You're right about my error with the definition and I'm no physician so I'll defer. But it was certainly a death sentence in my family. Still, if survival is possible I wouldn't wish death on anyone who suffers from it to prove my point.

It was bad. He became dependent on prednisone and inhalers to breath. And, well, if you've ever seen bloating and weight gain from prednisone you'd know what he went through. And the prednisone caused secondary infections from impaired immune function. He was dependent on an oxygen concentrator, which required bottled oxygen to be available in the event of a power failure. And a trip to the ER if the bottle emptied.

He described COPD as like downing in slow motion.

Any doc whose seen this before would know the story.

Anyway, of course, none of this I'd wish on Nimoy or anyone else.

http://wallstreetonparade.com/...

If you work for 50 years and receive the typical long-term return of 7 percent on your 401(k) plan and your fees are 2 percent, almost two-thirds of your account will go to Wall Street. This was the bombshell dropped by Frontline’s Martin Smith in this Tuesday evening’s PBS program, The Retirement Gamble.

This is not so much a gamble as a certainty: under a 2 percent 401(k) fee structure, almost two-thirds of your working life will go toward paying obscene compensation to Wall Street; a little over one-third will benefit your family – and that’s before paying taxes on withdrawals to Uncle Sam.

Documentary here:

http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/...

Here's someone else who made many similar points to what I posted:

http://www.forbes.com/sites/he...

First, any employee who leaves IBM’s employment prior to December 15 for any reason other than a formal retirement will not receive any company match to his or her own 401(k) contributions for the entire year. Nada. IBM executives could fire someone on December 14 and the company would not have to pay out.

Second, all employees lose an entire year of the IBM match working for them in the investment sense. ...

As for 'harassment' I think you made the point for me:

In terms of dissuading potential employees, it's pretty clear at this point IBM has stopped caring about hiring *new* talent. In fact, their overall strategy could just as likely be about making people *want* to quit because that's cheaper than laying them off.

What conduct in the workplace constitutes 'making people want to quit'?

Allow me to point you back to my comment here:

http://slashdot.org/comments.p...

There are some who argue that the 401k is a bad investment option.

http://www.fa-mag.com/news/the...

But note that by only disbursing matching funds on December 15th, IBM twists the arms of its employees to plan separation from the company at the most difficult time of transition. Right during the holidays and then a dead point for hiring in mid winter. They also incentivize employee harassment and unfair terminations prior to Dec 15th in order to cut costs by keeping what would have been 401k disbursements. And of course the funds are kept in an interest bearing or investment account controlled by the firm for a year, meaning those gains are lost to the employee.

I'd call that a terrible policy and one that any potential employee should carefully consider. Not only does it represent lost potential 401K gains, but much worse, it's an indication of how poorly management at the firm views its employees. Real 'company store' type stuff.

Yeah. OK. So what's wrong with what they want to do?

TFA says he has COPD - Cardio Obstructive Pulmonary Disorder. This is essentially emphysema and congestive heart failure. The disease is terminal. My father died from this disorder, so I've seen it personally. Not a nice way to go (not that any of them are).

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/C...

Still, Nimoy said that he'd quit smoking thirty years ago. While it's possible the smoking is a contributory factor, COPD is also commonly diagnosed in those who've never smoked. And Nimoy is an old man.

Of course I wish him well and hope he is cared for by the best doctors available.

The new boss not same as the old boss then.

All I see is some buggy software and a few too many PR releases. From where I stand, things really aren't that bad.

I have fond memories of Slashdot.

The new software is a little borked and needs some fixing. But this community outrage is a bit overblown. I mean, you'd think it's Paris and the French had just lost the World Cup or something. The Bastille opened and tourists imprisoned, cars burning everywhere, lithe blond queens frogmarched up to the guillotine, French men drinking Portuguese wine.

It's bad here. Real 'Reign of Terror' like.

We aren't going to be here between the 10th and the 17th.

That's the Week of Slashcott.

We *are* the users, and we're fighting for ourselves (and, believe it or not, you, as well)

Hey, it's awesome and all that the two of yous has worked out who's doing the fight'n for who. And I respect the collegiality of this Slashcott effort. You know, posting informative manifestos in places likely to be seen, again and again and again. And that productive organizing of community labor, yous know - boycott and strike proposals that seem perfectly suited to fixing a borked software release and everything. It's like Tron went Bolshevik at the Main Bus so afterward we'd all be free to turn the Great System off and bask in collective darkness. Real inspiring.

FREEEEEEEDOM!

But, uh, anyway. Could you do me a favor and not do that fighting for me? I'd rather you did it for someone else. I was thinking I'd skip the boycott for now. Because as much as I agree that the new beta needs some fix'n, I'm not ready to raise a pitchfork, raze the sandcastle, and laze'r up Alderaan down into bits over a few bugs and a bit of bad design. The tech world won't end if Dice rolls out a fucked up slashcode release.

Evil Somali warlards won't cry in their morning applejax.

Don Corleone won't make a bitcoin deal you can't refuse and build a toll booth across the Silk Road.

Dice employees won't twirl their greased up mustaches and laugh maniacally as slashdolts frankly press "preview" over and over again all for nothing.

Or maybe they will. Mwahahahahaaaaa!!!

Na. It's a sleazy marketing trick. 'Innovative gameplay' in this context is a phrase to be combined with 'conflict of interest'.

Hey,

it's a good thing to have an editor respond directly in the comments rather than with prewritten PR. So thanks for stepping out into the rotten vegetable pelting. It sucks. But it's for the best. Many more out here aren't throwing and have cupped their ears to listen instead. And from my perspective, this kind of dialog is what I'd like to hear.

There are some bugs to squash with beta commenting. I'm sure you're aware of that. And like many I think the layout and font selection could use some work. But there's been an abusive overreaction here by some members of the community and I'm sure it's no fun to stand in your shoes right now.

I want to offer some encouragement and to let you know that some of us support the goal of a software upgrade. Yet many of these complaints are valid. So sift out the wheat from the chaff and focus on actionable feedback to get it right. And don't let personal annoyance with overwrought temper tantrums get in the way of doing your job. A lot of people complain, but the fact is that this site still draws a large readership after many successful years. In the long run it's easy to fail. So you guys are doing something right.

Get past this shit and point your guns at /r/technology. There are whole plains full of profit out there in Redditland waiting to be claimed. Competition is good.

The UK doesn't seem to give a toss about its obligations as an EU member, but giving complete police access to medical records without court order appears to violate EU privacy guidelines. Never mind all reasonable expectations of privacy. Here's a telegraph article which suggests that the NHS policy violates EU guidelines and could lead to a ban. That the UK would likely ignore.

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/hea...

Honestly, there are places where national health care systems really do work. But man does the USA/UK alliance do their best to confirm every libertarian paranoid fear about rogue government abusing private data in publicly held records. What a mess.

Well of course you agree with me. My UID # is lower than yours. It's axiomatic.

LOL. Have you seen those complaints that the new system doesn't display UID numbers? Now there's a decision /. beta devs made I agree with.

Sandwich Geeks is going through a rev 4 rewrite. Much earlier opening, rearranged story line, slower build up, less backstory more frontstory.

Belated happy new year dude!

I'm going to defend the current state of that beta. It's shit. I'd be hard pressed to believe that even editors and owners don't realize the problems. And that they continue toting a ridiculous public line in opposition to obvious reality is simply an expected part of playing their public relations game. They can't speak truth. To do so would harm a set of internal and external business procedures entirely orthogonal to truth-telling.

Look, they've got all these sunk costs dumped into this ongoing project. It's turned into a debacle. Corporate owners don't want to write it off as a loss and editors are skipping around and around a ring of chairs, conspicuously short at least one spot for all. Who gets the boot when the music stops playing? That's what they're thinking.

We've all been there. A project goes sour and fingers point every which way and the first person to stand up and point at an actual problem which doesn't involve laying blame but work implementing a viable solution gets his finger chopped off and then a pink slip in interoffice mail.

So you propose more community yelling in the hope that leaders on the inside won't buy better earplugs. But they have every incentive to ignore the community. From personal at the job level to corporate at the image level. Ironically, everyone walking lockstep over a cliff is an easier sell than trying to convince one to rush over and jump for the good of all.

The old slashcode was OSS. I'm guessing this new stuff isn't. But maybe opening it up and soliciting community involvement might be a way out of this impasse. Might be a hard sell to the pointey-heads though.