Your comment gave me cancer. Also, are you allergic to Reddit?

Video? All I see is a big yellow box with a little circle and a blue "f" in the middle. That's why I prefer reading articles to videos.

To a certain degree, the downside is that this can lead to a big old circlejerk (also-known-as groupthink - also-known-as, colloquially from the pleasant times of 1930's-40's Germany; zeitgeist).

But by-and-large, I have been on slashdot from before the moderation system. I remember the debates. I didn't agree with the reasons for moderation. But after CmdrTaco made those changes, things did get better, and I really do agree that peer moderation, though not perfect, is the best way to deal with fanbois and trolls. (and ESPECIALLY astroturfing - which has been a HUGE problem, here on slashdot, historically).

yes - this is a real issue - and ARCHIVED data that is important DOES need to be "spun up" and refreshed to new media.

If it's hard drives, yes. If it's optical media. . . well that depends. Because some optical media just plain degrades over time. Some is written in special proprietary formats (like Apple's early implementations of CD+R) that you're going to have a hard time reading with CURRENT equipment.

If your data is archived to tape, and more than 10 years old, I'm afraid you're fucked.

. . . IMO - it's almost certainly the book/teacher.

True; but STILL . . . I went for a few years coding without really having much of a need for math beyond Algebra. Then I started getting into some interesting projects. I had to force myself to learn calculus. (realizing that: - a lot of basic calculus is already embodied in programming structures - it's just expressed differently in mathematics. Already having a background in programming gave me an insight to calculus that made it a LOT easier to understand, than when I struggled with pre-calc in High School).

nor do they really have the power to do jack didlysquat about it if they DID care. Really.

. . . well, to be fair, the same contingent of "geniuses" took us to war in Iraq based on a "1% chance" that Saddam Hussein had WMD. . .

Economists didn't give us good "costs and benefits" to changing taxation policies with the Bush tax cuts for the wealthy, and deregulation of the economy. We got vague platitudes about things like 17% annual growth, and creation of 4 million jobs per quarter (which was later, quietly revised down to something like 100,000).

These policy changes never achieved anything near that, and, in fact, collapsed the fucking economy.

And yet, nobody holds "Austrian" Economists to this same high standard of proof for their whack-a-doodle theories. And when it comes to the idea that investing in sound management of industrial emissions and natural resources - we hear the same claims from these fortune-tellers, that doing so will "ruin the economy". IMNSHO - that's evidence that we should do exactly the opposite of what the Economists say.

If you have insurance you pay the medical expenses for smokers, alcoholics or drug users . . . who are presumably WORKING, and on an employer-provided plan.

It's the NON-WORKING drug-users that I have a problem with. Gee, I wish I had the luxury to sit around all day, play video games, smoke crack, and have someone else work their ass off to pay for it.

. . . well, the first practical applications of industrial manufacturing, and computers, have been war and genocide. I don't expect THAT to change.

. . . . standing in VERY long lines. . .

exactly.

I'm upset that I'm in my 40's and can't have what my parents had - (including a secure retirement) - despite their lack of college education. Yes, this IS a fucking depression, and despite a localized, brief illusion of recovery, things are, long-term, on the down trend. We will likely have a pretty nice spring and summer (jobs and energy-price wise) - but the drought is continuing, and harvest will be bad, food prices will continue to climb (globally), and the EU financial situation is continuing to spiral downwards. Confidence in our financial institutions is not improving. It's likely that after around October, we're going to see some more signs of another downward change in direction in the global economy, which will continue to put the brakes on the US economy, no matter how much more austerity we continue to apply.

I don't expect this much class from Ellison. I really don't.

I may be paraphrasing Nathan Explosion here, but we're all facing mortality. Most of us are just in denial about it - most of the time.