Slashdot videos: Now with more Slashdot!

No, it is not a good idea. USA citizenship is an albatross around your neck at this point, given where the USA economy is going and what the USA tax system is like. It makes much more sense to start learning Mandarin at this point and figuring out how to get citizenship of Singapore instead.

Yes. They don't lose anything by becoming citizens (there are tax issues but they are pretty minor), and being a US citizen has a lot of advantages, like the support of US consulate services.

I'm a dual citizen (born American, obtained British citizenship while I lived there), and while my default position would be "you should grant them US citizenship as that opens up more options to them if they ever want to live in the US" (and despite the many issues, there are still good reasons to want to live here for many people), it should be said that the tax bullshit really is onerous, and renunciation would be expensive. It is like the US congress has built a financial Berlin wall around the country ... sure, you're free to leave, if you can pay up (and pay for expensive tax preparers who specialize in filing US taxes for expats, as the forms are by no means easy), but good luck ever getting out from under our thumb.

It's not an easy question to answer, and as someone else suggested, I would involve your 16 or 17-year old child in the decision beforehand, with good financial and legal advice on the implications pro and con. Weighing the option of living here vs. the never-ending IRS headaches of living abroad--that's a tough one.

Interesting. I guess I just don't hear enough about Quebec to have been exposed to the word before.

It still sounds weird to me, though (as an English-speaking American). I'm surprised it isn't something more like "Quebecan" instead.

Now ... imagine that there were at least three stories a day about people being killed by malfunctioning Toyotas and then we found out that Toyota was using its onboard electronics to record everything everybody who rides in them is saying, to be used against them in the future, and remotely detonating a few of them every few days. Most people still get from point A to point B, but still a bunch of people are getting killed because they own a Toyota.

A car analogy, eh? Alright then, try this one on for size:

Let's pretend the company in your analogy were Mitsubishi instead of Toyota. Mitsubishi is a huge conglomerate that makes bunches of different things; automobile manufacturing is only about 10% (by revenue) of what it does.

We'll continue to imagine that Mitsubishi Automotive is still doing all the nefarious things listed above -- being really, really pissed off at Mitsubishi Automotive would still be perfectly valid.

There's also a division of Mitsubishi that makes pharmaceuticals (Kyowa Kirin). Let's imagine for a moment that Kyowa Kirin does something really great -- maybe it makes revolutionary vaccines that cure all the worst diseases, and then distributes them worldwide for free, for example.

Would you also be justified in being pissed off at Kyowa Kirin for Mitsubishi Automotive's actions, even though Kyowa Kirin had no control over them and the work it was doing itself was valuable, just because they had the same corporate ownership? Of course not!

And condemning the FCC just because the US Marshals fucked up makes just as little sense.

Right, and when it comes to power generation deaths are the only metric that matters.

Well, don't keep us in suspense: what are these important metrics we should sacrifice human lives to improve?

Uhhhh, setting the coal on fire doesn't exactly render the region uninhabitable for generations to come. When the fire goes out, it's habitable again.

In 250 years, possibly more. After which you get to wait for the ground to return to normal again.

The engineers should have put the brakes to any construction efforts taking place in those locations, based on that fact alone.

They can't. The spirit of the organization employing them does not let them. Their role is to implement the decisions of the leadership and rationalize them. Conforming to their role earns them social capital, and going against costs it. And they can't possibly earn that capital fast enough to pay for keeping a plant blocked for long.

We support the government when it acts in the interest of the public, and oppose it when it acts against the interest of the public. Is that really so goddamn hard to understand?!

If you appear fit and nothing can be found wrong yet minimal exercise causes pounding heart and shortness of breath -- get your thyroid checked. Hypothyroidism can cause low blood sugar that's only evident during exercise.

Considering how many of the damn things there are in syndication, that sounds like a recipe for alcohol poisoning.

I liked netforce series a lot. It was a cool idea of what-might-be and I really hope it materializes. The way I understood VR simulaitons is they were just UI, the semi-inteligent software was doing work. But instead of staring at a console as we do, he got to play interactive 'game'. Which is kinda cool when you think about it.

Remember that scene from Jurassic Park where the little girl said "It's a UNIX system! I know this!" and proceeded to ssslloooowwwlllyyy fix the system using FSN instead of a reasonable interface? That's how that VR shit would turn out if you actually tried to do it.

Having a computer is all about being able to use the right tool for the job... and VR is very rarely the right tool.

Brilliant! Because you chose to make that particular analogy, nobody can refute your argument without being attacked by feminists regardless of how poor an analogy it is.

That is only true if the EPA is relying on faulty science that cannot survive the scientific method.

Science is not "faulty" just because its hypotheses are difficult to test or take a long time to test... but opponents of regulation would argue it is (and courts, being made of lawyers instead of scientists, would treat such claims as plausible). That's the problem!

These bills are about subverting the scientific method into a political excuse to destroy all environmental regulations -- period.

You'll have a hard time proving in a court that you made a reasonable attempt to pay.

Theft is a criminal offense, so the burden is on the prosecution to prove that you failed to make a reasonable attempt to pay. And there's nothing stopping the defense from simply putting the waiter on the witness stand and asking "did the defendant attempt to give you cash in payment?" Unless said waiter perjures himself, I have a hard time seeing how the alleged-thief could possibly be found guilty.

Coal with CCS is about the same price.

CCS - Carbon Capture and Sequestration? I wonder if you could drive the price down by keeping the carbon dioxide gaseous and feeding it to nearby greenhouses - possibly through a simple pipe. Heck, if you used the greenhouse products as biofuel in the plant you could create a completely closed loop :).