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Submission Summary: 0 pending, 23 declined, 0 accepted (23 total, 0.00% accepted)

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Editorial

Submission + - McCain on health care

cinnamon colbert writes: Paul Krugman in yesterday's NYT:

OK, a correspondent directs me to John McCain's article, (http://www.contingencies.org/septoct08/mccain.pdf) Better Health Care at Lower Cost for Every American, in the Sept./Oct. issue of Contingencies, the magazine of the American Academy of Actuaries. You might want to be seated before reading this.

Here's what McCain has to say about the wonders of market-based health reform:

Opening up the health insurance market to more vigorous nationwide competition, as we have done over the last decade in banking, would provide more choices of innovative products less burdened by the worst excesses of state-based regulation.

So McCain, who now poses as the scourge of Wall Street, was praising financial deregulation like 10 seconds ago — and promising that if we marketize health care, it will perform as well as the financial industry!

From: http://krugman.blogs.nytimes.com/2008/09/19/mccain-on-banking-and-health/
Programming

Submission + - slashdot format and code

cinnamon colbert writes: Dear Sir: I cannot be the only person using firefox who really dislikes the changes to the /. GUI in the last year; given the intelligence shown in the original code, I am surprised that you are making these changes. I submit that any piece of software has a natural evolution, and after a certain point, you have most of the features that you need; if you keep tinkering, you just make the code baroque. /. has reached that point — the changes over the last year are, imo, a net loss to usability. Every month, I find myself on /. less and less (don't say it,...a good thing) Please — I love /. and think you are going in the wrong direction !! Please — poll your readers on this !!
The Media

Submission + - Barack Obama website - sophisticated

cinnamon colbert writes: Barack Obama (or people associated with him) have a website http://my.barackobama.com/page/content/fightthesmearshome/ devoted to dispelling rumors. Aside from the depressing point that so many people are willing to spread such garbage, and that so many people pay attention, I was very impressed with the sophistication of the site — the content, layout, organization are superb. For instance, the site mixes text, photos and video, and does so in a context appropriate way.
GUI

Submission + - better writing

cinnamon colbert writes: much of the writing in the posts on /. violates one of the 1st principals of effective communication: go easy on words like "very" "interesting" and so forth. Maybe the /coders could put in code which automatically strips out these words, which on wikipedia, are aptly named "weasel words". Which brings up another thought, howcome /. posts and replies don't auto link to relevant wiki articles ? Finally, can the /. editors have a rule that a post has to go back to an original source if available ? Many times, I see science posts which are based on a news story which is based on a press releas which may or may not (uusally not) give a url for the underlying science, which is usually a report or paper in the peer reviewed literature. The post should have a url to this underlying report which is the basis for the long chain of secondary reports. If the post is based on a press release which is based on an UNpublished peace of work, this should be noted, as unpublished work has (at least to the scientist) a connotion of second rateness. PS: the wording on the submission page about which section to use is unclear; please rephrase, thanks

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