There's a whole solar system full of resources to utilise and SPACE to EXPAND since we hate the idea of state regulated birth control>

Even with multiple space elevators, you can't move more people off the planet than are being born on it at any given moment. Expansion into space is not a realistic solution for overpopulation.

You also present a false dichotomy between space colonization and extinction somewhere in the short term. Instead of expanding into space, a quite possible future for sentient races is to move into a virtual reality. Merged with machines and living underground, the human race could withstand catastrophic asteroid strikes and last until the sun expands to a red giant. Voluntary extinction may even be a possibility at some point after the human races has transcended biology. Your fanatical dreams of immortality and exploration of the universe are not the way it has to be.

I'm wondering why it is that the old "Soviet Bloc" countries produce so many hackers/scammers/malware authors?

A culture that valued intellectual pursuits probably helped. That culture has largely dried up when it comes to other pursuits like chess or poetry, but being interested in computers doesn't result in the same categorization as a nerd as in some other countries.

Couldn't these people use their - considerable - coding skills to do something constructive? Like starting a software or IT services company?

There are in fact an enormous number of legitimate software businesses in Russia, which the Slashdot crowd seems largely unaware of. However, not everyone feels that they have the savvy of starting a formal business, which involves navigating bureaucracy and in some regions brings one up against bribe-expecting officials. Crime just seems easier to some set of people.

Surely these people wouldn't want their own systems compromised by malicious software? So why do it to others?

If the Golden Rule were really common sense, we wouldn't have to be reminded of it by every religious teacher or moral philosopher that has come along in history.

Might be better to say "kudos to the publisher for following Baen's lead and not using DRM". Do keep in mind that Baen's ebooks have NEVER had DRM.

No one except the lamest of anoraks gives a shit about Baen. That publisher put out some of the pulpiest and forgettable writing in the business.

Tor, on the other hand, is a big deal because it has put out or reissued through its Orb line some science fiction works which truly belong in the general canon of English literature.

The problem is that you keep going the same places that everybody else goes. There is no "Lonely Planet Effect" is Madagascar.

Lonely Planet has published for six editions now a guide for Madagascar, and even if that island nation draws fewer tourists than some other countries, I've no doubt that that the specific lodgings recommended in the guide are now patronized by a steady stream of LP-toting backpackers -- and the proprietors have jacked up the prices once they've noticed that they've a guaranteed source of customers.

I only see people taking shots at inconsistent christianity - the ones that forgot not to judge others ... and nothing to do with the love of Jesus.

You've read the life of Jesus and you think you have his teachings figured out. But a text (not just the Bible, or the Qu'ran or the Bhagavad Gita, but in fact any written representation of human language) is meaningless in itself due to l'arbitraire du signe, and when you are looking at it two thousand years removed, the danger of an interpretation that departs from the original meaning is quite high. Since a text will inevitably be accompanied by an interpretation, a continual tradition of interpretation carries more weight than someone in 2012 picking quotes out of any context.

So your best argument here is it is bad because it is a tradition (i,e. some other people said it is).

The majority of Christians worldwide believe that Tradition is something endowed by the Holy Spirit, not just something that people say. (Now, you might not believe in a Holy Spirit, but in that case, why do you bother citing Jesus's teachings? That man did speak of such a thing.)

Slavery used to be a tradition like homophobia too you know.

While the Church condoned slavery, it was never a matter of Holy Tradition. There is no canon that obliges men to hold slaves, and manumission was looked on as a righteous thing. It is not at all comparable to the restrictions placed on sexual behaviour.

Your bible does not say homosexuality is a sin.

For the majority of the world's Christians, the Bible is not the sole authority. If something is not expressly condemned in Scripture, it may be condemned by Tradition, and indeed it has been consistently for two millennia.

The people here who want to take shots at Christianity seem to think that American Fundamentalists with their sola Scriptura principle are especially representative of global Christianity, but "It's not in the Bible!" isn't much of an argument for tolerating homosexual behaviour outside of that subset.

Did you kknow marriage wasn't a religious sacrement in Christianity before the 1700s?

Wrong. If marriage wasn't a sacrament before the 1700s, then Martin Luther couldn't have rejected it as a sacrament nearly two centuries earlier. Are you unaware of this debate among the first Protestants? Anyway, as it happens, liturgical texts for marriage as a sacrament go back to the early Byzantine era (mid-first millennium).

Ladies and gentlemen, it's roman_mir, turning any Slashdot news post into a soapbox for his libertarian hobby-horse since 200X (or whenever exactly UIDs were in the low six digits).

I myself don't put a ton of faith in ANY organization that might have an agenda in making a "reveal" like this whatsoever, especially a religious one.

Hebrew University is a secular insitution.

These Belgian swine aren't legally permitted to charge children to BORROW these same books from the library and read them THEMSELVES

I don't know about Belgium, but in many European countries libraries pay an annual fee to copyright holders to partly compensate them for perceived lost sales. Also, some European cities don't have the concept of free public libraries, and some kind of annual membership fee is required. Thus, even if the children aren't paying anything, their parents are.

By the way, on Slashdot you can use the bold and italic HTML tags for the sake of emphasis, not need to write in caps which looks like SHOUTING.