Can't we just face the reality that some races are actually better are certain things than others due to millions of years of evolution?

You misunderstand the reported problem entirely.

Even if we assume your assertion is correct, the average still means nothing in this context. Even if 2% of white people have IQ of 130 but only 1% of black people do (numbers entirely made up for illustration purposes), we would expect the 1% to be approximately as successful as the 2%. If they aren't, then we might reasonably want to understand why.

The tallest woman was 2.48m tall. Would you expect her to be shorter than a 2.48m-tall man, just because women are shorter than men on average?

Manned exploration may be really expensive, but if we can do it right I think it would be far far more efficient than robotic probes.

What about robotic probes that cost half or even about as much as manned exploration? The choice isn't just between tiny rovers and astronauts.

You mean the Xerox that "was allowed to buy pre-IPO stock from Apple, in exchange for engineer visits and an understanding that Apple would create a GUI product", according to Wikipedia?

Make no mistake if they didn't have to - they wouldn't have.

WebKit was created in 2002 with IIRC about 400,000 lines of KHTML code. While this is a good chunk of code, let's not kid ourselves that this represents something Apple couldn't have written from scratch to keep closed. Still, Apple presumably saved some development effort, and the resulting code is enjoyed by many - including Nokia and later Android. How biased do you have to be to turn a win-win-win story for open source software into a snide comment?

Blame the broken system rather than the companies who take advantage of what they're given.

Well, these are powerful companies that either helped draft those laws, or are not doing much to fix it...

No, we should fix three problems: One, make it easy for top talent to come work in the US, permanently. Two, make the temporary worker program live up to its name, instead of displacing US workers. Three, stop taxing true temporary workers for a benefit they are not eligible to receive. Your proposal attempts to use an injustice to make up for another, which is not only wrong in principle, but also ineffective since the US workers are still angry anyway.

The H1B is not a "dual intent" visa. Rather, the doctrine of dual intent is recognized for people on that visa: they may be here with temporary intent for one job, but have permanent intent with regard to another one IF they obtain lawful permanent resident status. In other words, their having permanent intent is NOT a visa violation (as it would be, with, say, a TN1 visa.)

You've just described why the H-1B is commonly referred to as a "dual intent" visa: you're allowed to have that second intent. Now, since you assert that it's actually not a "dual intent" visa, please also explain what a true "dual intent" visa actually means.

You getting an A+ in your algorithms class doesn't matter to me at all as someone doing hiring. You having experience, knowing how the real world works is what matters.

Why does it have to be either-or? I would not hire a programmer who knows nothing of algorithms any more than I would a 4.0-GPA CS graduate who never learned to write code. Part of "experience in the real world" is learning that using the right algorithms is very important, just as important as the ability to write good code.

Can you explain your thought process to me, beginning to end?

Allow me. Start with the core assumption that Apple users are sheep, who are unwilling or unable to think for themselves. Thus, they are defenseless against Apple's powerful marketing, much like unarmed civilians against an attacking army. As the invading army must then take responsibility for the safety of the civilians, so must Apple provide the most ideologically-pure (open source, Free, etc.) products to its sheep. Any mishap is therefore Apple's fault, because the users are so utterly helpless.

Yes, at the core of this thought process is an insult, because they just can't think of any reason that an intelligent person would buy an Apple product after considering alternatives.

You are basically saying you tried Windows 98 and hated it therefore Windows 7 has to be just as bad.

Don't blame customers for their bad first impressions if you don't care enough about your brand to do right by them the first time.

And yet there is no epidemic. If Mac users are the rich idiots that the stereotypes depict, why wouldn't every other Mac be full of trojans? At some point, when observation keeps contradicts your prediction, you're gonna have to review your premise.

I think 99% of Americans would support this.

I don't think you can get 99% of Americans to agree that the earth isn't flat.

Riiiight - just like the quality control guys are a cost centre, and the safety standards people, too.

jacks0n may have been overly harsh, but he makes a good point. A friend of mine was in a certain air force, and his officer once addressed the group. Paraphrased, he said that their only job is to deliver missiles, and if you're not delivering missiles you better be making it easier for somebody to do that. IT is the same: your job is to enable by default, and disable only when you absolutely must. Now, when it's your job to answer for breaches, everything looks like a threat, yet while that's an understandable and useful frame of mind, it needs to be balanced with getting real work (remember, delivering missiles) done efficiently. Safety standards are useful, but there's a reason combat aircraft turn off anti-collision lights on missions.

In this case, I don't see portable electronics going away. In fact, I see them become more powerful, more highly-personal, and more popular, so IT Departments would be wise to find a way to keep them useful without compromising too much in security. Calling them "toys" or "whiz-bang gadgets" is a rather poor attitude for a geek who's supposed to see their uses better than the unwashed masses.

No, the 5% ($105 million) means that's what the RIAA agrees is Limewire's share of the responsibility. It's not outrageous to claim that the person who actually downloaded those songs is 95% responsible.

Sure, you can cite many examples of companies that were in the right place at the right time (Yahoo, Google), or are examples from the time I was referring to (MS, Apple).

Right place at the right time is precisely one (if not the) formula to success, so I don't understand why you're discounting that. Yahoo! and later Google would not have been successful if the web wasn't so big that we couldn't easily find what we wanted. Microsoft being picked by IBM to build PC-DOS is the stuff of lore, and Apple ][ certainly was a right-place-right-time product.

There is even the chance that, even today, you can beat the odds and turn a small company into a success, but it's certainly not as likely as it once was.

I don't really know what numbers we might use to prove the comparison you want to make, but I don't think it was more likely back in the day. Apple's early competitors included Atari, Commodore, and many others who ultimately didn't make it. Microsoft fought Lotus and WordPerfect and GEM and others. Success was not at all likely, much less guaranteed. Do you know of Stacker? Stac had a clever disk compression product, Microsoft killed them. Netscape had the first good web browser, Microsoft killed them. Apple killed a number of third party apps, not to mention the clones. This is a bloody, bloody path if you care to look back.

The problem is that it's incredibly hard in today's environment to survive as a small business, much less flourish. If you achieve any success at all, you'll attract the attention of larger companies who will either buy you out (a good outcome from your perspective, maybe not so good for the industry) or use their much deeper pockets to try and put you out of business through lost-leader pricing or outright anti-competitive practices.

Apple and Microsoft both had to contend with IBM, in an era where nobody was ever fired for buying IBM. I don't see how that was any easier.

Behemoths generally have groups of analysts whose sole raison d'être is to seek out new lines of business. If anything new appears on the horizon and looks like it will generate revenues, these organizations are quick to jump in, buy out or push out any competitors, or even quash new technologies if they feel it may compromise the profitability of existing revenue streams.

Again, I disagree. Behemoths indeed have certain advantages, but quickness is almost never one of them. Microsoft was late to music players, and late (or too early, if you want to take that perspective) to the modern smart phone and tablets, and not particularly early in game consoles. IBM was late enough to personal computers that Apple got itself a foothold, and late enough to PC operating systems that DOS and Windows survived. You can easily look at Android to pick out a number of features that Apple was or is late at. Google itself was playing catch-up in things like web mail, and of course phone and tablet OS.

It all adds up to an environment that heavily favors large corporations at the expense of small businesses. This is not news and I find it hard to fathom that anyone can honestly feel that is not the case.

I'm not arguing that this is not the case, I'm arguing that this is not a new case. I'm saying that small companies have always had a very tough time, especially when they tread into areas that big companies become interested in. In fact, it was far worse back then when we didn't even have anti-trust laws.

Now, I do agree with you that many start-ups seem to be primarily interested in getting bought than building itself into a big company, but how much of that is just wanting the quick buck and not willing to put in the real work ("kids these days"), and how much is your thesis that it's not possible anymore? Facebook, for example, doesn't seem that interested in being bought out.