Mate, read the logic in what you wrote - how the hell do you bribe someone with something you say they don't want? Having said that I actually agree that most politicians don't care about money, they care about power. Money is a powerful tool but political power trumps it.

TimBL should hang his head in shame - then send his OBE/KBE back to the Queen, like Lennon did.

Fucking gongs. The Brits beg for these baubles, too - like puppies, on their hindmost.

Maybe approving something doom to fail, is a way to get it off your agenda, and cease endless persistent lobbying by media companies.
"Yes. Why don't you start work on the perpetual motion machine - here we've provided you a framework."

Or maybe Tim Berners-Lee is Hitler.

None.

Just the power to distract. It's like stage magic.

True, but if your an honest speculator, it's likely BC's will be dirt cheap in the short term, how badly the exchange rate is hurt in the long term depends on how public this guy's flogging becomes. Silk Road was THE "leading brand" in the online black market, their successful branding campaign was their biggest PR problem, their demise will be noted briefly, the market will return to BAU, if it has not done so already.

I'm all for recreational drugs but the silk road guy has been charged with advertising and paying for a hit on his employee. In this scenario the silk road owner is the alledged "dick-tator" who is ordering the whistle-blower's assassination.

In the Westminster system the same dead locked funding scenario is called a "double dissolution". It's a constitutional trigger for a general election, the theory being that if the government of the day can't get their agenda funded by a hostile senate, then we pick a new government/senate that can at least keep the fucking lights on. What's the point of electing a bunch of public servants if they stubbornly insist on derailing the delivery of public services?

"Caught" would imply that it can't exit the area or phenomenon. In fact it seems to be traveling through the phenomenon. It would be really interesting if its vector chaged, and I thought that was what the headline meant.

Probably a loan guarantee, it's the same thing as military 'aid' to Israel/Egypt, the 'aid' goes directly from the US government to the US arms supplier. The recipient country pays the money back to the US government. If the recipient nation is run by a strategically cooperative dictator then non-payment may be overlooked/forgiven.

Yeah, just keep trashing this place, we don't need it, we will have that 8 billion seat interstellar transport ready any day now. When will space cadets understand that if we can't rebuild the life support system on our current circum-stella spaceship, we can't possibly build a brand one into the boot of your imagined interstellar ship.

Wildlife is thriving because of the lack of humans, the contamination affects their health but nowhere near as much as living amongst humans does. Wildlife also thrives in the Korean DMZ, to them a carpet of land mines is safer than living with humans.

You do realise that in Australia a 1.5% levy on income tax covers the cost of a "free" health system for all Australians (taxpayer or otherwise), our system also has significantly better medical outcomes than the US system. For a family of four that works out to close to 1/10th of what an American pays for similar cover. In fact you guys already pay a similar per-capita amount on health through your taxes. With the better economies of scale you have in the US that should easily be enough to ensure nobody goes bankrupt due to medical expenses (which is the real point of any health insurance scheme). Why the hell do you (or your employer) then need to go and pay another 9X that amount to a private middle man?

Oh, and lets not blame it on the doctor's hourly rates, our home grown doctors still drive around in nice cars and live in the "leafy avenue" part of town.

"Debate club" is an excellent description! We have something unique here that is so far ahead of the game it looks old fashioned. Slashdot is not a "news" site and never has been, if I want to read a good a news site then I will go to the BBC. The slashdot "story" is just a summary of the (alleged) topic up for debate, it points to one or more articles that are already fine examples of traditional news publishing such as the BBC and invites the reader to express and defend their opinion on it.

The new style is like every other mainstream site because it's coming from a long publishing tradition. Things are set into columns, the columns surround by pictures in a way that's both easy to READ and eye-catching. The newspaper tradition does not expect the reader to insert their own comments within their carefully layed out columns.. Slashdot's format begs the reader to WRITE something. At Slashdot the comments are the content, take the focus away from them and it will rapidly devolve into just another link farm..

Put another way, if the active Slashdot commentators liked the traditional feedback formats of newspaper publishers then there would be no reason for Slashdot to exists. Sites like the BBC would keep the eyeballs on their own site. The comment system is Slashdot's "value add", without it, it's toast. Make it look like a traditional comment system that's normally provided by the real news sites and people will just comment directly on the real news site.

There's a reason people like me came here in the late 90's and are still actively commenting, it's not support for Slashdot in the way one supports a football club, it's support for a genuine alternative to the traditional publishing meme. One that has the ability to turn a story into a conversation, which is something I think is desperately needed to counter the undue influence of the incontestable propaganda statements known as "opinion columns" that dominate the MSM, particularly in the US.

Glad you posted directly. We're a hard crowd to please, after a very brief look my main objections are...
1. Use the whole width of the screen. The narrow width gives the individual comments a ridiculously tall aspect ratio which destroys the flow of the thread. The threads need to stick out like dogs balls for an old fart like me to follow them.
2. Get rid of the pictures on the front page or give the option of a list format that reflects the style of the current front page, thumbnails perhaps?.

Like many other loyal fans, the reason I have posted well over 5K comments, a few stories, and the occasional small donation in the past 10+yrs, is the comment system! There are a billion sites where I can post comments at strangers, but other than chat rooms full of sexually frustrated people, this is the only site where I can hold a conversation with them.

Slashdot will never be the "cool kid", but this "new look" is like Sheldon picking out his own suit, even the geeks are shaking their heads in bewilderment.

That's the entire problem for me, it's like a newspaper only printing a single column down the center of the front page, why would you do that?