I am thinking that most of those corporations measure productivity by hours spent in front of a computer, which means they see younger programmers working 80 hours a week spitting out the same code that would take an older programmer 40 hours to be "more productive".

But your point is well taken; perception of productivity is pretty messed up and I think that explains a big part of why these workers are striking.

OMG. If that is what Europe really wants, then they can keep it. Maybe they don't realize that workers don't magically become "productive" out of the womb. Nor do they when someone hands them a diploma. Productivity increases with experience.

By saying a nation should only employ productive workers and leave the unproductive unemployed, you are effectively saying that anyone young should just be a dependent of the state while older people get to reap the benefits of labor shortages.

So what happens when your older "productive" workers all retire? All of those "unproductive" young people you wanted to keep unemployed will still be unproductive. I suppose you could just import productive immigrants. But eventually nobody will want to come to your country because you're going to have to tax most of their pay in order to support the multitudes of unproductive people in your country.

No. I think I prefer America's way of doing things. We provide subsidies to our low-wage earners in the hopes that they increase their productivity through experience. It isn't perfect, but it is at least sustainable.

Yes, they certainly will.

By identifying the high risk teenaged drivers we can target them with additional training and restrictions that will reshape their driving behavior and make them lower risk. And we could mandate that the insurance companies pay for some of that additional training.

This would similar to health insurance companies being mandated to cover preventative health services.

The FDA is a lot more strict about the manufacturing of hospital equipment than the BATFE is about guns.

Soviet Space Program, NASA, and the European Space Agency.

I'm not saying Gates is necessarily wrong, but it is awfully convenient that the most important issue for the world just happens to be the one his charity is involved in.

I question whether you can even know what will "save the world". Look at risks to human civilization. What is the impact of malaria on the population versus say, an asteroid crashing into our planet? The latter is more catastrophic to the survival of our species than the former, but the probability of occurrence is much lower.

What if the Internet becomes instrumental to the identification of an asteroid threat with sufficient time to mitigate its effects? Will the Internet have 'saved the world'?

Again, I'm not saying that curing disease isn't important, and I applaud Mr. Gates' efforts even if I may question his motives. But I don't think he can possibly know what will and will not "save the world".

That isn't true. Under Carter and Clinton the public debt went up every single year. In fact, the last time we managed to actually pay down the debt was in 1957.

Go ahead. Just be sure to add every loophole and tax deduction that was available during Eisenhower's times. Otherwise you're just advocating confiscation of wealth, which is not such a lovely road for us to go down. But hey, high tax rates with generous deductions would encourage spending, and that would be fine by me.

Perhaps the $16,000 could be divided up and paid to multiple researchers who do their own separate analyses. Even better would be researchers on different continents, who pledge not to communicate with each other until their work is complete.

I disagree. Actual manned spaceflight is dangerous and damned scary as it is. The scenes with the remains of dead astronauts were just freaky. You didn't need a monolithic cloud of space debris, just a few pieces that cripple the shuttle's windows and heat shield. Then what do you do? Houston says they can't launch a rescue shuttle due to the unknown debris factors so your only choice is to chance a transfer orbit to the ISS using an experimental jetpack. Despite the differences in orbital shapes, IIRC the delta-V required isn't that obscene and probably easily written into the capabilities of an experimental jetpack.

You could cut out 90% of the drama in Gravity, and still have a beautiful, compelling, and downright terrifying movie. It's really too bad they felt the need to overdo it.

While the VMA Security Group's officers are certified to carry firearms, one of the crowdfunding pages plans to ask any of them assigned to the neighborhood to remain unnamed 'unless they feel they cannot accomplish their duties otherwise.'

You can not violate my constitutional right to be named.

Al Gore's precise words: "I took the initiative in creating the Internet."

Gore didn't say his initiatives had a significant and beneficial effect on the internet. He didn't say he helped commercialize the Internet. Nor did he say anything about funding computer initiatives. He literally said that he "took the initiative in

• creating

the Internet".

If you want to argue that he made important contributions, be my guest. I won't disagree. But it is amazing that anybody on Slashdot would defend a politician taking credit for decades of scientific achievement because said politician, towards the end, introduced some bills to fund it and commercialize it. The simplest and most reasonable explanation is that those who do are politically biased.

The idea that genetically modified organisms present an unknown danger to people is one example. The left regularly propagates this scientifically ignorant viewpoint, exchanging their anti-corporate biases for facts.

Janez LenarÄiÄ, the Director of the OSCE Office for Democratic Institutions and Human Rights (ODIHR), stated that "The United States, like all countries in the OSCE, has an obligation to invite ODIHR observers to observe its elections.â (http://www.osce.org/odihr/elections/96639).

Where does this obligation come from?

After that, I started holding laptops exactly like that, making people cringe. True story.