I do have a problem with a lot of the for-profit schools this measure is attacking, but for different reasons. Because it is way overpriced vocational training, not an education.

As expected, the attacking the "college is stupid, why would anybody get a degree in {liberal arts field}, because you can't get a job with it" line thought was well represented. Congratulations, you'd just brought into the mindset that the economic and power elite wants; that nothing is valuable without dollar signs attached to it.

Yes, think that higher education isn't a public good (hint, that why there are state schools, and they were subsidized for a long time with tax dollars), but instead treat it as job training that employees, not employers have to pay for. Reduce and eliminate anything that require critical thinking or actual unique thought, because that's a luxury for the rich. I mean, we can't have tax dollars and contributions going to a bunch of intellectuals that aren't smart enough to teach at a "real university". That's a waste.

And forget college preparation in high school, because who needs to be able to write a original essay or be critical of, well, anything. Just funnel everybody in a public school into a job. If you aren't wealthy, you don't deserve to have ideas, you just deserve to work mindlessly. No pursuing higher ideas for you. I mean, those classes were so annoying. Having to process new ideas, having to study things that don't interest you, having to do things you don't like or want to do? What's the point in that? Being exposed to diversity? Pfft.

This story doesn't end well. Usually, it's violent and a lot of people die. If you are lucky, it's more peaceful, but still really bad for business. But, the reduction in real tax rates for the truly wealthy can't be stopped. Increasing taxes to restore revenues to schools and education? Insisting that corporations and those that profit from them have to contribute a better society? That's insane big government talk.

Hell, just send them to a code boot camp. Those are great jobs. If want to learn stuff, just go on the internet, because, all that stuff on the internet that is useful just came out of nowhere, right? The fact that PhDs are on food stamps and can't find jobs is a canary screeching in a coal mine. Damn straight college administration needs to answer for this, but we all have to answer; we need to value real education in this country.

- you know you are an actual asshole, right? What, the difference between people that are flying space ships for private business and for NASA or whatever agency is that in private business they are billionaires? Nope. The owner of the company is, the people flying the fucking rockets are heroes even before they blow up.

By the way, asshole, the only way to achieve real cheap space flight is to have commercial space flight, and just like anything that is done before it becomes the thing that everybody can afford, the first years of it are going to be expensive and only affordable by the wealthiest individuals. Just like cars used to be.

Before one of these hobo-planets comes our way, we should already have a Rotor colony.

What good is more rain here and there

It's not here and there, on average a warmer climate means more rain everywhere. Which means people that would have starved, will not be. And that includes the north indian areas...

... to the masses of sarcastic "I though Open Source was more secure!" crowd: in an Open Source forum, when vulnerabilities are found, they are patched. Since it's a public forum, the vulnerabilities are disclosed, and patches / updates made available. The poor, sorry state of the first cut gets rapidly and openly improved.

With closed source, the vulnerabilities merely stay hidden and undisclosed, and you have no ability to know about it, or fix it yourself. the poor, sorry state of the first cut never improves. Yes, there are some cultures that take security seriously. You have no way of knowing.

This, right here, is what "more secure" looks like: public notification of the vulnerabilities and patches to distribute.

I haven't worn a watch in well over a decade. Why should I start wearing one now?

A set of beliefs concerning the cause, nature, and purpose of the universe, especially when considered as the creation of a superhuman agency or agencies, usually involving devotional and ritual observances, and often containing a moral code governing the conduct of human affairs.

1) A scientific mindset is not a set of beliefs. Scientists do not worship what they cannot understand; they only seek to understand it.
2) Scientists do not consider the cause or purpose of the universe, only its nature. Cause or purpose implies an intelligent creator. We do not have any objective evidence that one exists. The Bible is not objective evidence, only philosophy, narrative, and metaphor. Even if it were, the current versions of the work have been translated and interpreted so many times by so many people with so many different agendas to push that the original meaning has been lost for thousands of years.
3) There is no objective evidence that a superhuman agency or agencies created the universe. There is conjecture and hypothesis. The problem is that the zealots insist that you prove a negative when you express an opinion on the subject. As we all know, proving a negative is impossible. Thinking that something is possible doesn't mean you believe it to actually be the case. We do not know what was happening before the Big Bang happened, as current technology does not exist to look beyond the singularity. Nothing can be proven or disproven about the origin of the Big Bang at the moment, and that is not a concession of a weak argument; the three most important words in science are "I don't know".
4) Exactly what devotional and ritual observances do scientists engage in? The closest I can come up with is getting your morning coffee.
5) Scientifically based solutions and practices are not the same as a moral code. Morals are arbitrary rules of conduct that a particular slice of humanity has decided are worth upholding, and as such, cannot by definition be associated with science. Nothing in science says you can't have sex before marriage, for example, or stone the gays to death, or beat your wife, or kill your slaves..

I'm positive you don't know what you're talking about.

What the deniers dispute is humans having a majoritive effect on climate change. The science on that is not settled.

It's settled. Getting 97% of scientists to agree on something is virtually impossible if there is no objective evidence. CO2 in the atmosphere makes temperatures rise. We're dumping CO2 into the atmosphere by the billions of tons. Therefore, more heat from the sun is trapped in the atmosphere, making global temperature rise. Honestly, it's not a difficult concept, and if you need an example of a greenhouse effect gone mad, take a look at Venus. It's like 863 degrees F / 462 degrees C on the surface, in large part to the atmosphere being 96% CO2. The origins of the high levels of CO2 on Venus are different from those on Earth, but they share a similar problem in that there is insufficient biomass to recapture the carbon in the atmosphere.

especially when new papers are being published trying to explain a hiatus in the warming trend and the significance of the oceans in the atmospheric temperature.

Please link to some of those papers; if they're not in reputable peer-reviewed publications, though, don't bother.

If the science on that was settled there would be no use for continued research.

You are failing to grasp the nature of scientific endeavor. We will never know everything about a particular topic; there is always more knowledge to be obtained. If 97% (or even a significant majority) of the new research contradicts the human-caused theory of global warming, then a conclusion can be drawn.

But I'm wasting my breath. If human-caused climate change deniers are confronted with objective evidence that contradicts their hypotheses, they simply stick their fingers in their ears and say "LA LA LA I CAN'T HEAR YOU". The evidence is overwhelming; the science is settled (in as much as anything in science can be settled; the strength of science is in its flexibility and the tacit admission that any theory can be rejected based on new evidence, if the evidence is compelling enough).

Nothing you say in this reply cannot be contradicted with objective facts.

In fact I think overpopulation will be a problem in the future.

We already know from Hans Rosling that population tops out at 10 billion or so, which we can easily support (and again, a warmer climate helps with).

It's the ice ages you need to fear, those fuckers will slaughter billions.

Crop yields are expected to decline because plants need more water as the temperature goes up:

We already know from historical records agriculture was better with the climate a few degrees warmer overall - also a warmer climate increases ocean evaporation, leading (as it has) to more rain in many areas.

If you are thinking regionally instead of globally, like say California, that is simply reverting to historical norms after a decade or two of above average precipitation - plus of course really badly managed water rights that hate agriculture.

As for your link, good luck with the magical thinking.

What gets me is the mild warming we are obviously going to be experiencing (since large CO2 increase have not shown not to correlate to rapid temperature increases as previously thought) is going to bring an overall boon to the planet, just as it did in ages past - a wider range of arable land.

Sure some land will change for the worse, but overall as a species we will be better off - and the rate the climate is changing allows for plenty of time for people, plants and animals to adapt.

It's a sign that years and years of mismanagement maybe didn't completely kill the ability for them to come up with interesting stuff This is exactly the kind of thing they need to do. Shore up HP Labs and solve some neat problems and ship cool stuff. Sure, let's be skeptical, but good for them for trying.

Why? There are no limits to filing lawsuits against businesses, I believe there shouldn't be any limits on lawsuites filed against anybody. Why should there be limits? Also there shouldn't be any limits on contract clauses. People must be free to set up contracts in any way.

Would you consider home address, and phone number also to be a bit of a breach?

Because you can get those and a lot more with just the email address and a call to the CurrentC web service.

they just got a hold of their email mailing list

From registered email addresses, you can get things like home address/phone number, and lots more data that may be of interest.

Basically the breach got a bunch of primary keys they can use to get something more juicy later.