The comment about asymptomatic people being less infectious was from one loose cannon, was retracted less than 24 hours later and the retraction is a top story right on Slashdot.

The bible seems to have been written starting around 1500 BC (the first books of the Old Testament) with later stuff coming ... uh .. later. Since the Ancient Greek civilization dates back to something like 6,000BC I don't really see any substantive inconsistency here.

I am amazed by how utterly paranoid and cynical US citizens have become about their own government, except for the few that are 100% the opposite and equally polarized. While there no doubt the US government has made some bad calls, and maybe even some very bad ones, that's still a far cry from the utter cynicism one often sees here and elsewhere that ignores that many people in government might be attempting to do the right thing, even if they sometimes fail.

It's the "role" of the Debian (community) to do the best thing for their users, both for the sake of the people at stake and for the heath and promotion of Debian (and UNIX) as a whole. Doing the "right" thing usually involves difficult compromises and judgement calls, and sticking to a strictly hard-line set of ideals is rarely compatible with the messy real world we all live in... that is my experience running a couple of organizations: people make mistakes and their organizations, or superiors, or "family" often need to clean up after/for them, even if it's not technically their job to do so, for the benefit of all concerned.

I think the fight over the name, which caused the name change, was a mistake with consequences that could have been predicted. Even if it's the fault of the sysadmins who messed with their systems, finding a non-intrusive way to help them from getting nailed is in everybody's long term interest (except maybe Microsoft or other non-Linux vendors... and even they want a health Internet). In the worst-case scenario that this domains gets acquired by bad people and users get burned by this, it will make UNIX/Deb look bad, cause harm to various individuals, and potentially even lead to more spam or malware.

Seems pretty fair to me: you pay to get a set of services including a transcript, and they are withheld if you don't pay. I think that same rules apply at the Supermarket or the gas station.

The strange thing here is the sense of entitlement that people have regarding their debts. Now, the tuition prices at many US schools to seem crazily high, but the correct solution there is to go to a cheaper school. Of course, education is probably one area where it is definitely not a god idea to focus on the short-term cheap deal, but you do need to keep in mind that the price you pay actually has to be paid, even if a loan is involved.

Please do not save me a seat on the space shuttle you build.

This is not serious or credible. Building prosthetic devices is a serious challenge with a lot of ergonomic issues. This project and the reportage like some kids building a lego robot and expecting it to revolutionize the automobile industry. Great, they controlled some simple pneumatic with an alpha wave reader: yawn.

How about Dean Kamen's TED talk as a reference point for what's really needed and where this game is at: http://www.ted.com/talks/dean_kamen_previews_a_new_prosthetic_arm.html

Some conferences are good, and some are mostly unfiltered junk. The junk conferences tend to have worse networking, less interesting content, and generally much less value. Good conferences are very important venues for scientific exchange, networking and hunting down new ideas and trends

Low quality conferences can either been more social, local events, or even money grabs by the organizers. I believe CCSC is a local "unfiltered" conference that is a social event, but not a really high-value scientific exchange meeting. Such lower profile meetings can be a useful warmup to bigger events.

Only in the USA. Everywhere else (even Canada) it means real cheese sliced into ... slices.

Just say no devices at all. It fair, even-handed and realistic. Make an exam that doesn't put such a premium on mindless calculations (for example allow them to submit an expression such as 112*121/11 instead of computing the result). More emphasis on brain and mind, less on fingers.

Oh, and the can use their mind as a dictionary too.

Sheesh.