Exactly. Why is everyone ignoring the analogy to cigarette manufacturers? As Oreskes and Conway documented in Merchants of Doubt, oil companies used exactly the same strategies (and same people) to cast doubt on the link between fossil fuels and climate change as cigarette companies did to cast doubt on the link between smoking and lung cancer. If cigarette companies can be found liable, why not oil companies?

Regional pricing already exists on Steam (http://www.pcgamer.com/the-weird-ecomomics-behind-steam-prices-around-the-world/). When I worked in Kyrgyzstan (low GDP country), many games were significantly cheaper than in the US store.

Scientific dissent is fine, but at some point science has to move on to new questions. We'd never get anywhere if scientists were still sitting around debating whether the Earth really is round, whether the Sun is the centre of the solar system. Science has moved beyond the question of whether AGW is occurring, whether or not non-scientists are happy about that fact.

Prior to 1950 it was not uncommon for doctors to prescribe menthol cigarettes for respiratory problems. You can always find precursors in science, but prior to 1950 prevailing medical opinion was that cigarette smoking was not a significant health risk.

Climate science is an evolving science, but the question of whether AGW is happening is settled. How quickly it is occurring, how the climate will react to different forcings, how that will affect specific regions of the planet, etc. are all questions that are more or less up for debate.

Regardless of the political and economic circumstances, the science is very clear. AGW is a fact, whether or not political ideologies have seized upon it to further their agendas. You might be right in your explanation of progressive and conservative reaction to AGW, but this does not discredit its truth. There is no symmetry here---whether you are progressive or conservative the simple fact is that AGW is true.

This is just factually incorrect. Al Gore is not a scientist. He, as you said, used the results of science for political advocacy. But using the results of science does not politicize that science. The scientists did not have to give Al Gore their blessing to use their results. They were not complicit in his work. The scientists involved in the IPCC have been remarkably objective and apolitical.

Why do you think it is silly to deny GW while questioning A(nthropogenic)GW? Neither of us is competent to actually measure global warming ourselves---we have to rely on scientists to inform us that the Earth is in fact warming. We know that GW is occurring because there is a scientific consensus that it is. But that same scientific consensus tells us that the overwhelming cause of that warming is human activity. You can't consistently believe one but not the other. You're right that scientific consensus is no guarantee of truth, but there are no guarantees of truth about anything. Scientific consensus is our, as laypeople not competent to judge the matter ourselves, best method of judging where the truth most likely lies. What justifies you in taking a position contrary to the scientific consensus? What is a more reliable guide to the truth?

It seems to be a fairly common problem on Slashdot that posts are poorly hyperlinked. There are two key pieces of information here: (1) The party received 4 seats and (2) the party can no longer be considered a "single issue" party. The second two hyperlinks (7.4% and 4 out of 51 seats) are related to (1), but there is no hyperlink for (2). If a reader wants to know where (2) comes from, they have to randomly click the links to find that it comes from the pcworld.com link (7.4%). This is just annoying.

Not to be a shill, but I've been using the Livescribe Pulsepen for about a year and it's perfect for class notes. It records what you write then uploads your notes to your computer, along with audio that is sync'd to your notes, so you can hear what was being said while you were writing. You can convert notes to text using 3rd party software, but I've found it to be better just to leave it in handwritten form. The search function actually works pretty well for handwritten notes.

As an aspiring academic half way through a philosophy Ph. D., I find Nunberg's argument pretty absurd. Google books is a godsend for academics, and would be much more so if there was full access to their entire catalog rather than "limited previews" for most books. I have used Google books countless times to quickly check out whether a book is relevant to my research, or to get the gist of an author's argument without having to trudge down to the library. I know many others who do this as well. In all this time I've never even looked at Google's metadata. No decent academic would rely on such information, as there are far more reliable methods: such as actually checking what's written in the book, which yes, Google scans in.

I'm not sure what the legal mandate of the CBC actually is, but I don't think it should be to disseminate Canadian content. I think it should be to serve the Canadian public by broadcasting quality material that wouldn't necessarily be broadcast on commercial stations. Where that content is produced, and whether that content has a Canadian flag in the background or a shot of the CN Tower is of no interest to me. If the nationalistic agenda is undermining the quality content agenda (as I think it is), then something is wrong.

CBC Radio is great, but I think CBC TV would be a lot better if they didn't feel obligated to make all of these nationalistic TV series. I'm all for the government funding Canadian artists, but I hate content regulations.