I use Firefox and Opera quite a bit. My objective is to become Microsoft free, but it's still difficult. On one of my machines I am almost totally able to avoid using IE, but there are still times when it's the only way to see what's going on, and of course Microsoft also locks WindowsUpdate to it.
An especially annoying aspect is that my company talks a lot about offering non-Microsoft solutions, but many of our internal applications are locked to IE. It's getting better, and Firefox has the official status of a "supported" browser, but IE is still an effective drag.
And don't get me started about MS Office. That's a love-hate relationship and a half.
Moving onto dreams, I'd really like to be able to banish Microsoft from my life. The two major alternatives seem to be Apple or Linux, but I haven't made any move yet...
Getting further off topic, but for me to move away from Windows, I think the new non-Windows operating system should be pre-installed by the manufacturer with high assurance of software equivalents for all of my primary applications *AND* the ability to import my old data, which has mostly been trapped in Microsoft formats. I've done enough of cross-booting to say that cross-booting is not convenient enough...
Getting off topic, but when I say "mature" I mean in the sense that I don't have to spend too much time on system issues and can spend most of my time on doing actual things. Trying to keep this brief, but I think that for me to go with Linux it either needs to be pre-installed by the maker with high assurance of software equivalents for all of my primary applications *AND* the ability to import my old data, which has mostly been trapped in Microsoft formats, or I need to be able to install it as an upgrade that will retain convenient access to my existing Windows software. Cross-booting is not convenient enough, and WINE has very low "assurance" value, and I don't know of alternative approaches...
Fuck anonymous coward and the horse you rode in on.
Re:Indexing or Caching?
on
Reining in Google
·
· Score: 2, Insightful
I think you're completely missing the boat here. When someone puts something on the Web, they have agreed to try to make it visible, and Google is serving their interests by making it more visible.
The conflict of Google caching is not that they scan pages and use that content for indexing and search results, but that they allow the cached content to remain available even after the authors have changed the site so those keywords no longer exist. I frankly think it's difficult to justify that use of caching. That's the goal of the Internet Archives Project, but in Google's case it would make good sense to offer the cache-based version only if the original site is down (or/.ed).
(For people who are eager to distribute content but who want to minimize their bandwidth charges for their own servers, it would actually make excellent sense for Google to offer some special metatag to encourage cache availability all of the time. (Though they ought to offer some kind of service for site owners to get a "hit report" for the cached access directly from Google. Obvious implementation would be with a metatag that authorizes an address for a robotic query--only the site owner could add that to the webpage.))
The conflict with the publishers and authors is *completely* different. However, I don't blame Google for trying to adapt to the new technologies, and you can't blame the defenders of the old system for crying when those new technologies are threatening the very existence of their system. To heck with the children! What about the money!?!
Libraries have always had a tenuous relationship with publishers, because borrowed books are only sold once. The argument there was that the public derived large enough benefits that it was okay. Also, the libraries are seen as kind of good publicity and not very accessible, so they (the publishers) can still still books, and perhaps even make more sales to a more literate population.
The Internet is changing things radically. The recent story about newspapers suffering is only a different tip of the same iceberg. From that perspective, the only solution is to ban the technology, which seems unlikely.
When the Internet library is banned, only outlaws will have libraries?
In conclusion, I think the publishers are doomed. The Internet is not going to be banned. It doesn't matter if Google or someone else does it. The books are going to become available via the Web, and the publishers can try to adapt or they can become extinct. Google just wants to be first for the same reason Amazon wanted to be first.
(And the CSS weirdness in the preview and editing areas is over here, too? Looks like an accessible page now. I'm still wondering if it's somehow linked to the latest abuses of anonymous moderation...)
I'm frequently surprised by the banality of these early posts, but what really surprises me is the total lack of insight in the early posts. In this case, the obvious missing word is "enthusiasm", which is what Microsoft is trying to simulate, apparently due to the lack of an ability to stimulate the real thing. By creating shortages, or even rumors of shortages, they will make sure that the most extreme gaming enthusiasts will be the ones who wind up with their machines at first. Very simple. They'll be the ones who are willing to line up early and wait a long time to get the machines. Because of their enthusiasm, they can also be counted on for favorable comments so that the machine will be assured of favorable "word-of-mouth".
Typically diabolical Microsoft marketing.
I'm really thinking about switching to anything else. Unfortunately, I've had bad experiences with Apple in the past, and the Linux options remain immature, especially in Japan.
[And what was all that bizarre junk before the preview? CSS problems on top of the moderation-based attacks? (I had 28 moderations in my last report, and many of them were extremely peculiar.) It seems to think that my Firefox has switched to some sort of accessibility mode?]
You poseur. You're no geek to propose such a flawed algorithm. It essentially reduces to a 3-digit pin with a 0 or 1 givaway. the optimum random solution is probably 12 bits or 12 tosses. I admit my Q&D heuristic is unbounded, but it hasn't gone into an infinite loop yet, and it can be done quite easily.
It's often quite easy to make such argument about corporate convenience. So where do you think it will be convenient to draw the line? Or just let them have all of it. After all, there is an alternative position that no one will (or should) have any privacy.
Actually, I'm certain that the truth about Dubya would have prevented him from having any political career at all.
I still stand by my earlier comments on this topic, but at this point it's pretty clear it isn't just a/. rumor. I used to have a lot of respect for Sony, but it's been pretty well dissipated over the years. Their decision to dump PDAs greatly saddened and annoyed me, but I've also had too many problems with their hardware to buy any more... They just couldn't handle the pressure of needing to have ever higher profits and being squeezed between their one low-margin hardware-oriented parts of the company and the high-greed software-oriented parts. Now they've completely trashed their own reputation, and I do feel morally constrained to sell my stock, too.
I guess I'll send them a sharply worded letter first, but I really don't see any way that I can do any business with a company like this. Not even as a shareholder.
Well, thanks for your kind reaction. Actually, part of the source of that comment was the realization that cheap HDDs have made it quite reasonable that we keep all of our personal information in our own machines. Remember that "Possession is nine points of the law." I have at least 100 GB available at home, and I'm still sure my personal information is way less than that.
To elaborate (but at risk of going off-topic), the basic idea is that if someone wants to store information about you, you should have the right to make them store it on your machine. They can sign it or whatever to prevent you from tampering with it, but if they want to see it again, they should have to ask your permission. As long as it's reasonable, you can let them see it--unless you change your mind. Even including your SSN.
This is not really as radical as it might seem. Only a few years ago, pretty much all of your personal information was stored in your punkin head, so to speak. If someone wanted to know about you, they HAD to ask you. From that perspective, the essential principle of the Fifth Amendment is that you didn't have to tell them if you don't feel like it. However, these days it is increasingly less necessary to ask you anything--someone else already owns your data.
Anyone who is dumb enough to use part of their SSN as a PIN deserves whatever happens. My own policy is to generate a random number each time I need a new PIN. (Four coin tosses per digit, converting from hex to decimal. Actually less, since 11 and 101 are terminators.)
Anyway, the entire question of personal privacy is rapidly becoming moot. It's not just that our fear-mongering overlords want more power over each of us, but also that we have no barrier to protect privacy in this modern age. Do you have any idea how much of your personal data is stored out there? Of course not--but the organizations storing it (mostly companies and governments) can do whatever they want with it. My contention is that we need to extend the Bill of Rights to explicitly state that your personal information is part of your property and should be protected from search or seizure without probable cause.
Interesting questions. My response it that, at least in America, proud ignorance and mindless greed became the fashions of the day. I think the long-term results will not be pretty.
Root cause? I actually blame it on the "free lunch" mentality that led to advertiser-sponsored "free" radio broadcasts, which led to even worse advertising on television, and which is now threatening the Internet, too. It's not as though they were unaware of the dangers, and the radio stations were originally required to consider the public interest. However, in the long run the profits have eclipsed everything else. Advertisers are not interested in creating well-educated citizens and careful voters. Their concern is with creating pliable shopping robots.
Have you already forgotten the famous BushCo advice about not launching "new products" in August? So how'd you like to buy a nice war?
As regards the Sony comment, that wasn't completely a joke. I really do own some Sony stock, and I really can't decide what to do about it. On the other hand, I certainly don't think that Sony is going to pay a whole lot of attention to what any minor shareholder does or thinks. However, if I react to every news item that is related to my stocks, the only beneficiaries will by the stockbrokers, since they rake their commissions off the top.
However, the lousy quality of the reporting isn't the only thing that's killing the newspapers. I think that they are in a death trap of reader selectivity. Since most people only believe what they want to believe, do you really expect them to pay to read other stuff, too? From that perspective, it's only natural for the Internet to slaughter the newspapers. Not just because the Web is faster and cheaper, but because search engines make it easy to find the stuff that agrees with what you want to believe. No cognitive dissonance there!
To give you a convenient concrete example, if you dislike Bush, just do a news search for "Dubya", and you're pretty sure to see plenty of disrespect. All you need is to learn the appropriate buzzwords for what you want to see, and voila, that's what you see.
Actually, I like to sample several of the extreme positions, because the truth is most often somewhere in the middle. However, that's another strike against newspapers, in my opinion, since most of them are pretty uniform. An enormous part of the content comes straight off the wire, and the rest of it tends to be whatever the publisher likes.
So should I sell all of my Sony stock, or buy more?
Seriously speaking, this shows two things. One is yet another demonstration of the fundamental evil of Microsoft's "security" model. Even if you weren't running as root/Administrator (and everyone does, don't they?), then the "reputable" installation from the "reputable" company would just ask you to elevate your privileges.
The other thing is that power is always abused. If not now and by Sony, then tomorrow by some other "reputable" company. (Or put on your tin hat and say "Yesterday by the NSA.")
I hope they track this story, and if it is not another misguided/. rumor, I certainly hope that Sony repudiates the technique and the software. Soon.
Then they should apologize.
Then sack the person responsible.
Then sack the person responsible for not sacking the responsible person earlier.
Well, actually, now that you mention it... A stuck relief valve after enough time might well be the cause of an explosion, and even with all the nitrogen suddenly in the room, now you have me wondering if that could have been the cause of the mess.
However, I have to doubt it. I'm pretty sure that the large tanks would have multiple relief valves and probably even pressure monitors with alarms. So does anyone want to start a pool on the cause? The angry intern was the only suggestion I saw so far...
My scientific prediction is that/. moderation will probably mod that insightful, though it obviously isn't.
Having worked with liquid nitrogen in the past, I don't really like the thought of what would happen if the liquid was quickly heated up. The tanks are vented, but I really doubt the vents would be able to deal with that. Sure, the gas itself is not going to burn and might even snuff out a few neighboring fires (though the oxygen will come back fairly quickly and the fires might revive), but it's the large and very jagged flying pieces of metal that could, shall we say, greatly inconvenience anyone in the vicinity.
It's certainly not an experiment I'd want to participate in.
No, actually I have discovered some excellent settings that make the anonymous cowards almost completely visible. I will grant you credit for being a slightly less cowardly coward, insofar as you use a stupid handle rather than the AC setting.
Let's try again. You are a vacuous fake, a minor dildo hurler, a waste of bits. I have no use for you except as a "foe". In real life I assume you are a spam emailer or minor hoodlum of some sort. Or perhaps you're already posting from jail. I don't care.
I see you still haven't figured out how to set "foe". Gosh, your stupidity is exceeding my greatest expectations in these days of increasingly great stupidity. I would be truly delighted to know you are an official foe.
(Well, actually that's a rhetorical florish. I really couldn't give a flying shite what you do. It's just the convenience of seeing the "foe" dot and ignoring the associated tripe--if my settings haven't already made the post invisible.)
Amusing. I just posted a typically courteous response--to someone else. You're essentially certain never to see one from me, unless you miraculously grow a new brain.
The only thing I'm looking for here is a nice "foe" mark. Just click on the gray ball.
I think you misjudge some aspects of the situation. The #1 reason the Democratic Party is suffering is precisely because they are copying the "winning" tactics of the Republicans. Actually, that's a natural result of a political system that has (or perhaps it should be "had") so much openness in it. The GOP has always been the party of big business and big money, and the main recent development is that they have become much more effective in channeling money directly into political power. Clinton's success was mostly simply because he was a good copycat.
Having said that, I do think there's a difference in the motivations of the corporate donors. I think many of the larger donations to Clinton's Democratic Party were seen as a kind of insurance. In contrast, the donations to BushCo are seen as investments. (And remember that Dubya's #1 investor was that master of shaky investments, Enron.) There are still some traces of philosophic differences between the parties, but they are almost totally eclipsed behind the big money now. In that scenario, the "best" way for the Democrats to "win" is to become bigger gangsters than BushCo. The "win" in quotes because the country loses in almost every case.
I also think your praise of Reagan is misdirected. His main contribution to the present mess was to demonstrate that a bogus puppet can be a "successful" President. However, I admit that he is quite different from Dubya. Reagan was essentially incapable of lying. Whatever he saw on the teleprompter was the truth to him, and no problem if it was diametrically opposed to yesterday's "truth". This was natural from his background as an actor, even for the B grade. While Dubya is pretty dumb, sometimes he knows he's lying, and then he gets all fumble-mouthed.
My belief about the real root of the problem is that it came from "free" radio broadcasts. The explosive growth of the advertising industry was not about creating better educated citizens and voters. It was about manipulating suckers, and ultimately has created a nation where 30% of the voters are easily manipulated by Karl Rove and his ilk, and 40% are too disgusted (or manipulated into passivity?) to even bother voting.
As it applies to the main topic, the signficance of the anti-science fanatics is that they are a "cheap" block of votes. Just agree with them on their key issue, and you get that block of votes. Later on you can make excuses about why you couldn't deliver *all* of the promised craziness, though that may not matter as long as the fanatics believe the opposition disagrees.
No, but what America does have is a situation where a small group of fanatics who do oppose science are successfully gaming the system to attack science. Part of their hypocrisy is that they do not attack all science, but only certain parts that they disagree with. For example, they want bigger and better bombs, the better to kill their enemies with, but they *absolutely* do NOT want better understanding of biology where it conflicts with their other beliefs.
Fortunately for science, though unfortunately for America, attacking science produces negative dynamic stabiity. You can't disrupt one part of science without disrupting *ALL* parts of science. The inevitable result is that, in the long term, the societies with the best science will wind up with the biggest and best bombs, too. (Unfortunately, in the short term, you might wind up dead due to the bad science...)
Come on, you can do it. Click on the little gray ball next to any of my comments. Then you click "foe". That's my *ONLY* interest in you and people like you.
Just don't get a swelled head about it. I wouldn't regard you as a non-trivial "foe" unless you were actually a large-scale spammer or mafia punk, or something along those lines. Any Sophistic moron can misread and twist posts and play various imbecilic word games. (Unless I'm confusing you with some other moron. Excuse me for not caring.)
Another point against anonymous moderation. I don't begrudge them their right to moderate that post funny, but (as the author), I really would like to know what the punchline was supposed to be--but I can't even ask them. I would have thought the other post with Bill Gates as "the senior Senator from Microsoft" might have been the one deserving moderation as "funny". The parent post was basically supposed to be serious.
Slashdot Mirror
An especially annoying aspect is that my company talks a lot about offering non-Microsoft solutions, but many of our internal applications are locked to IE. It's getting better, and Firefox has the official status of a "supported" browser, but IE is still an effective drag.
And don't get me started about MS Office. That's a love-hate relationship and a half.
Moving onto dreams, I'd really like to be able to banish Microsoft from my life. The two major alternatives seem to be Apple or Linux, but I haven't made any move yet...
Getting further off topic, but for me to move away from Windows, I think the new non-Windows operating system should be pre-installed by the manufacturer with high assurance of software equivalents for all of my primary applications *AND* the ability to import my old data, which has mostly been trapped in Microsoft formats. I've done enough of cross-booting to say that cross-booting is not convenient enough...
Getting off topic, but when I say "mature" I mean in the sense that I don't have to spend too much time on system issues and can spend most of my time on doing actual things. Trying to keep this brief, but I think that for me to go with Linux it either needs to be pre-installed by the maker with high assurance of software equivalents for all of my primary applications *AND* the ability to import my old data, which has mostly been trapped in Microsoft formats, or I need to be able to install it as an upgrade that will retain convenient access to my existing Windows software. Cross-booting is not convenient enough, and WINE has very low "assurance" value, and I don't know of alternative approaches...
Fuck anonymous coward and the horse you rode in on.
The conflict of Google caching is not that they scan pages and use that content for indexing and search results, but that they allow the cached content to remain available even after the authors have changed the site so those keywords no longer exist. I frankly think it's difficult to justify that use of caching. That's the goal of the Internet Archives Project, but in Google's case it would make good sense to offer the cache-based version only if the original site is down (or /.ed).
(For people who are eager to distribute content but who want to minimize their bandwidth charges for their own servers, it would actually make excellent sense for Google to offer some special metatag to encourage cache availability all of the time. (Though they ought to offer some kind of service for site owners to get a "hit report" for the cached access directly from Google. Obvious implementation would be with a metatag that authorizes an address for a robotic query--only the site owner could add that to the webpage.))
The conflict with the publishers and authors is *completely* different. However, I don't blame Google for trying to adapt to the new technologies, and you can't blame the defenders of the old system for crying when those new technologies are threatening the very existence of their system. To heck with the children! What about the money!?!
Libraries have always had a tenuous relationship with publishers, because borrowed books are only sold once. The argument there was that the public derived large enough benefits that it was okay. Also, the libraries are seen as kind of good publicity and not very accessible, so they (the publishers) can still still books, and perhaps even make more sales to a more literate population.
The Internet is changing things radically. The recent story about newspapers suffering is only a different tip of the same iceberg. From that perspective, the only solution is to ban the technology, which seems unlikely.
When the Internet library is banned, only outlaws will have libraries?
In conclusion, I think the publishers are doomed. The Internet is not going to be banned. It doesn't matter if Google or someone else does it. The books are going to become available via the Web, and the publishers can try to adapt or they can become extinct. Google just wants to be first for the same reason Amazon wanted to be first.
(And the CSS weirdness in the preview and editing areas is over here, too? Looks like an accessible page now. I'm still wondering if it's somehow linked to the latest abuses of anonymous moderation...)
Typically diabolical Microsoft marketing.
I'm really thinking about switching to anything else. Unfortunately, I've had bad experiences with Apple in the past, and the Linux options remain immature, especially in Japan.
[And what was all that bizarre junk before the preview? CSS problems on top of the moderation-based attacks? (I had 28 moderations in my last report, and many of them were extremely peculiar.) It seems to think that my Firefox has switched to some sort of accessibility mode?]
You poseur. You're no geek to propose such a flawed algorithm. It essentially reduces to a 3-digit pin with a 0 or 1 givaway. the optimum random solution is probably 12 bits or 12 tosses. I admit my Q&D heuristic is unbounded, but it hasn't gone into an infinite loop yet, and it can be done quite easily.
Actually, I'm certain that the truth about Dubya would have prevented him from having any political career at all.
I guess I'll send them a sharply worded letter first, but I really don't see any way that I can do any business with a company like this. Not even as a shareholder.
To elaborate (but at risk of going off-topic), the basic idea is that if someone wants to store information about you, you should have the right to make them store it on your machine. They can sign it or whatever to prevent you from tampering with it, but if they want to see it again, they should have to ask your permission. As long as it's reasonable, you can let them see it--unless you change your mind. Even including your SSN.
This is not really as radical as it might seem. Only a few years ago, pretty much all of your personal information was stored in your punkin head, so to speak. If someone wanted to know about you, they HAD to ask you. From that perspective, the essential principle of the Fifth Amendment is that you didn't have to tell them if you don't feel like it. However, these days it is increasingly less necessary to ask you anything--someone else already owns your data.
Anyway, the entire question of personal privacy is rapidly becoming moot. It's not just that our fear-mongering overlords want more power over each of us, but also that we have no barrier to protect privacy in this modern age. Do you have any idea how much of your personal data is stored out there? Of course not--but the organizations storing it (mostly companies and governments) can do whatever they want with it. My contention is that we need to extend the Bill of Rights to explicitly state that your personal information is part of your property and should be protected from search or seizure without probable cause.
Root cause? I actually blame it on the "free lunch" mentality that led to advertiser-sponsored "free" radio broadcasts, which led to even worse advertising on television, and which is now threatening the Internet, too. It's not as though they were unaware of the dangers, and the radio stations were originally required to consider the public interest. However, in the long run the profits have eclipsed everything else. Advertisers are not interested in creating well-educated citizens and careful voters. Their concern is with creating pliable shopping robots.
Have you already forgotten the famous BushCo advice about not launching "new products" in August? So how'd you like to buy a nice war?
As regards the Sony comment, that wasn't completely a joke. I really do own some Sony stock, and I really can't decide what to do about it. On the other hand, I certainly don't think that Sony is going to pay a whole lot of attention to what any minor shareholder does or thinks. However, if I react to every news item that is related to my stocks, the only beneficiaries will by the stockbrokers, since they rake their commissions off the top.
However, the lousy quality of the reporting isn't the only thing that's killing the newspapers. I think that they are in a death trap of reader selectivity. Since most people only believe what they want to believe, do you really expect them to pay to read other stuff, too? From that perspective, it's only natural for the Internet to slaughter the newspapers. Not just because the Web is faster and cheaper, but because search engines make it easy to find the stuff that agrees with what you want to believe. No cognitive dissonance there!
To give you a convenient concrete example, if you dislike Bush, just do a news search for "Dubya", and you're pretty sure to see plenty of disrespect. All you need is to learn the appropriate buzzwords for what you want to see, and voila, that's what you see.
Actually, I like to sample several of the extreme positions, because the truth is most often somewhere in the middle. However, that's another strike against newspapers, in my opinion, since most of them are pretty uniform. An enormous part of the content comes straight off the wire, and the rest of it tends to be whatever the publisher likes.
Seriously speaking, this shows two things. One is yet another demonstration of the fundamental evil of Microsoft's "security" model. Even if you weren't running as root/Administrator (and everyone does, don't they?), then the "reputable" installation from the "reputable" company would just ask you to elevate your privileges.
The other thing is that power is always abused. If not now and by Sony, then tomorrow by some other "reputable" company. (Or put on your tin hat and say "Yesterday by the NSA.")
I hope they track this story, and if it is not another misguided /. rumor, I certainly hope that Sony repudiates the technique and the software. Soon.
Then they should apologize.
Then sack the person responsible.
Then sack the person responsible for not sacking the responsible person earlier.
[Infinite loop warning.]
However, I have to doubt it. I'm pretty sure that the large tanks would have multiple relief valves and probably even pressure monitors with alarms. So does anyone want to start a pool on the cause? The angry intern was the only suggestion I saw so far...
I even promise to say "thank you" as soon as you figure out how to do it. (Breaking a promise to a foe is also one of life's little pleasures.)
Having worked with liquid nitrogen in the past, I don't really like the thought of what would happen if the liquid was quickly heated up. The tanks are vented, but I really doubt the vents would be able to deal with that. Sure, the gas itself is not going to burn and might even snuff out a few neighboring fires (though the oxygen will come back fairly quickly and the fires might revive), but it's the large and very jagged flying pieces of metal that could, shall we say, greatly inconvenience anyone in the vicinity.
It's certainly not an experiment I'd want to participate in.
Let's try again. You are a vacuous fake, a minor dildo hurler, a waste of bits. I have no use for you except as a "foe". In real life I assume you are a spam emailer or minor hoodlum of some sort. Or perhaps you're already posting from jail. I don't care.
All I want from you is a "foe" rating.
(Well, actually that's a rhetorical florish. I really couldn't give a flying shite what you do. It's just the convenience of seeing the "foe" dot and ignoring the associated tripe--if my settings haven't already made the post invisible.)
The only thing I'm looking for here is a nice "foe" mark. Just click on the gray ball.
Having said that, I do think there's a difference in the motivations of the corporate donors. I think many of the larger donations to Clinton's Democratic Party were seen as a kind of insurance. In contrast, the donations to BushCo are seen as investments. (And remember that Dubya's #1 investor was that master of shaky investments, Enron.) There are still some traces of philosophic differences between the parties, but they are almost totally eclipsed behind the big money now. In that scenario, the "best" way for the Democrats to "win" is to become bigger gangsters than BushCo. The "win" in quotes because the country loses in almost every case.
I also think your praise of Reagan is misdirected. His main contribution to the present mess was to demonstrate that a bogus puppet can be a "successful" President. However, I admit that he is quite different from Dubya. Reagan was essentially incapable of lying. Whatever he saw on the teleprompter was the truth to him, and no problem if it was diametrically opposed to yesterday's "truth". This was natural from his background as an actor, even for the B grade. While Dubya is pretty dumb, sometimes he knows he's lying, and then he gets all fumble-mouthed.
My belief about the real root of the problem is that it came from "free" radio broadcasts. The explosive growth of the advertising industry was not about creating better educated citizens and voters. It was about manipulating suckers, and ultimately has created a nation where 30% of the voters are easily manipulated by Karl Rove and his ilk, and 40% are too disgusted (or manipulated into passivity?) to even bother voting.
As it applies to the main topic, the signficance of the anti-science fanatics is that they are a "cheap" block of votes. Just agree with them on their key issue, and you get that block of votes. Later on you can make excuses about why you couldn't deliver *all* of the promised craziness, though that may not matter as long as the fanatics believe the opposition disagrees.
Pretty please with sugar and spice on top. However, 9:1 you're still a rude jackass even after you figure out how to designate me as a foe.
Please.
Fortunately for science, though unfortunately for America, attacking science produces negative dynamic stabiity. You can't disrupt one part of science without disrupting *ALL* parts of science. The inevitable result is that, in the long term, the societies with the best science will wind up with the biggest and best bombs, too. (Unfortunately, in the short term, you might wind up dead due to the bad science...)
Just don't get a swelled head about it. I wouldn't regard you as a non-trivial "foe" unless you were actually a large-scale spammer or mafia punk, or something along those lines. Any Sophistic moron can misread and twist posts and play various imbecilic word games. (Unless I'm confusing you with some other moron. Excuse me for not caring.)
Another point against anonymous moderation. I don't begrudge them their right to moderate that post funny, but (as the author), I really would like to know what the punchline was supposed to be--but I can't even ask them. I would have thought the other post with Bill Gates as "the senior Senator from Microsoft" might have been the one deserving moderation as "funny". The parent post was basically supposed to be serious.