Seems like "paying other people to be smart for them" is doing something. (Btw It's probably the best one-sentence description of Capitalism I've seen!) Rather than this being the opposite of doing something, it's the best possible thing they can be doing! For example, all the programmers on Slashdot (are there still any?) :-) are most likely benefiting from being paid to be smarter at programming than the person/organization doing the paying.

Paying others to be smarter causes investment in businesses and ventures that generate more jobs and grow the economy. Even the stereotypical "rich d-bag" with a gawdawful big, tacky mansion, provides jobs for construction, plumbing, electrical, architects, interior designers, furniture builders, artists, landscapers, etc. (Paying each for being smarter in their respective trades.) i.e. It benefits people at every tier of society.

This system has produced the most innovative society ever! Technology miracles happen so often now we take them for granted, because of this system. The overall standard of living is much higher for everyone in societies that adopt this approach.

Please, please encourage the wealthy to pay others for their smarts!

The CIA is part of the State department. It's the part authorized to do clandestine operations outside the borders of the US.

Gosh I hope this is an ironic reference to how far things have dropped here since the excellent threads/discussions here after the Columbine School shootings.

That's what I get for trying to make a point about how Slashdot seems to be pushing more political stories but then also letting my opinions in to the mix. Human nature, though... I can't help but take up your comment. (Damn it, trolled again!)

In full disclosure, I don't know where you're from or the details of your system and I admit my comment was extremely general. It may be better than ours in many ways, if not every way, but it may also not be apples to apples. You may have all the elements I describe below and if so, I leave the educated one.

In our system, if you get high marks in secondary education, you generally already receive highly subsidized higher education through things like government grants or scholarships funded by the private or personal sector. (Yes, even from the dreaded 1%.) Students who can afford it or who's family can afford it are generally restricted from these, so there's already a distributive element built in to the system.

If you don't receive those marks at that time, you still have higher-ed options and choices. If you mature at a different rate from your peers or find that your interests don't align with your abilities at the same time to meet the specific criteria needed in your system, you can still find many options for college. You just have to decide personally whether the benefits that you'll receive from the degree outweigh the costs.

I believe that we under-value vocational education in this country and tell kids that the only way to be successful is through higher ed. We do a bad job of helping kids and families do the cost/benefit analysis but since the government took over much of the student loan business, it's kind of hard not to see them as beneficiaries and thus complicit in this. (There I go, showing my stripes again.)

Your system seems rather unforgiving to us "anything goes" yanks but I also kind of feel that ours maximizes personal freedom at the expense of allowing people to make choices that aren't in their best interests.

So to take it all the way back to the techie discussions I'd rather be having, it's kind of like when the manager wants you to keep putting more VMs on the same VM host instead of buying new hardware. The raw computing resources are still limited and have a real cost. When you start thinking of the underlying layer as free and unlimited, things will break.

There are several methods/theories on how to best ration a limited resource and far fewer are actually evil than get credited as such in Slashdot these days.

Actually, I vehemently agree with you. I'd MUCH rather be talking about tech than topics which require using classifications like left or right-wing to discuss. I feel like many of the recent stories lately were picked or positioned to do just that. I'm not sure if I'm the troll here or just being trolled but there seems to me more of a political agenda in the stories themselves which just catalyzes a bunch of, "if you don't agree with me, you're not just wrong, you're evil" kinds of comment bouts. (Case in point.)

I hardy ever post comments so I don't get to enjoy being called stupid very often, but I'm pretty sure I can differentiate a basic left vs right-wing approach to a issue, rather than just self-identifying with right and thus anything I disagree with is automatically left. (Believe me, both sides have their strengths and weaknesses.) Yeah, I let my stripes show a bit but the bigger point is: "Hey story approvers, stop posting stories that try to stir up all the political BS and get back to what we came here for, heated, political debates about stuff like init vs systemd."

Maybe your last point was that I'm the stupid one for still coming back hoping that this wasn't the case. As I wrap up this comment, I certainly feel a little more stupid than when I started so you may just be right.

I totally agree. Not only are there more political stories, they're decidedly left-leaning. It's getting even worse in the comments. I remember when government was "the man"' and hackers were mostly libertarian. Now every Slashdot issue seems to end up as a fight for who can hand government more power and control. (Don't like big corporations? Why do you think big government is better? Maybe small both is best. Bernie Sanders? Give me a break. Do you know how other countries provide college for free? They pick the people who are allowed to go.)

The more Slashdot becomes a hang out for privleged young lefties to tell everyone how to think, the more I just want to chuck the whole thing. And fwiw, I've been a daily visitor since I downloaded Debian onto floppies with my 28.8 modem.

This will really mess with my obsessive/compulsiveness. I'll never miss a day again!

I too go back to the very early days. I started reading about the same time that I did my first Debian install, using FTP over dial-up! In many ways I owe my technology career to Slashdot and by extension to Rob and Jeff.

So many things along the way, but the one that really sticks out was the Columbine thread. Every news/blog/comment site that exists today owes it to Slashdot for pioneering the form. That DEC alpha should be in the Smithsonian!

Thanks for everything!!!

How scary would a combo Wireshark + root kit or botnet be? A lot of companies download Wireshark, stick it on old laptops, park them on various parts of their network, and remote desktop into it as a cheap troubleshooting solution. Get malware on those boxes and the bad guys now can see inside everything that crosses the network, inside all the firewalls. Yikes!!