Not really. Sometimes you have to give people a chance to come around to the good ideas if they're not popular or notable at first.

Think about it this way: if Al Franken had been on the Republican side and had spoken up in the same way, he would have been shouted under the table by his own party members and would have become a pariah, perhaps even losing the very next primary election to a more party-line candidate or a tea party challenger.

As much as I feel disappointed and disgusted by things that Obama and other Democrats have done over the last several years, I still don't buy the whole line that some people here on Slashdot trot out all the time: that Democrats and Republicans are the same thing.

You know that this deal would have sailed through and there's no way the FCC would have pushed for Title 2 regulation, if a Republican were in the White House right now.

So remember, as dumb and crappy as some parties' actions have been lately, who you vote for still matters, even if only in limited ways. Yes, some large scale issues are pretty much a wash between the two, but there are still some issues that you can have an influence in with your vote. Pick the party and candidates who you feel are more likely to be on the same side of the issues you care about, regardless of what the naysayers say.

Also, a shout out to Al Franken for being one of, if not the only top politicians to have questioned and criticized this merger from the beginning.

They should only allow reviews from people who actually purchased that product. Their reviews are already a mess, with tons of one star reviews for products that are really meant for the seller.

They already have a mechanism for this too: http://www.amazon.com/gp/commu...

They just need to purge all the other reviews. There's so many scams and agendas both for positive and negative reviews, that nowadays I only trust verified purchase reviews anyway.

I agree with you about time, and would add that it's too precious to spend much of it on Facebook. However, it's nice to at least be aware of the events that are taking place and have the ability to make the choice to go or not.

I also agree with most of what you say - I'm even of the same generation of letters being cheaper than calls, no email, etc. I was just presenting the facts as I perceive them currently. I'm sure that each person will react and respond to those facts differently. Some people may not want to miss out on anything, while others may actively want to miss out on most things.

Regarding email, perhaps I didn't express my idea very clearly. The root of what I was trying to express is that, like it or not, email and the various types of facebook communication all have a different perceived value and importance to recipients. I would think that most people feel that an email is more deserving or demanding for a reply than a mass facebook invitation or post (I could be way off on this, though). And if one sends out a mass facebook message, but only sends an email to a couple of friends that are not on facebook, that puts even more pressure on the email recipients to reply than the facebook friends, just because of the difference in numbers making the email friends not be able to hide among the crowd. Because of this, a facebook user may choose not to contact the email only friends, to not place pressure on them to respond. I hope this makes my perspective a bit more clear.

True, you're probably not going to miss your best friend's birthday party invitation because of not having facebook. What I found seems to happen though is that you may miss something more low-key from someone who you're not necessarily super close friends with.

Think of it from the other side. You want to invite everyone in your friends list (or perhaps a group of 30 friends you've created) to do something, say, go to a local amusement park. It's an added inconvenience to track down the handful of people who don't have facebook. It may be worth the effort, or it may not. You may just forget to invite those people if you're not prompted by the list. Sending an email or calling seems a lot more formal, and may send the wrong message about the importance of this invitation.

Does that make more sense? Now, some people may just not care to get those types of invitations, and prefer to just get the important ones from important people. I would say it's still possible to get missed in the shuffle...

Sometimes you don't, which was my point.

A facebook account is useful for a few things, like event invitations, birthday reminders, and getting in touch with some people who seem to use it as their principal means of communication.

You can have a facebook account, and just keep tight control over what is on it, or even not post anything at all, or delete what you post after a while. This is basically what I do. I rarely post and sometimes go through and delete old posts. I also don't post any photos of myself on my profile, and don't allow tagged photos to be posted either.

You can control most of this. You could basically treat your Facebook account like your LinkedIn account and keep it clean for a general audience. Get closely familiar with all the privacy controls as well.

In other words, don't throw the baby out with the bathwater.

Here's a humorous clip related to what you are saying (not a Rickroll - it's a comedy sketch): https://www.youtube.com/watch?...

It's usually incumbent on the person making the claim to provide citations to the evidence that supports the claims, especially if the claim is not something that is broadly and commonly known.

But just for kicks I made the following search on google:

2014 elections more votes than registered voters

I didn't find any links on the first page of results that appeared to report this widespread voter fraud.

So the citation is still needed.

Never heard of any of these cases, so citation needed.

FYI, I was just at Home Depot last weekend and noticed that they were selling Cree LED "fluorescent tubes", i.e. the 4 foot ones, I believe. I was surprised to see those because I had never heard of them. So you may be able to go 100% LED after all.

Never mind, I found it: "Most incredibly, Harrell tells us that it could absolutely be used in a real vehicle, since it is a scaled down version of the real thing."

Yeah, I feel that the article's writer probably missed a few qualifiers or misinterpreted what the guy said. Being a mechanical engineer, I'm sure that he's quite aware that a plastic transmission wouldn't last under load from a real car engine. I imagine that what he really said was that if his thingiverse design were printed in metal that it would work.

All good points, but I'm still wondering where TFS got that the creator said that it would work as a replacement for the real thing. TFA doesn't say that anywhere. It seems that the submitter just made that up out of the blue?

I have to agree with hodet's point as well. I'm pretty surprised at the negativity of some of the Slashdot crowd regarding this story.

And the headline is accurate. They could have maybe added "replica" there to make it less click-baitish, but it IS a working transmission for his 3D printed, replica Toyota 22RE engine. The video shows it working exactly like a transmission should. Perhaps we have differing interpretations of the word "working"?

Still, the headline is the fault of the website, not the creator. He has done nothing wrong. On the contrary, what he has done is really cool.

After reading all the top-rated comments here, I have to think that the Slashdot crowd has given up on evidence-based solutions to problems.

From the TFS: "Reducing the availability of highly lethal and commonly used suicide methods has been associated with declines in suicide rates of as much as 30%-50% in other countries (PDF)."

Who said anything about forbidding suicide? They are just talking about reducing the availability of easy routes to suicide. I just don't understand why anyone would be against that, as it is not impinging on anyone's rights. The only thing it does is to help prevent someone from making a rash decision while they are not thinking straight.

It's a little bit like IT security. You can't stop the people who are really determined to get to their objective, but you can stop the casual attempts. In this case, you will give people a chance to think twice about this very ultimate decision.