Highest *marginal* tax rates...not only that, but a signification percentage of companies (especially the largest ones) pay only a small fraction of that due to subsidies, tax breaks, and other perks that the average citizen does not get. This is nothing more than a talking point with zero substance.

Bullshit.

Google are a highly effective propaganda company.

But, as providers of a platform for developers, they are absolutely horrible. Writing software for their "platform" is like building a house on quicksand.

They make me look back on the time spent developing for Microsofts products with fondness.

Are there any valuable functions mapped to a middle button anyway, that make it so important?

Yes. For people who use real computers, middle button = "paste selected text".

Who puts three fingers on the surface of a mouse?

People who use real computers but have not yet found the one true pointing device, the 4-button Logitech Marble Mouse Trackball.

Just because one is a physical limitation and the other is a psychological one doesn't make them different

Yes, actually, it does. That the idea of so-called "mental illness" obscures this is one of the problems with mislabeling various problems of living as diseases.

I've heard claims that one in four women will be raped at some point in their lives, and have yet to hear any sort of data-based rebuttal.

Really? You heard such an extraordinary claim, but apparently made zero effort to look into its validity?

Here you go. And here. And here.

Essentially, that inflated number is based on questionable surveys which often fail to distinguish between a regrettable drunken hookup and rape, and is not just about rape but about behavior ranging from grabbing a woman's butt on up through attempted rape and actual rape. (Yes, grabbing someone's butt is bad. It's assault. It's unacceptable. It is not, however, rape.)

Is rape much more common than most people think? Yes. The data is murky but I would be surprised if the lifetime victimization rate for women was less than 5%, 1 in 20. Is it 25%, "eeny-meeny-miney-RAPE!" common? No.

And a teacher sending a student sexy messages over the internet is certainly a breach of professional conduct...but it's not rape.

Star Trek now has freedom to have any future the writers can come up with

No, they're stuck with the universe Abrams left them. A universe which makes no sense, where starships are irrelevant because transporters can move people over interstellar distances (from Earth to the Klingon homeworld), and where a cure for death has been found in Khan's blood. Not to mention the absurd political situation, with a corrupt Starfleet operating accord to some bizarre system of personal prerogative of individual commanders rather than any rational chain of command.

Yeah, no shit.

My post wasn't directed at the lusers, though, it was directed at the editor.

But yeah, I think it's true... our community was bought and paid for by outsiders, and it's going to be used as a vehicle to attack us until it's finally been rendered irrelevant.

Shame. I've been coming here for a long time, and I'm still on the cutting edge of my field with lots of knowledge and wisdom to share.

Done now though... the well is poisoned, time to move on.

Doesn't this study show that women and men don't work as well together as they do separately, and that trying to increase diversity results in less effective teams, and was a bad idea all along?

So, the smart thing to do is separate the women off away from the men, encourage them to form teams entirely composed of women, and give them some meaningful tasks to do that won't overly burden them physically and will exploit their particular strengths.

This is very innovative stuff.

OSX is horrible. Really, really horrible.

Like an OCD wife that puts your tools away while you're trying to use them because everything has to look clean and nice at all times.

Is there a way to reclaim Slashdot from this constant barrage of psychological assault on IT professionals by outsiders?

I'm a bit of a nerd and I'm an IT professional. This place used to be a place to find news of interest to nerds and IT professionals. Now it's a place where there's going to be a daily article about how shitty a person I am and how shitty my industry is.

Is this what the rest of you guys come here for? To get shit on daily? It's kinda feeling like Slashdot has just become a bad habit I do when I'm bored because I've done it so many times before.

Is your target audience people who are nerds, or is it people who are envious of nerds? It's kinds feeling like this place has become the latter.

The open ballot worked fine in the US for 100 years.

Are you seriously referring to the era of American history when slavery and Native American genocide were at their peak, when women and those of the wrong skin color were deprived of the vote, when worker revolts were regularly put down by armed force, when violence at the polls was a regular occurrence, as a time when voting "worked fine"?

Here's how we used to vote. Any claim that this system "worked fine" is disconnected from reality.

The ahistoricalism of American political discourse never ceases to amaze me. Nor does the desire for technical fixes to social problems: to get voters to vote, we don't need on-line voting, we need better candidates, a reform of ballot access and campaign finance laws. (And a preference ballot and ad binding "none-of-the-above" option.)

Yeah, I'm not talking about you, stupid. You're just barely above notice.

I do have a life outside of Slashdot, dimbulb.

I'd call what Charlie Hedbo did hate speech, myself.

I hope people refuse to work for them, myself. Professional antagonists who got what they deserved.

Your approach requires billions to willingly agree to put my head in the sand in order to work. This simply isn't going to happen.

My approach involves giving people greater intel systematically. This can happen, and if it does happen, it will make everyone stronger and able to make better informed decisions.

Yes, the inside of my head is a strange place. "Gifted", "Genius", "Freak", "Monster", "Idiot", take your pick, I've heard it all.

I'm being stalked right now, by people who don't like the shit I write. They don't do anything, they just follow me around because they're bored.

Do I wish I'd self-censored myself? No. Do I wish I could look at my phone and have the conclusive evidence I need to confront the guy face to face and use physical measures to make him stop? Damn right I do.

And, frankly, the more information everyone has, the better I can trust them to participate in a democracy with me. If you're inclined to willfully stick your head in the sand, why would I want to participate in a consensus style system of decision making with the likes of you? That's like having the car break down with 3 toddlers in the back seat and having a vote on what we ought to do... no thanks.