They'll succeed: they're going to successfully repeal the medical devices tax, and then cheer about what a huge accomplishment this is (and to be fair, it's a good idea, the tax is stupid). Then they'll move on to something different and forget about Obamacare.

What security features, and are they present in PostgreSQL?

I'm not sure why everyone automatically goes to MySQL as the only choice for open-source RDBMSes, when Postgres seems to be superior in every way.

Technically, you're supposed to pay the tax based on your residence, not the location of the merchant. Most merchants don't bother (and aren't required to) because it'd be a logistical nightmare, but try buying a car sometime: the dealer charges tax based on where you live, even if it's out-of-state.

In your case, you're probably supposed to pay that 1.86% difference in the "use tax" portion of your state taxes.

Hmm, this sounds a lot like the complaint that women make less in the field. One thing about professional fields like this, though, is that negotiations are a big part of the final pay; some people are able to negotiate better salaries than others, and it's been said many times that women aren't as aggressive in salary negotiations as men. The same could be true of blacks unfortunately. Or they could be the type of people who don't change jobs much (once they get in a place, they don't want to leave because they value security higher): people like that always get terrible salaries, because the only way to get a serious raise in IT or engineering is to quit and get a new job. I wonder if any of these things are factors here. Of course, racism could certainly play a part here: if Jamal has a hard time getting an interview because of his name, once he finally finds a place that'll hire him, he may very well be inclined to take whatever their first salary offer is, and then never leave.

Society has these problems, so why wouldn't tech fields?

Because tech fields are composed of different types of people who go into construction and commercial fishing. Hint: education is a big factor.

I completely agree that you can't expect tech to hire more blacks than are available in the labor supply.

Ok, then what exactly are you complaining about? If they can't hire more blacks than are available, then why are you complaining that they aren't hiring more blacks than are available in the labor supply?

But we're still human, still tribal, and still subject to the same social forces as the rest of society.

What social forces? If there's no qualified blacks to hire, then how do "social forces" have anything to do with it?

This thing with the black names sounds like BS to me. Was this study confined to tech jobs, or was it all jobs? If it wasn't confined to tech jobs, then it's irrelevant.

I have no doubt that in many industries, having a "black" name will make it harder to get an interview. But that doesn't mean it's true in all industries, particularly the tech industry. There certainly isn't much trouble with people with "Indian" names (like Swapnil, Ravishankar, etc.) getting interviews, and lots of companies are desperate to hire anyone who's qualified.

I do agree that racism still lingers and affects minorities in a lot of facets of life; for instance, in dealing with cops, black people have had to learn very different tactics than white people because doing otherwise gets them shot dead.

However, for this, I think they're being ridiculous. If you want to know where there's no IT pros of any particular group, it's simple: go to the schools that churn out these pros, and look at who's in the classes. Do you see many black students there? If the answer is no, then there's your answer: there aren't any black IT pros because there aren't any black people going to school for it. Same with women.

Now if you want to investigate why women or black people or hispanic people aren't going to school for tech degrees, you'll need to do a serious sociological study, which you can probably get a PhD for. But this isn't something you can blame anyone in the industry for. People in the industry have no control over who goes to school for tech-related degrees; they can only hire people who are qualified, and the pool of qualified applicants is limited to people who have the proper educational background and degrees.

Um, yes, what's your point? I never said the US was worse than any place else, I just pointed out that it wasn't all that free 1910 as some people believe, it was only free for a certain privileged portion of society.

In addition to that, it wasn't even all that free for white males, depending on where you went. All that stuff in the Bill of Rights (freedom of speech, religion, etc.) didn't even apply until the 1900s sometime. Before that, it was considered as applying only to the Federal government: the Federal government could not pass laws restricting freedom of speech, religion, etc. and force the States to follow them. However, individual States could, and did, have all kinds of anti-freedom laws, official religions, etc. All these people who like to open- or concealed-carry firearms today? Back in the "Old West", there was no such right: any time someone entered a town, they had to surrender their guns to the local sheriff, and could only get them back when they left town.

You could argue that the last time the US was "free" was prior to about 1910.

Yes, before 1910, if you were a white male (and not Irish or some other undesirable immigrant), then you indeed had a lot of freedom.

If you were black or female, forget it. Women coudn't even vote then.

cant even have dinner conversation with someone over the age of 30 in the USA without rampant jingoism and political correctness.

You need to move out of the South and stop hanging around conservatives.

Yeah, but I'd think that on an island, the insects wouldn't be nearly as bad as in a mainland swamp. Isn't there usually more wind on islands? Bugs don't do well with wind.

Nope, not everything.

1) Cable companies: since they own the last-mile connections to peoples' homes, they basically have a monopoly on high-speed internet service. Unless you want to use your cellphone for all your internet connectivity, or perhaps you happen to have an alternative like FIOS (which probably isn't any better or cheaper than cable internet), you can't walk away from them.

2) Banks. If people walk away from them, the government will deem them "too big to fail" and give them all the money they ask for.

Steve Ballmer wasn't taken very seriously by various Slashdot users, and he ended up getting sacked by the MS board. He also made all kinds of dumb decisions during his tenure (which is why he was sacked, the latest dumb decision being Metro).

CEOs aren't brilliant geniuses, not usually anyway. They're just in the right place at the right time and don't screw up too horribly while they're there, like most successful people.

The Keys are a chain of islands with a very different culture from the rest of Florida. They even called themselves the "Conch Republic" at one point during a political stunt.

I imagine the weather in Key West is rather different than much of Florida, being a Caribbean island, whereas much of mainland Florida is swamps.

So don't let your experiences in Key West give you the wrong idea about the place where this company is setting up shop (Fort Lauderdale I believe).