The actual verbiage is new, to make it explicitly clear that what MS was threatening would violate the standard, but it was clear from very early in the working group's collaboration that the DNT signal is required to signify the user's preference. When MS decided to chose for the user, they violated decisions that were already consensus within the working group.

That is not all that a strict no-data-collection policy (such as some that are under consideration in the DNT WG) would do. If they aren't careful, they could prevent "frequency capping", the practice whereby each user will only be shown each ad a limited number of times. The advertiser who pays for 1 million ad impressions doesn't want to hit 1,000 users 1,000 times. They want to hit at least 100,000 users no more than 10 times each. In order for an ad network to honor that kind of contract, it needs some way to know when the same person (or browser-instance, anyway) comes back to their site for an ad. They aren't compiling your personal information; they just need to not show you the same ad too many times.

No, the reason that the Greens aren't polling well is not because they cannot get media coverage. The reason is because their natural constituency (of which I am one) is smart enough to know that "Nadering" Obama and ending-up with Romney is not in our best interests. I would rather have the Greens in charge, but that is not an option; a liberal voting for the Green Party is a vote for Romney.

Sadly, while there used to be Republicans like that, there are few left. Partly, the reasonable ones fled their party in disgust when nutjobs like Bush II and Palin, and power-hungry crooks like Tom Delay, Newt Gingrich, John Boehner, etc. became leaders in the party. Partly, they were deliberately driven out by GOP leaders striving for ideological purity. Their "big tent" doesn't have room for anyone who is pro-choice, gay, non-"Judeo/Christian", opposed to unlimited military expansion, etc. Today's GOP would scream that Barry Goldwater is a Communist and run him off.

There is often a flood of Libertarian comments, but that doesn't mean that there are many Libertarian commenters. Libertarianism really only works as an extremist position, and those extremists are likely to pounce on anything that they don't like while the majority of liberals just let the insanity flow-by.

That being said, I think Slashdot has many more Libertarian commenters that you would find in a random population sample because Libertarians are found disproportionately in engineering fields. Partly I suspect (pet theory) that this has to do with the creation-and-control aspect of engineering feeding into the "look what I made all by myself" attitude of Libertarians. Another factor is probably the lack of "education" in technical and engineering programs that are tightly focused on a small subject matter while neglecting the usual benefits of making someone an all-around educated person. That kind of experience produces technocrats with highly marketable skills, but the political leanings that resemble those of the completely uneducated.

No. In fact the US/ROK military has had a problem (at least into the 1980s) with their human-detecting radar alerting on Manchurian cranes in the DMZ. Any moving creature big enough to register at all, registers as "target".

It's also probably not good public policy to pay a fire department on a per fire basis.

Are you suggesting that there might suddenly be more fires, if the fire department got paid per-fire? How odd!

There's no reason that one should have a choice.

Sure they should have a choice, but I expect that their homeowner's insurance should also be more than $75 higher if they don't have fire-department coverage.

MySpace was mostly popular among young people, particularly teenagers.

MySpace was mostly popular among blind people. There is no other possible explanation for the "design" of users' pages.

Also, all this means is that Greenland and West Antarctica are contributing less than 1/4 of the annual rise in sea levels rather than accounting for more than half. I guess we have to keep looking to find where the rest of the rise is coming from.

Unless a "rebounding crust" can also cause sea-level rise?

That advice would have been really useful before he invested several years and tens of thousands of dollars getting a Comp Sci degree.

> It's the large industrial hemp growers that are growing the good quality pot, driving the price down, Are you sure that this is not an issue of confusing terminology? Maybe the complaint is about "industrial hemp growers" as in "large-scale growers of high-THC hemp, who use industrial-farming practices". That is different from "growers of industrial-hemp", a different strain of the plant that has almost no THC.

If you have a Mossberg, you don't need the NYT to help keep kids off your lawn.

But these claims do not constitute a bomb threat. We have evidence that bombs exist. This is more like you are running the airport and someone calls in an "angry, rampaging. leprechaun threat". Would you order the evacuation of the terminal? If so, how would you later explain this to your boss?.

> Well, once you start living in houseboats, you need to move all your prisoners to prison boats.

You must not be familiar with "Compassionate Conservatism(tm)". We don't have to move prisoners to prison boats. This is called, "solving a problem with a problem."