So, to summarize...

• You value people with wealth over those that work
• You think a person's contribution to society is directly proportional to disposable income (Miley Cyrus > Van Gogh)
• You would rather keep someone alive who inherited vast quantities of wealth (and does nothing) vs. someone who started with nothing and now has a job cleaning floors
• You don't like people who clean floors
• You want your pizzas served by people with diseases
• ...preferably from a pizza shop that doesn't clean it's floors

Your utopian dream (I'm calling it Cyrocracy) might just be fair if a) everyone started their life with the same opportunities and wealth; b) all money was redistributed on death (no inheritance). But that smells an awful lot like government intervention so I guess your weird little fantasy can stay just that.

The majority disagreeing with you |= a conspiracy.

The scientists are free to study what they like (in so far as permitted by their funding). This is a deliberately scuppered study on the effects of climate change on Nebraska. By ignoring the elephant in the room the results become next to useless, even dangerous. Since scientific careers are built on usefulness of research taking this on = ~ 3yr of career down the pan for nothing. "They should study it anyway! Scientific curiosity! Every angle!" Yes, and they should also study whether there are fairies on the moon and whether the solution to this whole climate change thing is copper bracelets or setting fire to icebergs. Nobody has checked that right?! Right!

There are an infinite amount of things to study. Scientists have to use their judgement, based on evidence and experience to determine the validity of a line of investigation.

Your boss comes in tomorrow and says "Hey 'phairy, we've got a problem with the network think we're getting hacked." All the evidence points to Chinese hackers, there are even posts all over Netcraft confirming it. "But," your boss continues, "my new business partner is Chinese so don't bring them into it". "I want the report on my desk pronto - and if it doesn't help fix the problem you're fired!*"

I guess you'll just buckle down and write that report?

*fudged to fit the analogy. Feel free to replace with "you can spend the next 3 years upgrading our network to block everything (except Chinese hackers). If it doesn't solve the problem you're fired!"

Grant money is grant money, and publications are publications.

That couldn't be less true if it tried. A PhD/post-doc spent outputting useless intentionally-crippled research is not the basis of a successful career.

I am sure there are many grad students / post docs willing to take on this research.

Find one. I hear Nebraska has some money to spend.

Thanks for the link - that cleared things up nicely.

The Tor site is a tad jargon heavy methinks.

The video on the EFF site gives instructions for downloading a Vidalia Bundle for Mac - but this doesn't exist on the Tor website. The only downloads that I can see available are the 'Tor Browser Bundle' which is an auto-launching Tor node and browser combination.

So you can't run a node without a Tor browser window open all the time?

The Independent is another good UK paper. It seems positioned slightly less left/more liberal/more free market compared to the Guardian (my take). They also make a point of having intelligent dissenting opinions in the paper - so you get to see well reasoned arguments from different sides instead of a battle of talking-heads-who-shout-loudest.

Makes a good reading companion to the Guardian.

fox news

Adding noise to your sample doesn't improve its accuracy.

Well, yes. But this thread was about an attempt to elicit an admission of guilt. Which presumes there is some guilt to admit on your part (you cannot 'admit' something you have done, cf. confess) So, in this hypothetical situation, you are driving in some way illegally e.g. speeding. So, the question still stands. If you are pulled over speeding and do not know why you were pulled over, are you now not liable for driving "without due care an attention".

It of course depends on whether driving without due care and attention is better than knowingly driving over the speed limit.

None of which I claim to know, just curious.

Although, if you answer "No" to that question don't you open yourself up to liability for "driving without due care and attention"?

The only winning move is not to play...

The number of male developers is currently close to the low, at 86%, which might indicate more females are taking up programming.

What else would it indicate?

It's not too bad. Slashdot does look dated these days, though that's up to individual taste whether it's a 'bad thing'.

Anyway, two things jump out:

1. It needs to be adaptive (i.e. fit the window) rather than be fixed width. Slashdot is about the comments and the comments are nested. Nesting means you need width.
2. Drop the sidebar on the story pages - or use an abbreviated one and stack the comments full-width underneath the story and 'sidebar'. Sort of like, well, it is now.
3. I don't really get what is going on at the top of the front page. Are the stories with the images the 'most popular' or just a random selection with images? I typically scan read the stories looking for something that is interesting - hiding the summary behind an image will make me less likely to read not more.

In short I guess: change the design if you like, but keep the layout. It works.

I'm also surprised that you've appear to have opted not to use one of the layout frameworks (e.g. Foundation). Sure you can code it all up yourself but even the bare bones of Foundation would give you a layout the fundamentally 'just works' on different platforms.

You're not adding noise, you're adding data.

Say hello... ...to the slippery slope!

My favourite bit of the linked article...

The upper right area of Gnome Shellâ(TM)s top panel contained four separate items with their corresponding menus used for configuring sound, internet connections, power and user settings. This was bloated, fragmented and space consuming especially in the case of using extensions that need space on the right.

A new status menu that unifies all the above individual settings in one was imperative and we got it on 3.10!

...directly above a screenshot showing the top panel in question - which is 80% empty space.

Seems you can justify anything in UI design if you include the magic words "bloated, fragmented and space consuming" in your rationale.