That an articulate and measured comment like this is modded flamebait is a true indictment of how out of control Slashdot groupthink has become. I wish I had mod points.

I am not sure about the intricacies of their arguments, but perhaps they are right? I do not mean to say that there are not clearly established patterns of scientific knowledge, but perhaps there is a God who has an active role in the guidance of evolution. I realize this is contrary to Slashdot groupthink and expect to get modded down, but I thought I should say something.

Until the day someone invents Star Trek replicators, giving people the bare necessities with incentives to work doesn't work. Someone will have to work to provide the tax dollars we're going to divert to those who are on the basic allowance, eventually we would have a very small number of the population supporting the majority. The people who are working are going to get angry at being the only ones working while every one else stays at home and lives a happy fulfilling life.

The truth is that we have the technology now; replicators are not needed. The number of people involved in actually providing the food harvest is minimal and will only be reduced as technology improves. The key is for the general population to have an ownership stake in the very technology used to eliminate their jobs. An excellent (and extremely prescient) book from 1976, People's Capitalism, suggests that a National Mutual Fund be established to invest in beneficial technology. I highly suggest you read it as it goes in to far more detail than I can in a Slashdot comment. It is available online at www.peoplescapitalism.org

There will still be jobs that need to be done, particularly in the fields of health and construction. These jobs will provide a way to earn more income. Other ways of earning extra income will include artistic endeavors such as handcrafted household items, music and restaurant work. Prizes can be offered for creative solutions to pressing societal problems. The important thing is that without narrowing choices down to work full-time (or even overtime) for a living or die hungry in the streets, a great deal of make-work jobs that do nothing for society (and often even negatively impact society) will be eliminated. This is not science fiction. This can happen within our lifetimes. Read up and spread the word :)

I think you're right. A big reason we have seen such an explosion among electrical devices and personal communications is because of general standardizing in the industry; as long as certain specs and tolerances are made,and the commonly defined patterns of operation are met, you can make equipment. Sure, you may have to pay licensing fees for the patent pool but that is a cost of doing business passed on as a portion of the final price. If the licensing fees are onerous, that encourages competition for alternative approaches, including using older technology that has fallen out of patent protection that works just fine for the task at hand. Perhaps votes could be delegated to trusted experts given the assignee has demonstrated a sufficient knowledge in a subject matter. It will be interesting to see how this develops; I suppose even more interesting to participate in the development . . .

This is why the Basic Income Guarantee is bound to gain traction. Buckminster Fuller advocated us humans operate on the principle of solar income. I feel that eventually people will wake up and realize that technology should liberate us to pursue athletic, artistic and scientific endeavors. Or we could just fall in to the trap of neverending economic warfare. Choose one.

Chatanooga has 30 mbps service for less than 60 bucks. Yet they are a small town on mountainous terrain

You have to be 35 to be president. The age requirement for the Senate is 30 and the House of Representatives is 25.While I agree that representatives who are stuck in the past should be voted out of office, having an age limit is probably counterproductive. There are many progressive seniors and many youngsters cling to antiquated notions about how the world works.

my .02

awesome! no mods now . . . .

That worked out well for Rome, didn't it?

what would be nice is a tablet that can be placed in a dock. the dock could have connections to a keyboard and mouse, maybe a port for an external monitor. i would buy this if the price is reasonable. a handy big iphone for browsing the web, playing games, taking notes and watching movies on the go; a regular computer at home. someone should make this . . .

I'm sorry, but the one of the principle reasons Europeans are generally opposed to war is the fact that the continent has been engulfed in numerous wars for nearly 2000 years, culminating in WWII. I'm generally opposed to war and American to boot. Most wars fought on this planet have had their roots in Europe. I wouldn't have replied if you hadn't sounded so smug. (Of course maybe you're Swiss)

But is that really clear enough? :-P

Bolgnium?

Really, the best way is with a text editor. Dreamweaver is a pretty good program but it can't compete with a basic text editor (with tabs and the ability to save to FTP.) Most of the work is tweaking the CSS, although you will probably need to modify some other PHP files if you plan on doing extensive changes. With Firebug you can modify CSS and see the changes in real time. There are so many different styles of themes that you can save yourself a lot of work modifying an existing setup you like (three column, magazine, corporate, 2.0ish, etc.) BTW, this works for Wordpress too.

As far as intially designing mockups of what you want the site to look like, that's what Photoshop is for ;) Been doing this for years and I couldn't agree more.

in the future, people will be elected with the accumulation of karma points on web forums! (only half joking ;)