In the US I don't think most workers have much of a choice of being in a union unless they start their own. For example, if I wanted to work at Vons (a grocery store) because they were hiring, I could either join the union or not take the job. Same for teachers and auto workers. And in this economy employment>politics for a lot of people.

Yes, but if you don't have any hard timelines you end up with Duke Nukem Forever.

My wife is a food+drug union worker in California. The positive side is we have excellent healthcare benefits. The negative side is it breeds incompetence/laziness? on all levels, from the union down. If you've ever dealt with a troublesome HMO, just wait until you deal with a union, if you can even get a hold of anyone that knows what they are doing within it. In addition, since it is quite hard to get fired most of the employees take advantage of it. The customer service difference between Safeway (union) and Trader Joes (non-union) is astronomical, and Trader Joes even pays more than union wages.

I'm not anti-union in general (I did mention great healthcare benefits), but they definitely have consequences.

I use outlook and I never see spam and I don't get false positives. That doesn't mean the spam problem is solved but at least my time isn't wasted (just bandwidth).

1. A browser is a browser. Yes, that is just as retarded as what you said.

2. You obviously don't use windows. That's fine, but firefox is quite happy to let programs hijack your computer as well (the infamous windows xp antivirus exploit).

3. You do if you want any sort of protection from drive-by-advertising exploits such the exploit mentioned above. Adblock helps but I've still had things go through that noscript blocks.

4+5. Makes no difference to the end user. No one switches to firefox because of better web compliance.

Wow, big surprise, security company creates an exploit for money. That doesn't change the fact that the current 0 day doesn't affect IE8 on windows 7. Exploits are found and patched all the time in firefox, safari, and chrome. Hell in the Pwn2Own contests safari is always first to be cracked, Chrome currently has an unpatched critical vulnerability (secunia), and firefox actually has been doing quite well but still really requires noscript to be safe which cripples browsing the internet.

You clearly haven't used IE in years, or you are just trolling. IE8 handles tabs much better than Chrome or Firefox, and unlike firefox IE is sandboxed (this exploit doesn't affect ie8 in win7), to get similar functionality in firefox you have to install noscript and individually handle every single new website you go to. The problem with IE isn't its compliance to standards or acid tests (no one cares except web developers) it is that its snail slow. The UI is atrocious but firefox really isn't any better. So I'm not accused of astroturfing my main browser is firefox (it used to be chrome, but I got tired of the horrible bookmark system).

There are ~309 million people in the US. Did they really think they were going to get ~80% of the entire US population to get the swine flu vaccine? Somebody definitely got kickbacks.

I know this but how good is it at recognizing and interpreting handwriting? I sound like I'm astroturfing but windows 7 actually does a good job with this.

As a tablet user myself who also likes mac products, I would probably skip the first couple of generations of mac tablets anyways. For instance, MS has learned through several OSes how to do handwriting recognition and now it actually works very well in windows 7, and I'm skeptical Apple is going to get that right the first time. I'm sure the UI will be better and they will have some nifty features compared to PCs, but the heart of a tablet is handwriting recognition.

People say "$60 for a new roster", not realizing that accurate portrayal of the players and stats is probably the #2 reason people buy these games. I don't play sports games since NFL blitz, but if I was going to buy NCAA 10 I would want my school's players and stats to be represented, otherwise why even bother, just make a robot space football game.

I know sports is antithetical to most slashdotters but a lot of people into sports enjoy the stats, enough so that a lot of them are into fantasy football. While I'm sure they could put out a roster update for $20 they seem to get enough people who are perfectly willing to spend $60

In order to demonstrate what you say to be false, there only needs to be one supplement that is medically effective that isn't used by MDs. Eat a bundle of dandelion greens and tell me it isn't a diuretic. I understand placebos, you're just stubborn and ignorant if you think the only effective medicines are pharmaceutical pills.

1. Insomnia
2. Depression
3. Anxiety
4. Bowel disorders
5. Insulin resistance (pre-diabetes)

Those are conditions off the top of my head where alternative medicine not only has effective treatments, but the treatments are often better for you than conventional medicine. Calling anything non-pharmaceutical as "non-medicine" is disingenuous at best, and shows you have done absolutely no research on the matter.

Perhaps there is a middle ground between 20 minutes of silence and MTV NEWSBLAST? What about insightful commentary about the mission, what it means/significance/future projects that involve the mission, or was this already included?

I just graduated medical school, so I have at least some authority on the subject, but I plead with people to go to the doctor at least every 3-5 years even if you never get sick. If you have even a halfway competent family doctor he will know what tests and exams to perform so that he can detect things that when things get serious, it isn't too late. For example, if you wait until you pass out from a diabetic coma, you're already well into diabetes, where instead if you have some minor symptoms and are found to have insulin resistance you can make some dietary changes so that you never have diabetes. If you have moderately elevated high blood pressure (but don't know about it because you never went to the doctor) you are putting undue stress on your organs. There are dozens of similar problems that most people shrug off as nothing but when taken together can point to a potential serious problem or complication.

However, like the poster below mentioned, if you have the common cold or even influenza just stay home so you don't infect everyone you come into contact with. The likelihood that you will come and see me in time for tamiflu to do anything is pretty small, and I'm not really convinced it makes much difference anyways.