so palmOS then?

I'll leave this here.

It then became co-opted by Republicans and enough right-wing extremists to drive away most moderates and all right-leaning Democrats.

Or more to the point: It became co-opted and taken over partially by Karl Rove and his cronies and then successfully painted by establishment Republicans and their Democratic peers as an extremist movement. All this because entrenched Republicans and Democrats neither want to be disrupted from their position of power or ousted by outsiders. Government by and for the government.

While third parties have historically done poorly in US elections, given how little functional difference there is between the two ruling parties, we're sorely in need of change.

Although my voter registration says "Republican," I have increasingly less and less respect for most "Republicans," including Karl Rove, Ann Coulter, many of the establishment incumbents, and dozens of others who happen to be as big (or bigger) spenders as their DNC compatriots they rail against. It's like someone else said earlier in the thread: It's not that either party is opposed to regulation, they just can't agree on what needs regulating.

This is probably true. There are extremists on both sides, but I suspect I'm just in a regretfully pessimistic mood. ;)

So... why single out Whole Foods and compare them with creationists?

Because it works, for the most part. It elicits an emotional response in readers who have an irrational hatred for people who happen to ascribe to creationism. Like most "editorialisms," it's a race for the bottom.

If this is the kind of crap Slashdot is going to keep posting, maybe it's time to go elsewhere.

I quit reading Slashdot regularly about a year or two ago for this exact reason and started reading HN instead. Unfortunately, I've noticed that the left-of-center outgassing from Slashdot and elsewhere has caused many of these other sites to express the same symptoms within a short few months. The tech community is, at large, an echo chamber of Leftist ideology and ideologues who suffer from various degrees of disdain, disgust, or hatred for any who holds beliefs that run counter to majority views. Any suggestion that minority opinions may be welcome is a ruse.

Watch my comment for illustrations to this effect; within a few days, it'll likely have replies confirming my suggestions by denigrating common scapegoats for societal ills (the "extreme right," global warming "denialists," religious believers, etc.) painting them as the most vile of scum. Or observe the sibling comment just prior to my posting that illustrates the condescending pretentiousness that is endemic to these discussions.

My motive in leaving Slashdot was the fault of vitriol I observed directed toward those whose comments I've enjoyed over the years (and friended them). It was depressing, to say the least, and reflected poorly on the Slashdot community. So, packing up and leaving for a while seemed the only option. Except that it's inescapable. You cannot go anywhere without encountering this sort of vitriol. Maybe it's the fault of society in its present state, maybe it's the fault of Internet discussion and what behavior it encourages. I don't know.

Fortunately, with the libertarian revival as of late, I've noticed some Slashdot threads improving in balance. Or maybe it's because of how I left my thresholds configured to filter out mostly the people I enjoy (who are still posting, thankfully).

Seriously, it's too abstract and invisible.

I agree. I think that's a tremendous part of it. I think your first statement hit the nail on the head though. Much of it is because people are too complacent or don't understand the implications of a massive surveillance state and the ills that such a monstrosity can bring upon our society. As long as they can eat and watch television, most people don't care what happens outside their own little bubble, and I think that's a damn shame.

If nothing else, it certainly explains why the US political climate is such as it is and why we continue to elect politicians who uphold the status quo, outright refusing to hold anyone accountable with regards to such constitutional violations. It's probably also at least partially to blame as to why our elected officials fail to agree with the assertion that extensive surveillance is a violation of the 4th Amendment (possibly others).

I don't know what the answer is, but I do think that at least a fraction of this responsibility should rest on the necks of the media giants. But it's almost as if they don't care either. Or maybe they're receiving threats/kickbacks to funnel information into the NSA.

Yeah. I'd buy the Taj Mahauler in a heartbeat. Or a small diesel hybrid pickup.

I can't tell if you're trolling or not. I have never held a job where I wasn't doing some kind of programming, and I only was a programmer by job title for about a year and a half. Most of the time I was writing code in C, fortran, and scripting languages to help me with the automatable or problem solving parts of various jobs.

The fact that I grew up peeking and poking the hell out of my early commodore and apple computers certainly helped. I think the paradigm of desktop computer went away from that because in the 80s and 90s the bulk of the workforce had never used a computer and so it became the glorified typewriter, reinforced by the way you worked with the MS and apple machines (ie, no longer was the user interface also the programming interface).

But any of the people (none of whom were programmers) I spent years working with that were doing simulation on Sun and SGI machines quickly learned at the very least c-shell scripting along with grep/sed/awk and then perl so that they could do more of their job and less of the data reduction tasks. There should always be protocol for the area to which you refer, but I'm talking about something else entirely.

The point is that the usefulness of knowing how to program goes far beyond the commercial and corporate software development worlds.

I think the biggest change is that people in many fields will be using programming as a tool in their non-programming job. This is already the case, but it is largely informal. Computers as a job tool for everyone are going to move far beyond the office suite, and kids who don't know how to program are going to be less able to compete and contribute in general.

Unsatisfying blurb on fosters site. A regolith dome over a inflatable original structure. It makes good sense, but the hype should be more about the fact that its a manned moon base. For some reason it reminds me of all the press gherry got for using "aerospace manufacturing techniques" for the skin on the Bilbao Guggenheim and then again for the Disney center. Architecture sucks.

Getting the printer up there is the trick. But perhaps I'll go rtfa ....

Try the spatula hut ... better deals and salespeople who really know their stuff.

You can just wish you had a million wishes and problem solved.