Typesetters use fairly rigid rules about how many characters-wide text should be, in order to be easily readable. If you're filling a widescreen with one window of wrapped text, there is no way it is readable.

That's pretty much the point: beauty before function.

Fine, fine, change it to crystal meth and the executive will be right on board.

Here is a more direct analogy:
Selling is legal. Donating a kidney is legal. Selling a kidney is illegal (in the U.S.).

I think even George Carlin (who was a comedian, we may need to recall) realized that laws reflect a society's collective (not unanimous!) views as to what is "right" and "wrong".

One excuse politicians use to strip away freedoms is to point at those who abuse them. [Hint, hint, there moderators.]

" Well the Net is really here, and we have Slashdot and Twitter and blogs... we can post wisdom until cows come home and no great powers will have been gained."

I couldn't disagree more.

Consider Nate Silver. (See his wiki entry if you don't know who he is.) He is a smart guy who started off with baseball predictions, but his prominence shot up after he "posted his wisdom" essentially nailing the last presidential election state by state. There is no doubt that this lead to his prominence today (at a relatively young age).

Secondly, regarding the rest of "us", I'm still waiting to find this wisdom of which you speak. And no, the occasional needle in the haystack does not count.

That's right, you hadn't.

Could you give me your address, and let me know when you won't be home? (I presume you no longer lock your house.)

Dude, it's Japan. A little spray nozzle comes out after each use, followed by a mini-squeegie.

The encrypted auction paper (the whole point of the summary) is at: http://arxiv.org/abs/1202.4507
and not at the arxiv link provided in the summary.

And as it turns out, that is not the case at all. Imagine that, a completely misleading summary on slashdot.

Summary says: :The US State Dept has started to warn potential recruits from universities not to read leaked cables,"

TFA says: Columbia University career services got a recommendation from an alumnus that if you want a job with the State Dept, he recommends
"you DO NOT post links to these documents nor make comments on social media sites such as Facebook or through Twitter. Engaging in these activities would call into question your ability to deal with confidential information, which is part of most positions with the federal government."

So,
(1) This is not official policy; it is an alumnus giving personal advice to undergrads at his alma mater.
(2) It has nothing to do with reading/not reading wikileaks.

I really have to spend less time reading /. summaries.

If it takes phone companies as long to eliminate phone books as it takes for Slashdot to get around to the topic of phone book elimination, the phone books should be safe for awhile. (e.g. New York)

Was the irony intended?

This is slashdot. What site were you looking for?

Meanwhile, free will, property rights, and individuality negate everything else when misapplied (and definitely when correctly applied too).

Everything is a tradeoff; that's life.

I'm just amazed that there's a court in the U.S. that doesn't subscribe to the opposite fundamentalist philosophy: sacrifice everything for the weakest. But given that one exists, I'm not surprised it's Texas.

If we ever meet in the 4th dimension, it will only be in passing...