It's funny how people bitch about the Koch brothers while ignoring the 58 people and groups who spend MORE money to influence politics (the majority of which donate to Democratic Party campaigns).

There's already far too many humans on the planet.

I suggest you remove yourself from the planet, then. That'll leave us one closer to your ideal number of humans...

What? You thought that OTHER humans were the problem? Ahh, I see....

So here we have this commode that uses solar power to burn turds and they want people in developing nations to install and use them while the wealthy in the developed world continue flushing their porcelain thrones with gallons of fresh potable water? Perfect.

Show me one wealthy person who has argued for higher taxes and then hasn't turned around and found ways to not pay them. Hollywood does this all the time and so does Silicon Valley, but they get passes because they tend to support Democrats and tax hypocrisy is accepted among wealthy Democrats. It's classic limousine liberalism: do as I say and not as I do.

Bill Gates is hardly unique in this regard. Many young techies with a leftist bent aspire to "change the world" through various disruptions to and meddling in the lives of others. The difference between them and Bill is merely one of scope and budget. I find it amusing how these people curse the Koch brothers and others who use these methods to stand in the way of "progress" while at the same time cheering those, like Bill Gates, who use the same or similar methods to achieve more ideologically aligned goals.

Those 'other reasons' are pretty simple: Liberal and wealthy societies become complacent due to the ease of their lives, and that makes them neglect the principles and practices that made them powerful and wealthy to begin with.

The default human condition is poverty, misery and violence. Escaping that is rare, and it takes a special society to make wealth, power and security seem normal. Once wealth, power and security are seen as birthrights and not hard-won prizes, the parts of a society that make it special are neglected (because, hey, they're 'mean' and 'hard work'), and rot sets in.

While I'm a bit skeptical of the study after reading TFA, they avoid that particular pitfall and put their money where their mouth is. They conclude that if things don't change, we're looking at about 15 more years before collapse.

And in 15 years, if anyone still remembers this report, they'll say "well, obviously something changed".

Then they'll say "according to our revised model it'll be fifteen years from now".

So, because one thing happened (the Megaupload.com situation) which you think was an injustice (and I am inclined to agree with you, but I have not studied the situation closely enough to be positive that you are) you think it is a good idea to set up control of the Internet so that more countries have the ability to do similar things (and things that are probably even greater infringements of freedom of speech and justice).

Why does a newspaper get protections that I don't? And don't quote "freedom of the press" since that means everyone has the freedom to publish, not that there is some institution called "the press" that gets special freedom.

Will the African elephant be a large enough surrogate mother, or will this baby mammoth have to be delivered premature due to its size. If it's the latter, I'm guessing a pre-planned stay in some animal ICU box?

but why can't Tesla open their own Tesla dealerships? Have the incumbents rigged that too?

Apparently the definition of "dealership" requires that two or more models be sold. Since Tesla only has the one model, they can't open a "dealership".

While I mostly agree with you, it's worth considering that comments have a cost as well. Duplication of the same information between the code and the comments, in particular, increases the maintenance burden and makes it more likely that the code and comments will get out of synch in the future—and one incorrect, misleading comment can outweigh a thousand correct ones. For that reason, comments which fail to add any useful information should be pruned away no matter how accurate they may be.

Exactly! Good code will have comments, in moderation, which tell you things you couldn't get simply by reading the code. Well-chosen names are part of those comments, however, and can be significantly more valuable when used appropriately.

Which would you rather read:

Personally, I'd much rather have the latter version, despite the absence of formal comments. The descriptive names more than make up for the lack.

Duh, it's politics. You define the crisis thereby having the power to engineer an infinite number of solutions. It's a method of empowering over others in the form of perpetual dependency via victimhood.

It requires a quite a bit of time in the spring, while preparing the ground and planting, but not much during the rest of the year. But all this work does not have to be your labor. There is an exemption to the 13th Amendment, which outlawed slavery and indentured servitude: You can still coerce unpaid labor from other people, provided they are your direct descendents, and under the age of 18. You can even use extremely cruel and unusual methods to extract this labor, including turning off the TV, and even unplugging the router, until the tomatoes are picked, sliced, and in the mason jars.

LOL, thank you!!

That, I think, is the best post on Slashdot for the year, the rest of us all might as well pack it up till next year, this one wins hands down!!

:)