments contaminated with such fluids. "

Submission + - The Secret Government Rulebook For Labeling You a Terrorist (firstlook.org) 1

Advocatus Diaboli writes: The Obama administration has quietly approved a substantial expansion of the terrorist watchlist system, authorizing a secret process that requires neither “concrete facts” nor “irrefutable evidence” to designate an American or foreigner as a terrorist, according to a key government document obtained by The Intercept. ...The heart of the document revolves around the rules for placing individuals on a watchlist. “All executive departments and agencies,” the document says, are responsible for collecting and sharing information on terrorist suspects with the National Counterterrorism Center. It sets a low standard—”reasonable suspicion“—for placing names on the watchlists, and offers a multitude of vague, confusing, or contradictory instructions for gauging it. In the chapter on “Minimum Substantive Derogatory Criteria”—even the title is hard to digest—the key sentence on reasonable suspicion offers little clarity...

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