If you want to believe that politicians aren't just a bunch of amoral, self-serving scumbags, you go right on ahead.

Move to Chattanooga. It's one of the few cities in the southeast that built up a hugely successful municipal broadband fiber-optic system before the telcos bribed the state legislators into killing them off everywhere else. It's like an island paradise in the sea of shit (which the scumbag legislators of TN have been trying to sink for years).

You people don't understand because you seem to be working under the assumption that politicians are out to serve the public, and that this is somehow an ideological issue. If you look at it instead as "scumbag politicians, acting purely in their own self-interest, soliciting big campaign donations from cablecos/telcos" it makes a lot more sense, doesn't it?

Because brib....ahem "campaign contribiti.....ahem "corporate free speech".

And crowdsourcing!

Actually, it's all part of their new $25 "World of WarCraft BanHammer" expansion.

Yeah, but the 20-year-old who wants a cool software suite in his car today will be a family man who just wants plenty of room tomorrow. Eighteen year olds have a nasty, but consistent, tendency to become 30-somethings.

When I was 18 I drove a Camaro with a kick-ass sound system and it was good.
When I was 35, I drove a mini-van with many screens to distract the kids and it was good
When I was 45, I drove a Camaro again, because I wasn't good.
When I was 55, I drove a Mercedes and it was very good.

And I, for one, welcome our new Google overlords. I'd like to remind them that, as a programmer, I would be very useful in managing the slaves in their data mines.

IBM wasn't undone by the platform, they were undone by the CLONES running the platform. And at the end of the day, a car is still 99% hardware. It takes a lot to build one, and I can't envision a world where cars can be easily home built from standard parts.

Every time I hear a U.S. official talking about anything these days, I'm reminded of that scene in "Animal House" at the end where Kevin Bacon is desperately trying to calm the panicking crowd by saying "All is well" over and over again.

Hey, isn't Iraq on fire?

All is well.

Hey, aren't we $18 trillion in debt?

All is well.

Hey, isn't there a growing disparity between the rich and poor?

All is well.

Going slower means we can't push as many trains through, which means we don't make as much money!

Typical Silicon Valley liberal bullshit. From Code.org's website (bold added for emphasis)

So did you think this was going to mean some CS classes for you, poor little Appalachian white boy? Well TOUGH LUCK! That oppressed girl from Grosse Pointe beats you out again.

If the DICE staff don't post their daily "All white heterosexual males are evil" article, they risk losing their Silicon Valley Liberal cards.

When I read that story as a kid, it seemed absolutely absurd to me. How could such a society ever even come to be?

Now I understand. God Bless You, Mr. Vonnegut

I love how the headline and summary just unquestioningly accepts the premise that there is sexism in science and that something MUST be done about it--all based on the single data point that there are more men in STEM than women.

If an unbalanced gender ratio is all you need to prove sexism, then doesn't it follow that the Nursing and Elementary Education fields are even MORE sexist than STEM (and even more in need of attention)?