Slashdot Mirror

So that's where http://www.plastic.com/ went!

You forget all the 'Winblows' comments from the Slackware lusers, the 1337 kiddies braggin on how they can script faster and better than you, laments over Usenet, and of course the deluge when AOL burst at the seams and started bleeding users into the 'real Internet'.

Oh, and all us h@xors proud of changing our Winblows desktops to look like KDE 3 revs ago.

No shortage of snark. At least Shashdot hasn't gone dark yet.

If it's any consolation I don't think it's just Slashdot. A general-topic discussion site I heard about here on Slashdot years and years ago is plastic.com. It used to be a truly excellent place for really thought-provoking discussions. I think things have slowed down simply due to dwindling participation. Maybe that's at the core of the changes you see in Slashdot -- the prime contributors are finding they've got less and less "free" time to contribute to online discussion forums?

Sadly, as another poster mentioned, "rights", once lost, are restored very slowly, if ever. Likewise, taxes rarely disappear once they are put in place. Choose your poison.

I'll take higher taxes over infringement of liberties any day. Render on to Caesar what is Caesar's: money is a government creation, and while there are practical matters and while current tax schemes are rather invasive in terms of data gathering, I don't have a problem with the fundamental idea that if you want to play the game of state capitalism with the state's counters you've got to ante up.

We can get rid of taxes as soon as we can get rid of government, and we can get rid of government just as soon as the prerequisite of "universal enlightenment" is fulfilled. In the meantime, we Americans ought to stop our famous tax whining - compared to other industrialized nations we as a whole are under-taxed.

Would I rather pay an extra thirty bucks a month in taxes, versus warrantless wiretapping? Versus illegal invasions of sovreign nations? A consistent attempt to force religion into biology classes? Attempts to criminalize medical procedures, to even re-outlaw birth control? Continual anti-gay bigotry shrouded in religious language? Ruinous borrow-and-spend policies that merely shift the tax burden on to future generations? I'd pay the extra thirty bucks and be happy.

But I wouldn't have to, since the current Democratic plan is to shift taxes off of the middle class and back on to the wealthy who have benefited from years of rule by the investment class that owns the GOP, and off of the middle class. Under Obama's proposals, a family making $66,000/year would get a tax reduction of $1,042, while a family making $604,000 a year would see a tax increase of $116,000.

Compared to the great economic boom of the 1950s, the rich are far, far, far undertaxed - under that radical leftist Eisenhower, top marginal rates were over 90%. And during the go-go early 80s it was 50%. So don't even try to play that raising the top rate back to the modest 39.6% it was during the Clinton years would ruin the economy.

I don't think that this is what proves Adams to be a PHB. I think his spectacular mismanagement of his restaurant chain already did that.

I hit the occasional online comic once in a while (too lazy to add URLs): Sinfest, Order of the Stick, & Penny Arcade.

Google is the launching point for 95% of my other online time, helping me find pages on stuff I'm researching.

Certainly, I've known that images have been doctored in various media for a looong time. We've shown many such photo retouching samples to our 11-year-old daughter, as she's now starting to be aware of her perceived beauty.

It's no surprise that such digital manipulation is being used on the big screen.

While I don't have problems with such retouching, I do think that it makes it tough to consider films and photographs that have been doctored genuine art forms anymore. Certainly, much of anything that comes out of Hollywood cannot be taken at face value, but it's become even less genuine over the past 20 years. Before the 80's, if you saw a buxom, beautiful woman (or man, for you ladies out there), you could be much more certain that her hair color, bust size, and other features tied to "beauty" were more or less genuine. Sure, some makeup and soft lighting/focus made the ladies of that era slightly more attractive than they'd appear on the street, but damn, of most of them weren't drop-dead beautiful to begin with.

These days, with hair dyes and wigs, plastic surguery, and now digital manipulation, you can take the cannonical 300-lb fugly plumber, and whip him into a G.Q. model in under an hour with Photoshop. There's a fine line (in my mind, anyway) between the art of making people look good with some makeup, lights, and *good* photography/cinematography and just simply taking any old person, filming them by any old schmuck w/ a camera and then *converting* them to an entirely new person via post-production.

I don't know. It's hard to argue with the industry being at fault for these things, but I feel that imperfections (say, Jewel's crooked tooth) lend personality and uniqueness to a person. Erasing them from the record robs us of the *person* that's behind the image.

Wholesale digital creations, on the other hand, are slightly different than digital effects or enhancements. The Final Fantasy movie a few years back (or that first film from the Matrix shorts collection) was digital art. The T-Rex in Jurassic Park, while cool, was a special effect.

Another example. While I appreciate the digital eye candy of Star Wars: 1-3, I don't think they hold a candle to the *artwork* of Episodes 4-6. One example I always trot out is the asteroid flight/fight scenes in Empire vs Clones. The flight of the Millennium Falcon through the asteroids in Empire made me sway in my seat when I watched it on the big screen as a kid. The scene with Obi-Wan and Fett in Clones had nowhere near the same impact, though it may have been visually more "clean".

Surely there must be others out there who have make the same distinction as I do, and who are bothered by a cheapening of cinema?

Sorry, but the SCOTUS routinely immasculates the US Constitution when taxation powers are in question. See this lively discussion over at Plastic.com with some very well-informed regulars citing much case law to debate the issue.

If only kuro5hin hadn't devolved into a troll-infested, self-referential, not-even-semi-intellectual circle-jerk of late. I'd rather suggest taking a look at plastic.

I remember a few years ago Yahoo automatically changed all instances of the word "eval" to "review", in order to prevent script injection/evaluation attacks.

The only problem was that their regexp was a little too sweeping, and changed every instance of "medieval" to "medireview". See for example this article at Plastic. Googling for "medireview" gives a few hundred results.

So yes, this is dumb, but it really shouldn't be a surprise.

Not exactly what you are looking for but there are a bunch of current events stories that are commented on.

FWIW, the attempts lobby a legislative body into something like what you're talking about have already happened. Here is a snippet from the writeup:

The bill, with language basically provided by Horowitz, would establish "free inquiry and free speech" in university classrooms throughout the state. The problem, as opponents see it, is that this free inquiry and free speech is going to come at the expense of valuable classroom time. The bill mandates that professors seriously consider and debate obscure, irrelevant, or counterintuitive theories that students might bring to class. According to Rep. Dan Gelber (D -- Miami Beach), one of the bill's opponents, opinions such as "abortion is a sin" or "the Holocaust never happened" would have to be given classroom time to discuss and debate. And, should a professor refuse to turn his or her classroom into an open-ended intellectual food fight, the bill would give students legal standing to take the school to court over the refusal.

Yes, but apparently if you are under 18 you can be charged with possession of child pornography if you take pictures of yourself:

http://www.plastic.com/article.html;sid=04/04/25/2 2421610

Fucking puritans.

Speaking as a low-5-digit ID, the whole ScuttleMonkey + BeatlesBeatles shit makes me want to get the (fixed) slashcode that runs Plastic and make a Slashdot2. Moderated submission queues + writeups (no need for editors), karma systems that work, etc. Not like Plastic doesn't have its issues, and some days I'm surprised that Slashdot actually works at all, but I don't even read stories anymore. Just comments starting at +2.

Thanks, but at the moment it is being down modded and the parent is "5 Insightful". The "Murka is #1, UN is the Anti-Christ!" crowd is going strong today.

Are you sure you are on the right forum? I think you meant to post that on http://plastic.com/ instead.

Nice! I did not know about that one. Definitely worth checking out.

Wow, that is the best post I've read in awhile, and me sitting here without any mod points.

Are you sure you are on the right forum? I think you meant to post that on http://plastic.com/ instead.

Take a look at the plastic coverage. Had the story earlier, and they tend to have slightly more intelligent commenting than here.

No, that's called a Tivo.

a lot of kids do play "sex" games with each other long before puberty

Doctors and Nurses, right?

yeah, sure. it's furtive but innocent. Kids at that age have no damn clue though, and luckily for parents there seems to be a window between the 'kid' games and the later genuine interest phase, which is what parents need to spot (and will spot), and take as a cue to actually start talking to their kids about responsible sex.

Now how to actually go about that, hell, in our current society it's difficult to see quite how to deal with it. I'm for openness with my kids, when they make it to that point. I can't expect my kids to make correct choices without information. But of course we're going hellishly off-topic. maybe this is one for Plastic?

Stupid /. crowd only likes "free as in beer" speech. Meaning someone call call 9/11 victims nazis and that's OK. Someone can say "abortions for all" and that's ok. Someone can "no abortions for anyone" (same Simpson's episode) and the world freaks out! Free speech is free speech.

I dare to guess that UofC professor would describe a statement comparing the 9/11 ATTACKERS to n-a-z-i-s as hate speech. EVERYTHING is free speech. In my mind ALL of the above statements are OK. Whenever you try to control any statement, you have a serious problem.

---gralem

So I made this argument in a submission over on Plastic on the second. I wonder if this article about it just came up by coincedence.

In any case I'm wondering if this means there is any actual legal merit in the speculation. It seemed a compelling argument from a logical case but I haven't heard from anyone who might have enough constitutional law experience to know.

Swiped from Plastic's Joke fest:

So an engineer is driving along when her car skids off a bridge and she plunges to an untimely demise. Immediately upon passing, the engineer sinks to hell.

After spending a very short time in hell, the engineer figures out several ways to make life more comfortable and presents them to Satan. Satan is very impressed having not met very many engineers previously, and within weeks he has overseen the installation of air conditioners, escalators, and wi-fi.

Next week at God and Satans regular golf game, Satan brags about how life in hell is getting very comfortable, like an underworld country club. God is visibly perturbed by this: "What? Where did you get an Engineer? There must be some mistake."

They check the records and sure enough the Engineer was supposed to go to heaven, but was diverted by a clerical error.

So God says "Give me back my engineer or I'll sue!"

To which Satan responds "And just where are you going to find a lawyer?"

Hey if this happens ,shorter version here.

It should make your dreams/ideas come out. Or like this guy put it The collapse of the dollar will be better for Americans.

And you will get what you asked for

Enjoy...

did I click on Plastic by mistake?

Not me. I just hoped there was enough stuff here

You might want to stop by PLASTIC's Politics Section for a more matured (and generally maturer) Slash-type discussion site on Politics.

I am somewhat weary posting this, but here it goes anyway (and I hope I won't regret it)

If you're interested in Slashdot-style discussion of non-technical topics such as politics, culture, etc., give www.plastic.com a click.

If you have used ./ you will feel at home with the UI (actually it's much more streamlined, though at some point it used to be Slashcode) and the read/respond process.

Anyway, have fun.

Don't tell them I sent you but http://www.plastic.com/ is where Slashdotters go when they grow up.

• Step 1: download the file.
• Step 2: Blank out the watermark, saving it elsewhere.
• Step 3: MD5sum the watermark-free file.
• Step 4: Restore the watermark.
• Step 5: Act like nothing's wrong.

Atlantic Monthly They regularly link to past stories in order to give better historical reference to current news items. I think the earliest story they have that mentions Saddam Hussein is from the late 1950's.

Harpers Yet another independantly owned journal that's not afraid to piss off thier advertisers.

The New Yorker Not independant, but has a long tradition of actually checking their facts. Great comics (understated, yet twisted, humor).

I also read my hometown newspaper every day, plus the New York Times on Sundays, and I scan BBC News, Google News, and The Guardian world news online daily. Plastic is good for getting an idea of what (somewhat educated) people think of the goings on in the world, and B3TA is a somewhat effective cure fore too much awareness of world events.

I also get The National Security Archive newsletter in my email about once a week or so.

For tech, I mostly read Linux Journal, SysAdmin, and occasionally Doctor Dobbs Journal.

Of course I always read The Debian Weekly News and /..

It looks like they were able to hire some competent web designers.

Actually, the code is maintained by Carl, who I beleive began with the Slashcode, as you can see after wandering around on the site a bit, he has changed it quite a lot from what he started with.

It's a bit more difficult to garner Karma than on /. and you need a lot more of it in order to benefit or fully participate (negative modding, story posting, etc), but those seem to make Plastic a reasonably civil place.

There's an article about Plastic and Carl available here.

(posting as an AC to avoid "modappeal" ratings on my posts over at Plastic

It looks like they were able to hire some competent web designers.

Actually, the code is maintained by Carl, who I beleive began with the Slashcode, as you can see after wandering around on the site a bit, he has changed it quite a lot from what he started with.

It's a bit more difficult to garner Karma than on /. and you need a lot more of it in order to benefit or fully participate (negative modding, story posting, etc), but those seem to make Plastic a reasonably civil place.

There's an article about Plastic and Carl available here.

(posting as an AC to avoid "modappeal" ratings on my posts over at Plastic

This is typical of freep.

I had two userIDs booted from the site due to posting evidence contrary to previous post's allegations (from government documents no less) before I realized that their definition of "free" is the freedom to lie, spin, eliminate opposing viewpoints, and hide evidence to the contrary of a revisionist conservative political platform.

At least on the so-called "liberal" sites, a little debate is always welcome, and unpopular viewpoints are moderarated fairly if they are argued appropriately and grounded in fact.

Heh, I started replying to another post - got distracted - returned and rewrote the thing as a reply to the article. Then I posted it as a reply to that fellows comment. *sigh*

I read and comment on Plastic way more than I ever did on Slashdot. Of course I did most of my slashdot commenting in the days before accounts were necessary. Not that I think things have changed too much - it's that the threads are all too large now it seems. I don't have any sense of communicating or community here. I think this is my third account because I keep forgetting the damn usernames and passwords - that's how seldom I think it worth it to log in. I still read here of course, but commenting seems to not add much value.

Simply too much 'stuff' to wade through on /. the way the interface works. Yet I have no problem navigating large discussions on Plastic. The difference in the two? Took me awhile but I think the thing that eases it for me is that they set the 'title' attribute on their links to stories and comments.

Wha? No, really. When I mouse over the links I get a cute little 'tool tip' giving me a preview of the linked comment. When those links have their 'title' set to be the first n characters of text in the comment it makes it a lot easier to skim along and determine what's deserving of 'drilling down'. I mentioned this on slashdot before I'm sure.

It's a small thing but it makes navigating a thread much easier when you can quickly gauge the tone/value of replies without having to click on them all to open them in another window. It works wonders with reading short replies, deciding which comments to investigate first and helps with often meaningless subject lines like "Re:The thing this thread started as but it no longers bears any relation to'. It's surprising how used you get to depending on that little bit of introductory info. I constantly mouse over the links in huge Slashdot threads and am surprised everytime when nothing happens.

It's changed the way I read on Plastic, I now read many more of the comments to a story because I seldom get frustrated by chasing replies that are of no interest to me. It also lends itself to interesting idioms.
Take this example of a post. Subject line is bold and the first line of the comment body (which'll show up in the popup and completes the 'thought') is in italics

My wife calls this...

..."A gathering of strays" instead of "lost sheep."

Now, I'm curious. Anyone else here discover a convenient UI feature that you wish more people used? There's probably lots of neat things going on out there that I've just been to lazy to notice.

Kevin

Simply too much 'stuff' to wade through on /. the way the interface works. Yet I have no problem navigating large discussions on Plastic. The difference in the two? Took me awhile but I think the thing that eases it for me is that they set the 'title' attribute on their links to stories and comments.

Wha? No, really. When I mouse over the links I get a cute little 'tool tip' giving me a preview of the linked comment. When those links have their 'title' set to be the first n characters of text in the comment it makes it a lot easier to skim along and determine what's deserving of 'drilling down'. I mentioned this on slashdot before I'm sure.

It's a small thing but it makes navigating a thread much easier when you can quickly gauge the tone/value of replies without having to click on them all to open them in another window. It works wonders with reading short replies, deciding which comments to investigate first and helps with often meaningless subject lines like "Re:The thing this thread started as but it no longers bears any relation to'. It's surprising how used you get to depending on that little bit of introductory info. I constantly mouse over the links in huge Slashdot threads and am surprised everytime when nothing happens. It's changed the way I read on Plastic, I now read many more of the comments to a story because I seldom get frustrated by chasing replies that are of no interest to me. It also lends itself to interesting idioms.
Take this example of a post. Subject line is bold and the first line of the comment body (which'll show up in the popup and completes the 'thought') is in italics
My wife calls this...
..."A gathering of strays" instead of "lost sheep."

Kevin

Also, plastic lets users with enough karma vote on stories in the submission queue. Although the editors decide what to run anyway, so the votes are just a factor they can take into account rather than the final word on what gets run.

Also, I think the Preview button should exist by itself, as a *default*, the first time you try to post, in order to avoid any or grammar spelling mistkes.

Agreed. I hate this place when the geeks think they're being funny. Slashdot became much more readable when I started assigning a -3 moderation to anything moderated as "Funny" (check the prefs -- great feature). Unfortunately the same trick doesn't work for the front page.

In the meantime, here are some other good tech/news sites to check out while Slashdot is useless:

• Ars Technica
• Kuro5hin
• Plastic
• MetaFilter
• MemePool
• Memigo

Enjoy!

I usually wouldn't rise to this kind of stuff, but it is either this, or continue working on an extremely boring bid, so what the hey - let's pretend this is Plastic.

Chairman and owner may as well be the same thing, especially in this context. If you think that DC no longer being chairman means that he no longer has influence, buddies, network of friends and - most importantly - longer term interests in the wellbeing of that organisation, you are simply a dumbass, and in need of some serious education in the ways of the world. If, on the other hand, you are simply defending a political idol, through misdirection and half-thruths, you are only a dumbass. If you really, sincerely, think that DC and Halliburton no longer have any linkage whatsoever in any way, shape, or form, then you are truly sad, and in need of professional help.

Monsanto, Monschmanto - who cares about spelling - did you know what I was talking about? You seemed to, sort of - so I communicated succesfully, which is what counts. Anyway, I did not mention Iraq, why did you bring it up? Hmm... must be some knee-jerk reaction on your part. I was, in the context of the story, talking about Australia, but it could equally apply to most other countries. There is no doubt that Monsalto crops are good for the US - it is the rest of the world that I am worried about.

Now, if you could please stop smoking crack, and pass me the crackpipe, I can dispose of it in the appropriate fashion. -- You see, you even got my handle wrong, and read into it what you wanted to see. I think that when the black helicopters really arrive, you would be the first jack-booted thugh to jump out and kick in the door. Don't worry dude - when the revolution comes, you'll be the first against the wall.....

At Plastic (based on the /. engine), they have a "modappeal" option for just this purpose. Unfortunately, hardly anyone uses it correctly, but it's nice to have.

Sorry, can't find a link, but I remember a story on Plastic when they actually asked for donations (!) to pay their bandwidth bills, even though redesigning their webpages would reduce their size 3-4 times on average with almost none visible changes.

It's a bit of a pain to get news from a wide variety of sources though. Takes quite a bit of time. I've found a couple resources to be useful for this.

Google News and Technorati pick from a wide variety of sources and allow you to search news articles. But I sometimes find it hard to find what I want in all the clutter. Plastic provides moderation and discussion of news, but doesn't have broad coverage. Various RSS aggregators allow me to create your own news feed, but they don't have good coverage of mainstream news sources and they're a bit of a pain to set up. There's a couple recent attempts at personalized news -- Findory News is one -- that try to pull news from a broad variety of sources targetted to your interests.

What do you use?

The whole expatriation thing is a terrible idea. If you go through with it, have fun.

Do you have first-hand experience to back this up? Just curious. On the 1-year anniversary of the Twin Towers attacks, I submitted to "Ask Slashdot" the question "Best Country to Expatriate To?". While intentionally inflamatory (probably best for the audience of Plastic), I felt a forum of tech-heads, who knew what to look for while the feds were (and still are) eroding our rights with technology, was an appropriate venue. Of course, my post never made it out of the queue.

But, my curiosity still remains.

The original poster has a good idea.

Firstly, there are (or were, last time I was inquiring about such things) really high-paying jobs to be found if you're willing to make sacrifices. I knew a guy who worked for a few years doing menial tech support in Quwait (I think) for an American firm. He couldn't do much outside of "campus" (due to security, culture, etc.), but he sacked away gobs of money. There is a niche market for jobs in American companies overseas, where your average suburban yuppies fear to tread.

On the other extreme, we all know that the standard of living in less industrialized places is far lower than domestic standards. Making $12k/yr in a suburban environment in Mexico (just pulling a ficticious example out of my hat here), might very well land you a better standard of living than making $50k-to-$100k somewhere in California.

The philosophy (at least in my own mind) of this latter option is the fact that there are still some places in the world where you can earn enough to modestly survive without selling your soul. By that, I mean what's the point of making $80k in the US, when it's all pissed away in overbearing taxes, the SUV in the suburban yuppie neighborhood, and Shiny New Things? What do most middle-Americans have to show at the end of their careers? Not too much, in my opinion. Certainly not freedom and peace of mind.

Of course, the US is the only country that I know of that requires its expatriates to still report non-domestic income to the IRS (and even pay taxes over a certain amount), so you see just how greedy the US really is. Anyone wanting to free themselves of the US will nearly be unable to if they desire to play by the rules.

There's hope for the original poster, if he's really serious. He just needs to dig in and do more serious research. My only lead for him is to search for forms of "expatriate" on Google, as there are many resources available.

The ratios apply everywhere.

It's rendered like this:

Thanksgiving turkey dinner for one. (score of 1)
by MAYORBOB at Thu 20 Nov 12:29pm (# 16 in reply to # 1)

From the following code:

<a href="/comments.html;sid=03/11/20/13072854;mode=th read;cid=16" class="int" title="Boston Market. Seriously, you're right. It's not so much the food which, when you have a house with four women in it such as mine, is plentiful and varied. It is the companionship of family and...">Thanksgiving turkey dinner for one.</a> (score of 1)<br>by MAYORBOB at Thu 20 Nov 12:29pm (# 16 in reply to # 1)

On Plastic the title of the links is set to be the first bit of text in the comment. So when I mouse over the link to the comment I get a little tool-tip like box that pops up and gives the first chunk of the comment. In Mozilla I get a popup reading:
Boston Market. Seriously, you're right. It's not so much the food which, when you have ...
whereas IE shows the whole title text. Here on Slashdot though it's only showing up as plastic.com so I guess they set it automatically to the domain.

It's a small thing but it makes navigating a thread much easier when you can quickly gauge the tone/value of replies without having to click on them all to open them in another window. It works wonders with reading short replies, deciding which comments to investigate first and helps with often meaningless subject lines like "Re:The thing this thread started as but it no longers bears any relation to'. It's surprising how used you get to depending on that little bit of introductory info. I constantly mouse over the links in huge Slashdot threads and am surprised everytime when nothing happens.

So, my question now is, is there a reason Slashdot wouldn't want to adopt this idea? It really is a great nav-tool and interface enhancement I find. It's changed the way I read on Plastic, I now read many more of the comments to a story because I seldom get frustrated by chasing replies that are of no interest to me. It also lends itself to interesting idioms. Take this example of a post. Subject line is bold and the first line of the comment body (which'll show up in the popup and completes the 'thought') is in italics

My wife calls this
"A gathering of strays" instead of "lost sheep."
You'd be amazed how well it works. Since your ...
...but such are family obligations.

Go over to Plastic and try following a few of the discussions in the stories there. I bet you'll see the appeal of this method. Of course, it's possible there's a really good reason we don't want to do this on Slashdot but I can't think of it right now.

Kevin

It's rendered like this:

Thanksgiving turkey dinner for one. (score of 1)
by MAYORBOB at Thu 20 Nov 12:29pm (# 16 in reply to # 1)

From the following code:

<a href="/comments.html;sid=03/11/20/13072854;mode=th read;cid=16" class="int" title="Boston Market. Seriously, you're right. It's not so much the food which, when you have a house with four women in it such as mine, is plentiful and varied. It is the companionship of family and...">Thanksgiving turkey dinner for one.</a> (score of 1)<br>by MAYORBOB at Thu 20 Nov 12:29pm (# 16 in reply to # 1)

On Plastic the title of the links is set to be the first bit of text in the comment. So when I mouse over the link to the comment I get a little tool-tip like box that pops up and gives the first chunk of the comment. In Mozilla I get a popup reading:
Boston Market. Seriously, you're right. It's not so much the food which, when you have ...
whereas IE shows the whole title text. Here on Slashdot though it's only showing up as plastic.com so I guess they set it automatically to the domain.

It's a small thing but it makes navigating a thread much easier when you can quickly gauge the tone/value of replies without having to click on them all to open them in another window. It works wonders with reading short replies, deciding which comments to investigate first and helps with often meaningless subject lines like "Re:The thing this thread started as but it no longers bears any relation to'. It's surprising how used you get to depending on that little bit of introductory info. I constantly mouse over the links in huge Slashdot threads and am surprised everytime when nothing happens.

So, my question now is, is there a reason Slashdot wouldn't want to adopt this idea? It really is a great nav-tool and interface enhancement I find. It's changed the way I read on Plastic, I now read many more of the comments to a story because I seldom get frustrated by chasing replies that are of no interest to me. It also lends itself to interesting idioms. Take this example of a post. Subject line is bold and the first line of the comment body (which'll show up in the popup and completes the 'thought') is in italics

My wife calls this
"A gathering of strays" instead of "lost sheep."
You'd be amazed how well it works. Since your ...
...but such are family obligations.

Go over to Plastic and try following a few of the discussions in the stories there. I bet you'll see the appeal of this method. Of course, it's possible there's a really good reason we don't want to do this on Slashdot but I can't think of it right now.

Kevin

"It is vital to understand the importance of doing nothing. Slacking is a necessity; it is Yin to activity's Yang"

So said the comedian Simon Pegg in endorsement of last month's England's National Slacker Day (August 23rd). This current week (September 1-5) is Work-Life Balance week for Britons, centered around pretty much the same idea. It is no wonder that these ideas are popular in the UK, since British get the fewest vacations of any European nation.

While some view leisurely time off as a right, does slacking really mean happiness? Some lament that the slacker lifestyle isn't what it used to be. Simon Pegg himself broke the first and only rule in the Slacker Day handbook, by working: "there, perhaps, is the problem with slacking in a world which does not owe any of us a living"

More to the point, Professor Michael Rose at University of Bath (he seems to do a lot of research in the field of work) found that working long hours does not lower one's quality of life - and indeed improves it. Not only are workaholics making more money and getting promotions - they are happier as well.

Contrary to what most of us believe, the workaholics are not especially stressed, nor are they particularly unhappy -- at least no more than the rest of us.

Why is that? Because they like working.

A significant point is being made here. The work-life propagandists constantly see the office as the enemy and emphasize that more time has to be allowed for family and other interests.

But work is a life as well. We live in a hedonistic age, but our grandfathers, many of whom grew up among stern Victorian moralists, would have understood that work is what gives shape and purpose to our lives.

Most of us work because we have to make a living. But we also work because it gives us a role, status, a sense of achievement, and just occasionally the respect of our peers. And those are things we crave just as much as material goods.

So fess up. Are you a slacker or a workaholic? How do you achieve a healthy balance between success in the office and a happy life outside of it?

"It is vital to understand the importance of doing nothing. Slacking is a necessity; it is Yin to activity's Yang"

So said the comedian Simon Pegg in endorsement of last month's England's National Slacker Day (August 23rd). This current week (September 1-5) is Work-Life Balance week for Britons, centered around pretty much the same idea. It is no wonder that these ideas are popular in the UK, since British get the fewest vacations of any European nation.

While some view leisurely time off as a right, does slacking really mean happiness? Some lament that the slacker lifestyle isn't what it used to be. Simon Pegg himself broke the first and only rule in the Slacker Day handbook, by working: "there, perhaps, is the problem with slacking in a world which does not owe any of us a living"

More to the point, Professor Michael Rose at University of Bath (he seems to do a lot of research in the field of work) found that working long hours does not lower one's quality of life - and indeed improves it. Not only are workaholics making more money and getting promotions - they are happier as well.

Contrary to what most of us believe, the workaholics are not especially stressed, nor are they particularly unhappy -- at least no more than the rest of us.

Why is that? Because they like working.

A significant point is being made here. The work-life propagandists constantly see the office as the enemy and emphasize that more time has to be allowed for family and other interests.

But work is a life as well. We live in a hedonistic age, but our grandfathers, many of whom grew up among stern Victorian moralists, would have understood that work is what gives shape and purpose to our lives.

Most of us work because we have to make a living. But we also work because it gives us a role, status, a sense of achievement, and just occasionally the respect of our peers. And those are things we crave just as much as material goods.

So fess up. Are you a slacker or a workaholic? How do you achieve a healthy balance between success in the office and a happy life outside of it?

It seems more like a topic for a civil libertarian blog. . . . I'm just asserting this is off topic. Michael, can't you find another website to pound your drums on?

Might I humbly suggest PLASTIC? It is primarily a political group newsblog with generally a libertarian readership.

It also has a couple of advantages that would keep a -1 Off Topic post such as this one is to SlashDot from running in the first place. The submission queue is readable to most users, and hundreds of users have sufficient karma to comment and vote on the submissions in the queue.

They also have a way for users to post "Quick Links" stories that might be interesting to the community but either don't have discussion potential, or which aren't generally relevant to the topics Plastic deals with.

Oh, and because the main reason I can see this running here is that it generates page views and thus ad revenue, you might be interested in learning that Plastic has no advertising and so is free of the motivation of posting something just to make money off user supplied content.

Do modern Republicans really have libertarian roots? That seems odd, given the blatant disregard for these principles lately. It should be the Republicans, then, fighting the PATRIOT Act and not supporting it. They should be fighting anything that take away Constitutional rights in favor of empowering the state. WTF?!?

That's exactly what is drawing me away from the Right. But practical politics in the US has shifted away from political theory. Both democratics and republicans can't be defined by "Liberalism" and "Conservatism" anymore...each party has picked over theories from both sides and taken what seems to help them.

For example...Classical Liberalism (what Americans might call conservatism) should be rooted in exactly what you said -- maintaining Constitutional rights, maintaining states' power, limiting government. But look at what the republican party is doing now: limiting Constitutional rights (see PATRIOT act), expanding government spending (see Bush's request for $87 billion). Guess who the biggest spender of the last 50 years or so is? George W Bush. And don't even get me started on the "crony capitalism" that the Bush administration tries to pass off as a free market economy. It's a free market if you know the right people.

Yeesh, enough of the politics already...what is this, Plastic?