I didn't know what a Brahman was until I worked for one. And you're right... all of them I've met have been assholes, while the lower caste Indians I've known have been mostly pretty decent people. In fact, I've noticed a strong correlation between caste, hygiene, and personality. Lower caste Indians, from what I've observed, are often slightly less well-groomed, and are typically far nicer people. High-caste Indians will dress and groom immaculately, and be complete assholes.

There are exceptions, but by and large this has been my repeated observation after working with hundreds of Indians over the years. I'm probably a racist for pointing it out, but whatever.

So, I'll summarize to what I was initially going to say (before I went on a bit of a rant, as it were). Essentially, you don't need technology to put you in such a situation. You can just take a job in a different industry, or company, or management chain, or whatever. Assuming you're white, if you want to be treated as a reviled minority, there are plenty of jobs where you can get the experience of being a reviled minority first-hand.

The other part of what I said though (which I think you missed), is that this type of experience doesn't typically breed tolerance; quite the opposite, in fact. I know a LOT of people who went into Microsoft without prejudice against any race, and came out loathing Indians. Sure, maybe those of us who went through that hell can identify with other minorities now, but is it really a better situation? I don't think so.

If you're white, and want to be a minority and be treated like a worthless piece of shit, all you have to do is go work for an Indian management chain at Microsoft (or probably any other big tech company). Want to get a bad review because of the color of your skin? Be white. Want to work 16-hour days while your bosses are off playing golf? Be white - your Indian coworkers will be off playing golf with your bosses, so you get to do their work.

Want to claim that you're a minority who's been discriminated against, and that you're not racist as a response? I say bullshit. Racism breeds racism. I never had a problem with Indians until I and all my white coworkers (and ALL my female coworkers, regardless of race) were routinely subjected to their racist bullshit for years on end. When they routinely hand out mediocre to poor reviews to all the whites, and stellar reviews to all the Indians, but then put those same whites in charge of the high visibility projects that they need done right the first time, there's a problem. When the Indians can take down an online service multiple times without much more than a sideways glance, and a white person nearly gets fired for causing a lesser outage, there's a problem. When this happens long enough, it's easy to start harboring disdain and distrust of ALL Indians.

I was fortunate - I got to know enough decent, talented Indian folk who treated everyone with respect that it mostly straightened out my view on the matter. SOME whites are racist assholes - the majority are not. SOME blacks are racist assholes - the majority are not. SOME Indians are racist assholes - they are drawn to management positions at Microsoft, apparently - but the majority are not.

The Fusion-io cards are also single slot, single PCB. The 3.2T card is even a low-profile card. So it's more like saying "hey, there's a 32GB DIMM out now!" While true, it's been true for quite some time. They're expensive, sure, but the home user who wants one can still stuff a system full of them.

Well, I've gotten 42mpg driving I-5 through Oregon at an average speed of around 70, in a 2005 Civic Coupe. My average speed for most of my daily commute is about 70 (about half of it at 65 and half at 75), and my typical mileage is somewhere around 33mpg. So 30mpg at 85 doesn't really seem like a stretch.

Samsung just now announced a 3.2T card? Why are they so late to the party? Fusion-io has had 3.2T cards out for well over a year, and has 6.4T cards out on the market now. Most people won't be buying them anytime soon for home use, but for the person who really feels they need one, they're available. I think the online price to buy through Dell is about $24k right now.

Yep, it's for sure all those darned Republicans with their fingers in Seattle and King County politics, from Jay Inslee right on down to Dow Constantine and Ed Murray.

Actually, it's not so much an "unwillingness to share" even though I understand how it comes across that way. If it were a simple question, such as one might find on stackoverflow, certainly, happy to help. But the breadth of the question means a huge amount of time is required to answer it in any sort of adequate fashion. Time is money, they say, and frankly I have more money than time. So it's more like "there's a limit to my generosity, after that you have to pay for my time."

and I like to get paid for my work. I expect most of my peers feel similar. So as unhelpful as you may find this, hire someone who's done it before, and ask them nicely to let you tag along and learn. Then you can become one of the professionals.

The above statement may sound condescending, but it's not meant that way. It takes years to learn the stuff you're asking, and differentiates the juniors from the seniors. Asking the seniors to train you for free isn't likely to be that well received by most of us.

Because it was only completely contained in those two countries... It's not remotely contained in DRC or Liberia.

This is actually false in many cities in the Seattle area now. Many of them actually do force you to sign up for garbage service. If you refuse to pay, they send you to collections and do their best to make your life hell. I believe Kent is now one of those cities (about a half hour south of Seattle). Thankfully I'm in a city that doesn't do that (yet), but I've heard talk that they'd like to.

So really, the choice in some cities is:
1) Pay for garbage service and use the garbage service
2) Pay for garbage service and take your own trash to the dump, and pay to dispose of it there.

I'm not certain how they get away with it from a legal standpoint, but they do (so far, at least).

Ever hear of saying no? "Sir, if you want my cash, you will have to arrest me and charge me with a crime."
or
"Sir, I will be happy to comply when you have a search and seizure warrant signed by the court. You may contact me at [phone number] once you have it. Until then, if I'm not under arrest, I'll be leaving."

Seriously, stop orzing. Yes, he'll be pissed... but what's he going to do, pull you out of your car? Shoot you? Maybe, but unlikely. Keep your door locked, and be firm but polite. Oh, and if you end up in court get an attorney to fight it, there's no justice for those without legal representation. None whatsoever.

You're aware that all the services of Office365 started out as box products, and are still available that way, right? Microsoft doesn't provide the server, but they readily provide the software. It's just expensive and a PITA to maintain, which is why people outsource to Microsoft where several hundred people work full-time to keep those services running as reliably as possible.

There's no reasonable way you could provide all the services of Office365 on a single local server for any company of reasonably large size, and even if you had a few servers you'd completely lose the local and geo redundancy features. The ability to have an entire datacenter go offline and only suffer a brief blip in services is something that very few companies have the money or the knowledge to implement themselves.

Civil disobedience is different still.

You're aware that bicycles fit easily through places where cars cannot follow, right? You stopped why? Do you honestly think that doughnut-muncher had the ambition to pull his lazy arse out of his car and actually pursue you on foot? And even if he did, you're on a bicycle, if he gets out you can EASILY ride faster than he can run.

I mean, good job citizen, way to orz on command.