It seems you missed the overall point here, which was "Cite your source, or shut up". We likely share a similar opinion on this particular subject. However, if you can't cite a valid source, if you can't point out solid, peer-reviewed research, then you're essentially acting on faith, just like the creationists, just like the anti-vax crowd. You're saying "this is what I believe", rather than "this is what I know". For the layperson (regarding any subject matter), there is much in common between faith in religion, and faith in science. Either way, you're generally accepting conclusions reached by others regarding a subject about which you have very little knowledge. You have to, as stated, examine the evidence available to you, and reach a conclusion based on that evidence. If you blindly accept what you saw on CNN, or read in a Slashdot summary, without further examination of the subject, you're no better than the anti-science fundamentalists.

And, seriously, the "falling on deaf ears" argument is a complete copout. I, for example, was raised catholic. Believed in creationism and the existence of god because that was how I was raised. Then I got a little older, started thinking for myself, examined the evidence, and concluded otherwise. If you write off an entire group of people because you disagree with them and think they're fools, hunkering down in your bunker with the others who agree with you, then nothing will ever change. I realize, probably better than most, how frustrating it is to have the same argument time and time again, with so little success swaying the opinions of others, but if you just say "screw it, they're all morons", then you're just helping history to repeat itself.

I find it interesting that this was modded flamebait. It's a valid point. Whatever your opinion on the subject, rhetorical hyperbole serves only to inflame those who already disagree to disagree more. If you disagree with the anti-vax crowd, offer reasoned counterpoints to their arguments. If you just write them off as a bunch of idiotic kooks, that will just entrench them in their position further. And who knows, do YOU have any research to support the idea that there is no benefit to, say, a more gradual vaccination schedule for infants? Has the issue been researched to a significant degree? I don't know of any studies on that specific subject (and note the difference between "I don't know" and "there are none"), so I couldn't counter the suggestion that it might be beneficial. If you disagree, back it up with the science, or you're no better than the "anti-science" crowd you claim to oppose. Blindly accepting "prevailing wisdom" without the knowledge to support it is every bit as "anti-science" as blindly accepting niche wisdom without the knowledge to support it. You look at the evidence available to you and form a conclusion, you don't just say "most scientists support idea A, so anyone who supports idea B is a fool." That helps no one and makes you look a fool.

And, for what it's worth, I was torn between posting a response to the fact this was modded flamebait, or modding it up. I chose the former.

https://xkcd.com/386/

You beat me to the punch. That was an excellent and insightful post, couldn't have phrased it better myself. So naturally, here on the free-thinking slashdot, it's been modded to zero. Hopefully someone with mod points will rectify this.

OK, mod this how you like, but having just read this entire thread, I am appalled that it seems to have deteriorated into a discussion of the supposed benefits to society to ENSLAVE people for a portion of their lives and force them to participate in organized butchery (or the support thereof). And yes, it is slavery. Just because your government passes a law and says it's for your own good doesn't change the fact that an unwilling participant in any such scheme is most definitely a slave.

And apart from that, I find it appalling that a seeming majority of people think military service is some kind of noble endeavor. The biggest nations and military alliances aren't fending off invasions of their homes. They ARE the invaders. They go to foreign lands, meet exciting new people and MURDER them. Usually on the flimsiest pretexts. "I was following orders" is not an excuse for killing someone. "They shot at me first" isn't an excuse when YOU are the invader. That's akin to a burglar claiming self-defense in shooting a homeowner who tried to defend his property. "I joined to do good and defend my country but a bad president started a bad war" is NEVER an excuse. You chose to join knowing that could happen (and based on, oh, say all of US history, you should have known it was damn likely), and when it comes right down to it, you choose to fire a weapon and take a life. Military service is NOT noble, it's despicable. Whatever the intentions, the soldiers make possible the wholesale slaughter of foreign peoples. Until people stop glorifying the trained attack dogs of the state, and stop making excuses for their actions, governments will have a plentiful source of cannon fodder and bullet sponges to continue invading and slaughtering.

Not really, use your own stem cells to grow the tissue, grow a new heart/arm/etc., and transplant it. Transplant tech has advanced enormously in recent years.

I for one welcome our new Cyborg Overlords!

Easy solution, slow down on the Diablo! Every high-end mouse I've destroyed this way, I can attribute to either D1 or D2.

The original Quake 1 actually REQUIRED an FPU coprocessor, as I recall. Never was happier to have a shiny new 486DX2!

Seriously, who torrents without using a blacklisting program like PeerBlock, anyway? Yes, I know it's not perfect, but it helps, and guess what? It can block ad servers, too! If I hadn't read about this here, they probably could have implemented the ads, and I wouldn't have known about it at all!

If you're more of the DIY type, like myself, I'd suggest building your own from scratch. Remus is an excellent choice for a high-availability environment. Admittedly, it's still a relatively young project, but as of Xen 4.2 (currently the unstable branch), it's been largely stable and easy to work with. You can even use DRBD as the storage backend (currently it's using a modified DRBD with a new "protocol D" synchronization method, but prot D is going to be integrated into the main DRBD branch as of DRBD 9, hopefully later this year).

Basically, you set up a normal Xen virtualization environment, but you mirror the configuration across two (or more) Xen nodes. You have two storage nodes sharing out virtual block devices (AoE is good if you'll have all the nodes on a single switch, iSCSI is good if you'll need to route over an IP network), one Xen node connects to one or more storage nodes, then DRBD running on each Xen node joins the block devices into a DRBD volume (I like to share out the whole disk/array of each node as a single block device, then create an LVM2 logical volume on each block device, and join the LVs together with DRBD). Xen then uses the DRBD volumes as virtual disks for the VMs. Once that's set up, you just configure remus to start when the VM starts, and it will checkpoint the current machine state between the two Xen nodes at a rate you specify. If one node goes down, the other picks up running the VM, without dropping a packet.

I've currently converted all our internal systems at work over to running on this cluster, and it works great. Highly recommend you take a look.

Well, apart from the fact that many of them are in the original packaging, and many of them are factory sealed (this is a huge boost to price for classics), you can't just take an average. For example, I'm currently selling my game collection (hate to do it, but it must be done before I move). I've got most of my games as complete boxed sets. Zelda A Link to the Past sold for $50, while Chrono Trigger sold for over $400 (and a mint sealed copy will net 7 or 8 grand)! Just looking at an average price per game treats all the games as interchangeable commodities, when in reality some games are more prized, more sought-after, and therefore more expensive than others, sometimes by a wide margin.

This story is worthy of note. As others have mentioned, this is the first beta release to use the Android native UI instead of xul. I can attest it is *dramatically* faster, night and day. The previous xul-based builds were largely unusable, taking 30 seconds just to start, even on my heavily oc'd phone. The new native UI builds run smoothly and fluidly. I've been using the native UI builds since they were first released as nightlies (currently on Firefox 15 nightly), and they're a big step forward.

That being said, these do have some big downsides. The native UI builds dropped support for things like text selection, copy/paste (can't copy what you can't select), and generally feel unpolished. Once all the features from the xul builds are available in the native ui builds, it'll be the best browser around, hands down. Until then, it's a nice tech demo from Mozilla.

He won't stand for being left out of the poll. He's just too damn sensitive!

Or, to summarize your comments in the words of a very wise man, "Anyone even remotely capable of getting themselves elected to office should on no account be allowed to hold the position."