Well, yes, I *am* a white male. But then, that's a pretty good "dollar to donut" bet to make about any random person posting regularly on Slashdot, isn't it?

I can't speak for Engineering students and what they're running up against in the work world, since that's not really my field. (Just today, coming home on the train, though... I heard a few people discussing Engineering and how "weird" the entire hiring process gets, especially for EE's. They were primarily talking about pay and raises -- but the point was, it sounded like there are a LOT of hard-to-explain decisions being made surrounding employment in that particular field.)

I will say that I spent 7 years or so doing PC support along-side an African American guy who was one of the brightest and most enjoyable people I ever worked with. He completely knew his stuff about both the computer network and the phone system we used. I don't know what he was paid, but I hope he earned more than I did because he absolutely deserved it.

Bottom line is, if you're hiring less qualified people based on skin color, you're screwing yourself in the end....

I'm still on the fence, on this.... As much as we rely on computers for in modern society (even life and death scenarios, such as computer systems warning about dangerous drug interactions when you're given a prescription), it doesn't seem impossible to get electronic voting done securely and properly.

The big problem seems to be a lack of understanding of the technology and security issues on the part of the folks who selected "approved" voting machine systems?

For example, all of this talk about touch screens with calibration issues? That's not even really a "thing" with capacitive touch-screens. How often do you have to recalibrate your iPad or iPhone's screen? It seems like any voting machine using the older and cheaper resistive touch-screen technology should have immediately been discarded as inadequate.

Good old-fashioned paper ballots? Well, they work -- but then you're back to handling an awful lot of paper, which has plenty of downsides of its own. And they couldn't even get THAT completely right, as evidenced by the whole "hanging chad" incident in Florida.

Personally, I think any e-voting system needs to have some way for the voter to be able to verify his/her voting selections after the fact, but via PGP key encryption type scheme (public and private key), so nobody ELSE has a way to view those selections without the permission of the key-holder who voted. (This would largely put an end to accusations of votes getting deleted or changed by the electronic voting machines, or by people modifying the data somewhere along the line.) The results could still be tabulated from the database of all the recorded votes ... but information tying a vote to an individual would be the encrypted part that the vote counters would be unable to access. The database could be "closed" when the polls closed with a CRC checksum value, too. So any tampering with the database after that point would change the checksum value.

Done properly, this would seem to me to be MORE secure than paper ballots (where it would be relatively easy to "lose" a whole bunch of them that help someone win who you're getting paid off to keep from winning).

Yeah.... I made a much more detailed post on here, somewhere up above this one, where I explained my views.

But this is, IMO, quite accurate.

Goes back to the line about Central government being an inherently evil thing, YET a necessary evil....

Why necessary? Anarchists will tell you it's not, and even quote some limited examples of anarchist societies that thrived for a period of time in history. Unfortunately, those examples don't seem to be around anymore in most cases.... or else they refer to a very remote, primitive society, which I don't think proves very much. (As a society gets more advanced, there are far more problems to be solved, such as resource utilization to make technologies work, and equitable distribution of the benefits. Primitive societies haven't run into these issues yet.)

I think most of us eventually gravitate towards some sort of central leadership. There's a sense that doing so frees us up to worry about and do other things. Certainly, it enables very large scale projects that are very difficult for a private party to gather funding for or to cost-justify except in nebulous or very long-term ways.

I don't think there's any one, perfect form of government. But I do think Capitalism, as laid out by the USA's founders, is a relatively good foundation to a workable and tolerable system. It does require constant vigilance (as we were repeatedly advised and warned), but a society willing to continually push back as government naturally tends to try to expand in size and scope results in a functional (even useful) core, IMO.

I'm with you that we need a better option, but Socialism? No way, man.... That's been tried in plenty of nations already, and people are generally free to move to those countries and practice it all they want, if they feel it's so superior to what's offered in America.

Personally, I think there's really nothing seriously wrong with the U.S. Constitution as it was originally written. (There may be a couple of the amendments which arguably weren't such good ideas or could have been written more effectively a different way.)

Most of our nation's problems, IMO, stem from getting away from the core ideas of the Founding Fathers about how the country was supposed to work. The system of checks and balances put in place was effective enough to put the brakes on corruption, but unable to completely stop it (as folks like Ben Franklin predicted and were concerned about). They gave us their "Democracy", "if we could keep it" - and apparently we've let it slip through our fingers increasingly in the last 50+ years.

The problem today is, our government has become such a big "ship" that you can't change its course very quickly. Personally, I find myself standing with those holding libertarian ideals, but at the same time realize that the "big L" Libertarian party has been ineffective BECAUSE it can't seem to distinguish between utopian ideals / principles, and the reality of politics today (compromises are required to make changes, and big changes only happen with many tiny steps).

Where there is centralized power (governance), you'll find corruption, no matter WHAT political ideology you prefer. I firmly believe the people in charge of Socialist (or Communist) nations are just as corrupt as those in charge of our Capitalist system.

The key is to trim central government back to the bare essentials. Yes, it's inherently evil, but unfortunately, I believe (as many do) that it's a necessary evil. So the goal is to always treat it as the poison it is, and minimize its usage.

Right now, the dominance of the 2 party system leads to the occasional libertarian-minded person running as a Republican. So I'll vote for those individuals when I find them and when I'm able to. The party platform they're on is irrelevant, really, except they're leveraging it as a way to remain a viable candidate. The statists who cling to the party are certainly corrupt and need to be voted out, but they're really no better than the vast majority of Democrats running.

It seems to me that one of the biggest complications lies in candidates trying to win votes based on topics that wouldn't even BE issues in a libertarian political scenario. For example, coming out for gay marriage (a favored tactic of Democrats), or concerning oneself with "family values and morals" like many statist Republicans like to tout? These are things government shouldn't even be INVOLVED in, period! A small, efficient central government won't waste taxpayer dollars and time/effort trying to legislate personal lifestyle choices or religious values!

Almost all political systems look great in theory and on paper.... but it's only when they come into actual use, in a society full of flawed human beings, that their validity is truly tested. IMO, Socialism has never proven to work as a "best option" in real world implementation. It simply has no incentive built in to encourage people to better themselves or strive for greatness. It's the same problem we've seen with labor unions in America. Yes, they provided initial solutions to some problems of unfair treatment of workers -- but in the long run, they fail to reward anyone for going above and beyond the rest of the group. We may all be CREATED equal, but our development as individuals takes very different paths after that. I don't WANT to live in a country that essentially promotes everyone being as similar as possible. I'm fine with voluntary inequality (EG. someone lives without much wealth because he/she prefers to be lazy and do the minimum to get by, while someone else prospers and becomes wealthy due to hard work, discipline and constant striving to learn more).

I'm NOT fine with a huge income gap created solely by corruption (paying off people in politics to bend rules to favor specific groups unfairly). But again, I think that's a battle you'll NEVER fully solve, as long as humans are imperfect creatures. You just have to have a system in place that makes such things difficult to get away with.

This sounds like a load of B.S. to me, unless you have some proof to back it up?

I can tell you that in close to 30 years of working in I.T. -- I've never seen this sort of behavior by H.R. In fact, when it came to I.T. hiring -- the hiring managers were often pushing to find a qualified female or minority candidate, precisely BECAUSE they got nervous about having nothing but white males in the department.

I helped interview candidates at one of my previous I.T. jobs, and my boss was openly frustrated that we just couldn't recommend any of the female candidates we interviewed. He was even hinting to us that we might want to adjust our standards a bit and give one of them a chance if we thought she could at least learn what was needed..... Only reason it didn't happen was the women who applied (for a workstation support job) were clearly uncomfortable doing such things as unscrewing the cover of the case for the desktop PCs and upgrading RAM or swapping out a defective part. We were too small a department to hire people who couldn't "hit the ground running" with that stuff.

I'm sure racist employers are out there -- but it's really not that big a problem, from my experiences. Most people simply want employees who can get the work done efficiently, because labor is too big an expense to spend it on someone who lacks the skills or motivation.

In my I.T. career, I've only met ONE memorable recruiter who honestly seemed to be concerned about matching the top candidates for the positions he knew of openings for. And in that case, he actually spent over an hour with me getting *detailed* information about my skills and strengths/weaknesses, before telling me that he honestly placed more software development people than anything else (I was seeking a network or systems admin job at the time.). He still kept my info on file though, in case the right opportunity came along. And to his credit, he contacted me LONG after I assumed he'd forgotten all about me and moved on, to let me know when something finally came his way.

Almost every other time? I'd say the recruiters I encountered fit one of two basic profiles. First were the "enthusiastic but clueless". Typically these would be the younger people you could tell were just starting out doing recruiting. They couldn't wait to get ahold of your "current resume" and to take you out to lunch to meet you face to face and chat. But after that? Crickets.... Months would go by without them so much as offering a single worthwhile opportunity. When they suddenly re-appeared, calling and leaving voice-mails, email, etc.? They had some job that 5 or 6 other recruiters were also trying to fill. You could find it listed all over the internet job search sites in most cases. Basically, it was clear they needed you more than you needed them.

The second type was the "just need warm bodies to meet my quota" type. These tended to be the slightly older and apparently more experienced recruiters who would send you opportunities that were clearly not even a good fit for your talents or skillset, but insisted you should go to the interviews anyway. After a while, I figured out a lot of these guys worked with H.R. for a few "pet companies" who liked to use them for one reason or another (probably because they low-balled your salary and saved the company some $'s or charged lower finder's fees). They didn't care about finding you the job you wanted, so much as just throwing your resume at their biggest customers every time some of the "key words" on it matched what the business said it needed for a new opening.

The *real* answer is to find the individuals out there who want to "break the cycle" and actually offer something more beneficial than the status-quo, and vote for them regardless of party affiliation.

I know you don't get a lot of real options when you're talking about a vote for the next President. (Truth is -- I think a lot of the people best suited to do the job well have NO interest in ever running. That's why you get such poor candidates, time after time.)

Personally, I would have really loved to see Ron Paul as President when we had the opportunity to elect him. May not have agreed 100% with him on everything, but I liked a LOT of his thinking. And realistically, you can only change or do so much while in office, since you have an entire judicial system AND a senate/congress who are probably filled with people holding opposing views. So anything Ron tried to do would have been tempered and watered down significantly before becoming law.

Right now? I like Dan Bongino for Congress in my district of Maryland. Former secret service agent who knows all about the political system and wants to stamp out a lot of the corruption - giving the common man more of a voice. There are others like him out there.... but you have to search for them and support them when they come out of the woodwork.

Umm, first off? This sentence of yours makes little sense:

"The reduction in mileage isn't because you burn more gasoline, it's simply becaue the oxygenation agents don't contain as much energy as gasoline does."

The reduction in mileage because the oxygenation agents don't contain as much energy as gasoline is EXACTLY why you burn more fuel! The typical operator of a vehicle doesn't just say, "Well ... I was going to drive 18 miles in to work today, but because my fuel has less energy in it in the formulation I filled up with, I'll only go 17 miles and stop my car wherever I end up!"

As far as the ethanol fuels like E10 or E15 (or even E85, which is what you usually see here in the USA) ... I definitely recall the environmental groups getting behind them when they were a new thing. (Granted, this dates back as far as the Carter presidency.) There was a belief that anything switching our fuel usage from dinosaur remains to crops like corn HAD to be a good thing. Perhaps NOW they're not so fond of them and it's big Agra pushing them ... but it wasn't always that way.

My web site link about that meadow jumping mouse was just a result of a 15 second Google search, so no -- that's not a site I frequent. The intent of that post was really just to find a quick example of the MANY times environmental groups scream about a species about to go extinct, and negatively affect a lot of people in the process -- even when that species is of questionable value in the big picture. (If it's so close to extinction already and we're getting by fine without much of it around, there's a good chance it's not a real big deal if the last few of them disappear. Species go extinct without any human intervention all the time. When it's a clear concern, people notice and step in to correct it -- such as the honeybee population decline. I don't know anyone who is uptight about a particular type of field mouse, or some of the birds they've gotten all worked up about in the past.)

I think you're being too short-sighted and cynical myself.

Why do I say that?

Well, when you talk about this situation with the old growth forests .... yep, old growth lumber *is* a limited resource, as anyone remotely following the industry should have been able to see. So what? The industry was also correct ... that trees ARE a renewable resource. All you have to do is plant more of them and WAIT. That's really the only issue here. People in the Pacific Northwest apparently had no "plan B" for what to do when the old trees were all cut down and the new ones were going to need another 100 years or more to regrow.

Like anything? You use it up faster than it can be replenished and you run out ... at least until you give it some time to come back.

You can point fingers at big business or energy companies in particular and scream that they "screwed all of us and LIED about the situation!". But come on... We're all the consumers who DEMAND that energy to survive in our daily lives. They're just supplying the demand. And we DO have no shortage of trees growing in the USA. I see people fighting to save up enough money to get dozens of 'em cut down simply because they're creating endless hassles in people's yards, damaging sewer lines and foundations, creating big cleanup messes each Fall, etc. It's all about the TYPE of wood you're trying to gather up and having the sense to realize that you can only gather up so much at one time, in one area ... and then you're done for a while.

Climate change debate? Not quite the same issue as lumber, but another case where "big energy" will take the brunt of the blame. I think "alternate/clean energy" solutions are coming along nicely -- but you can't rush changes like this, or else you get the sub-standard and uneconomical results we're seeing. (I'm talking about solar panels that cost more to install than they ever recoup in savings for users ..... windmills that can't generate enough wind power to cost-justify themselves without big govt. subsidies, etc. etc.)

It's one thing to look at a grand piece of "mother nature" like the Grand Canyon or some of the Redwood forests on the west coast and say, "Hey.... this is really something scenic, unique and amazing. Probably would be a good move to try to preserve this for future generations to enjoy."

It's entirely another to let the environmentalists tell you what to do when so often, they don't even have solid answers themselves. Remember the oxygenated gasoline thing, where they were SURE it would lead to less air pollution if gas was reformulated that way? So it happened, and cars and trucks started getting WORSE gas mileage than before - since the new formulation had less energy in it per gallon than before. That means more fuel was burned to drive the same number of miles, so likely no net improvement in pollution. But THEN, they find out the oxygenated stuff was more likely to seep into ground water and do damage. So a doubly-bad "improvement" that cost people money.

Or hey... instead of talking American Buffalo, let's talk about a more recent incident, with the "meadow jumping mouse:

http://lastresistance.com/6395...

I actually never knew that about Myst before.

I knew it was a Mac title originally, but I only owned the Windows version on CD. Pretty sure that one was no longer using HyperCard technology (though I remember it did use the Quicktime for Windows player and the QT videos).

Honestly, I'm glad to hear the guy is proud to be gay. He should be. We should ALL be proud of who we are, instead of regretting it or wasting time wishing we were different.

The world would be a really boring place if all of us were "wired" exactly the same, with the exact same interests, habits and tendencies.

But his sexual orientation was published years ago, and came up again some time earlier this year in news articles. So I'm not sure exactly how THIS time around is supposed to mean anything special?

I hate to say it, but I do think all of this is at least partially motivated by a marketing angle for Apple. The company has long been known to be relatively "gay friendly" in hiring practices and in loyal user-base. (Perhaps some of that simply stems from a tendency for the gay community to care more than others about product attributes like style, design or elegance .... all areas not so often associated with computer technology but embraced by Apple since early on?) Perhaps it's just that Tim Cook feels it's a good "climate" to promote Apple as a very equal-opportunity company to work for? I don't know ... but it doesn't seem relevant to bother mentioning it (especially if he's serious about valuing his privacy like he claims), otherwise?

No arguments about this from me. But that doesn't change the fact that the whole thing runs counter to reassuring the public that they're at relatively low risk of catching the stuff if they wind up around someone who has the virus while on mass transit.

I get it.... If they're not at the stage where the vomiting and diarrhea begin, it's different. But those people are still a ticking time bomb in that regard. Do YOU want to be the guy sitting next to one of them on a plane, betting they won't START in with the vomiting and coughing and so forth, until after you're safely away from them at the end of the flight?

I have to say that IMO, this is a pretty good idea.

The whole idea of doing crash tests and designing vehicles around one standard dummy size means you have no way to know if the safety systems work well with anyone outside that narrow parameter.

Not everyone heavier than the 167lbs. or so of the current crash dummy is unhealthy, for starters. Should America's vehicles be higher safety risks for all of our professional athletes with more muscle-mass than average? (Chevrolet just sponsored the World Series .... Maybe they better rethink their strategy if they don't design cars to be as safe for some of those guys?)

Even the "ideal weight charts" say a 6'4" person is still in the "normal" weight range at 197lbs. - so what about tall people like that? (Are the crash test dummies tall enough to see what happens when someone's head is that much higher up in the vehicle? They probably should check into that.)

But even putting all of that aside for a moment? The people bringing up those comparisons of average body types in other countries to ours don't really convince me that we're so bad off as a nation. Honestly, I used to be as skinny as the depicted "average sized 30 year old Japanese male" in that Huffington Post article -- and you know what? I hated it. As a general rule, women found me too skinny to be physically attractive to them (with many preferring the larger-framed guys who were clearly in the "overweight" category). The only praise I ever received was from the "gym rat" types who cared more about achieving the numbers the charts or stats said you should achieve as "ideal". And even then? I was never really very strong. They always assumed I would be a "quick runner" though.

If our President initially came out, armed with scientific facts and results of studies like this one as the rationale for not imposing a travel ban, it would have gone over much better with the American people.

Instead, we've witnessed nothing but a "FUD campaign" - with a strong sense that nobody in charge really knows what the h*ll they're doing with this stuff. First, the hospital in Texas got blamed for screwing up and not following procedures. Then it was revealed they never received any official procedure in the first place for dealing with ebola.

There's conflicting information about how contagious the ebola virus is ... with claims that you can't get it without direct contact with the infected person's bodily fluids, but medical workers wearing hazmat suits while going near the people. (If people are supposed to believe their chances of getting the virus while on an airplane with an infected person are "pretty unlikely" -- then how is it we have concerns about hospital workers catching it, even after wearing protective suits and everything else? I don't think people are convinced you can have this BOTH ways at the same time.)

And sure ... people also recall the H1N1 "swine flu" situation and how that panned out in reality.

IMO, the travel ban would just be good common sense to impose -- while setting up some exceptions for medical staff legitimately traveling to/from the high risk areas for the purpose of aid. I *love* how the government makes it out to be an "all or nothing" proposition -- where we simply can't impose the ban without risking inability to provide medical assistance over there. Seriously?! You can't come up with scenarios allowing SELECTIVE travel for appropriate people and some extra steps they're required to go through upon re-entering the US?