It is not an company's responsibility to address the failures of particular minority communities to embrace technology education.

That's right. A corporation's only responsibility is to enrich stockholders through ever-increasing profits by any means necessary. America, fuck yeah!

With the liberal arts degree, one can ask, "Would you like fries with that, you evil capitalist pig-dog?"

Hell, you can do that without the degree. It's not like the works of Marx and Engels aren't public domain. :)

If everyone had given up on airplanes in the early days because of a few deaths, then we'd all be taking the train today.

We gave up on zeppelins because of a few deaths. :)

Copyright is a monopoly. It just happens to be a monopoly defined by the Constitution, and protected by legislation bought and paid for by Disney. It's a monopoly that, if limited to a reasonable amount of time, enriches our culture. If that monopoly is permitted to go on too long, it harms our culture instead -- though I admit it's hard to argue that putting Mickey Mouse in the public domain would improve American culture.

While I don't mind being able to profit from sales of my books for the rest of my life, my creations drew upon the culture around me. It's only fair that my work should eventually join the culture as part of the public domain after twenty years or so.

Though, I suspect most of us only know about it due to reading the Cryptonomicon.

That's how I first heard of it. I thought Stephenson pulled it out of his ass until I did some research.