plants grow under the windows...

Only beards grow near Linux

True. False, true, true, true.

It really was about ideas, about building a better future, learning to put aside childish things, all that jazz. But you're also correct that it was never put together very well. This persisted into TNG, and didn't really change until DS9. That show had problems other than production value, though.

Simple cause: Plants don't run Linux ;-)

I'd say yes, it's a bad thing. But then I like commenting on articles occasionally.

You're going to have go into more detail. At the very least:

1. Explain how having to reload the page (Jump to Disqus and then bounce back) going to be positive for the user's experience. I certainly don't see how it would be remotely positive.

2. How is this going to work without the host installing something on their server? As I said, a selling point of Disqus is that it doesn't need anything on the hosts' server at all, just some boiler plate HTML that inserts the Disqus Javascript script.

I don't see your solution as being "How they should have done it all along". It's inefficient, kludgy, and fails the ease-of-installation test.

Well, I actually fit in an Amtrak coach seat (I'm 6'2", which, as I understand it, is ridiculously tall in America, nobody could possibly be that tall, and that's why airline seats are designed for people no more than 4' high, which is presumably normal.)

That's a good reason to begin with.

Also: the ability to get up and walk around, the view out the window, and the fact I can arrive at my destination relaxed. Show me someone who says they're relaxed after a long distance bus or air trip, and I'll show you a liar.

The bankrupt Penn Central was then reconstituted as Amtrak and Conrail

This is poorly worded. What I meant was that Penn Central's assets were divided between Amtrak, and Conrail, the latter being a new government corporation specifically created to take over the bankrupt entity's assets. Amtrak, of course (as should have been obvious from what I'd written earlier) already existed.

Historical accident, not politics. The NEC is the only part of the national rail system Amtrak actually owns.

Amtrak exists because a giant railroad company that operated most trackage in the North East called Penn Central was going bankrupt. In the early seventies it went to Nixon and said, essentially "We might survive if we can get rid of passenger service. which costs lots of money and isn't covering its costs for us. Hey, whatsay we make passenger service a government program, and then you guys can screw it up even more and close it down after two years? Then we can sell all the track we no longer need, cover our debts, and just do nice profitable freight in future."

(You probably think I'm doing a dig at Amtrak there with the "government program" and "screw it up" bit, but actually, that really was the plan. I'm not kidding. A few years after Amtrak's creation, Louis W. Menk, the then chair of the Burlington Northern, actually blurted it out in public, saying that the government was making a mess of screwing it up. Look it up.)

So, anywho, the other railroads were also invited to join, as most (but not all) were having similar problems. Amtrak was formed. Penn Central went bust anyway.

The bankrupt Penn Central was then reconstituted as Amtrak and Conrail. Amtrak got the NEC. Conrail got the rest. Conrail became amazingly profitable, was privatized, and finally split between CSX and NS. Amtrak has finally gotten the NEC to be profitable over the last few years, though the rest of its passenger service is still technically "loss making". But the non-NEC services suffer from not being under its control. It can't run Acela Express services on CSX tracks, for example, because it would need massive upgrades to lines that Amtrak would barely benefit from.

Please do mod me troll, when I provide citations. That's the best kind of trollmod, the kind that's probably metamodded against your favor. It also handily vindicates my statements. Are you getting paid for this moderation, or are you providing it as a free service?

Most people, even most slashdotters, are not really qualified to evaluate the evidence. We can look at it and listen to what people tell us and then react, but without experience and/or education in the field, at some point there is an element of faith involved. However, that faith is alternately in people or "the system", in this case the system of peer review. You can have faith that over time bad theories will be invalidated. A belief can as well be based on evidence as hearsay.

I believe in the validity of the scientific process because I can witness its benefits, not because I understand everything. It's still not a religion, of course, but it is a system of belief.

People believe in whatever because some scientist told them to. And what's wrong with that? If you want to know about science, ask a scientist. If I want to know about plumbing, I'll ask a plumber.

Who are you, and why should we care what you think?

The total paved land is only a small slice. You're talking about a false dichotomy. Also, you're way off on the potential effects of cities on albedo:

See the link for more information, with citations. The truth is that cities can be constructed such that they have lower albedo than forests! The earth needs a certain amount of vegetation for homeostasis, insofar as that is even possible. How it is distributed is also highly relevant. But cities are not inherently heat producers. In fact, since they enable higher efficiencies, they can actually reduce anthropocentric warming.

The real problem is the more general deforestation. While approximately as much area is forested as during native American occupation by some accounts, the overall biomass is much less, as the trees are smaller. Some species, notably including Sequoia Sempervirens, grow faster and thus fix more CO2 when they are larger. Old growth redwood once covered the entire West Coast from below Point Sur well into Canada. The scruffy mixed forests planted behind the logging do not fulfill the same function as the elder forests which preceded them in basically any way.

You do NOT want to be the enemy of the executives.

Pretend you are like a super-hero, maybe LinuxMan, EmacsMan, LambdaMan, etc.

During the day you are Windows Kent, but at night you put on your EmacsMan suit and save the day from the unsuspecting clueless minions below you without thanks or recognition except for a handful of fans who realize you have kept Joker Ballmer from ruling the entire world.

Nonsense. Everyone has an agenda. It's just that some men want to see the world burn, and some men don't. And of course, some men don't give a shit.

Provides governments with backdoor access to your supposedly encrypted data? Check.