Despite the legal action (and victories) by the DoJ it doesn't seem to me like we've had any price drops to reurn us to the pre-cartel pricing. So apparently these guys get a slap on the wrist and will get to keep the fruits of their bad behaviour?

The rate varies by card and the high-end cards can have significant fees atttached. And as stores aren't allowed to pass the fees along to the card holder every person gets stuck paying for the rich guy with the black card. Ignoring that - cartels, collusion and price fixing are illegal.

My observation in Canada is that most places don't take amex.

I think there are two problems, the first being the press does not understand science - and hence run stories about wine being great for you without the understanding that the chemical mentioned is present in such minute quantities as to be irrelevant.

The second issue is that a lot of the public (and hence the press) does not differentiate between proper research and published books or perceived authorities (fuck you Dr Oz and Dr Phil) espousing bullshit.

In summary - one part snake oil, one part losing nuance.

Seems like this would be an education issue not a hiring issue. e.g. are there really a lot of underemployed / unemployed black or hispanics with CS degrees?

I suspect the tech industry has a high percentage of minorities due to Indians and other Asians ethnicity.

I tried to use Android Studio a few times in the early days but could never get it to launch. Failed with non-helpful errors and none of the solutions

Full disclosure - I'm an inactive Eclipse committer so while one might argue I have a dog in the race I should also be competent enough to get it to run!

Are DNS entries really indicative of cheating? It doesn't necessarily follow that someone who has viewed a site about cheating is actually cheating. And now that it is known, it is virtually guaranteed that anyone actually cheating will simply use a secondary PC to surf the sites.

Its almost like there is a concerted campaign this month against Android openness - or are journalists seeing buzz around earlier stories and creating more link bait? I think this article and the others all demonstrate a fundamental lack of understanding of the open source world.

There is more than one model, while there are entirely open projects like the Linux kernel, there are also a great many projects with both open and proprietary components. See MySQL, JBoss, Glassfish, Solaris, ExtJS, Nexus, etc., all of these projects are completely functional products but the companies provide additional functionality for profit.

Android code is available under an OSI license, the code comprises a complete functional product (assuming device drivers, but that isn't Google's responsibility). The Open Source world is driven by contributing back, not by getting everything on a silver platter for free.

Actually a higher income bracket often comes with a higher % as well.

Lets be honest here, a pretty significant part of university expenses is not teaching its research. Why should former students be paying for research?