Wow - is that ever simplistic. That kind of thinking leads to foreign investment dropping to absolute zero, tariffs and sanctions from your biggest sources of tourism (which makes up something like 20% of the Greek economy) - that's a bright future for Greece you're advocating. If they play all their cards right, maybe in a hundred years or so they'll be back at the level of Portugal.

So you went to a Bay Area High School for a few years and you think that makes you dis-advantaged? LOL.

Talk about crap...

How was your childhood before that, in regards to education and parental support/motivation?
Did you run away from home or did you have the tacit permission and support of your family in China?
Did you live on the streets or, if you were basically penniless - how'd you avoid starving death entirely on your own?

I'm willing to bet you had PLENTY of educational advantages. This doesn't detract from what you've accomplished at all - congratulations on bootstrapping into Taco heaven. :) BTW - San Jose La Taqueria on 4th in San Rafael - amazing super burritos. Best in the world.

The problem is that you think everyone is like you, so they should be able to do 'like you.' It's just not the case.

Actually, regarding the Jewish case in particular - Numerus clausus - it was oddly enough motivated primarily (it would seem) by anti-Semitism but also from the overwhelming prevalence of Jewish faculty and staff in schools that did not follow these strictures in the same areas.

It isn't interesting because they were Jewish, replace Jewish with anything - it was interesting because it was a case of the empowered (white/male/protestant) being out-advantaged by a minority (Jewish mothers!)

That's just not the case though. Merit likely plays, by far, the most important part of the selection process; however, enforced diversity exists and is prevalent at "not for profit" universities and colleges. Heck, the older form of it was referred to as Numerus clausus. It still exists today in a more legally acceptable form and with much better intentions.

There are positive and negatives aspects of that behavior. There will always be people complaining about the process as well.

There's no effective difference. Embracing diversity is a reparation for discrimination against minorities.

While I can appreciate your intentions, the irony is that - as with schools and everyone involved in this topic (myself included) - you are projecting your own discrimination on the process.

The entire process of selecting students is discriminatory and openly acknowledged as being highly subjective; otherwise, a trivially simple software application would resolve the matter in a few hundred milliseconds.

Why isn't it discrimination to select students who score higher on a standardized test?

If you want to argue that this selector speaks directly to the abilities as a student, then we're back to arguing that there are selectors that *others* believe speak directly to student abilities as well - some of which you may not agree with.

I would suggest that the difference at Caltech is two part:

                1. Their requirements are so high that you can weed out the 'grinders' whose parent only care about those specific numbers.
                2. When you get there, if you don't have the real goods - you'll drown.

I've got an old work buddy who got in '89 (iirc), and it was so brutal that he dropped out in his sophmore year. He's a brilliant guy, and he wasn't angry/bitter - he said he just couldn't cope with the pace.

Yes, any contractor who has any idea of what is at stake should incorpate as a Chapter S at least.

Ignoring the huge tax advantages that comes with a Chapter S, it is the most protection for the least amount of effort.

If you're doing it full time, or you make at least $20k/year in income from your contracting, it's crazy to do anything else - it more than pays for itself. That $500 tax prep bill is worth every penny I saved by claiming capital gains on distributions.

You are conflating two different yet semantically related things.

"Work For Hire" and "Works For Hire" (sometimes referred to as "Works Made For Hire".)

Work For Hire refers to the actual work done by an employee/contractor that has been designated as falling upon the IP rules of Works Made For Hire.

Works Made For Hire is part of the the IP doctrine of copyright law.

If you are a contractor, and you do not have the money nor legal team to fight off an IP assignation case, you must carefully and clearly stipulate who owns what IP REGARDLESS OF WORKS MADE FOR HIRE. It IS ambiguous, and a contract lawyer will tell you - do not leave it up to interpretation outside of your contract..

I had a contract just two years ago that ran into an issue where the client (and their a**hole lawyer) were getting confused because I was going to provide them a solution that was built off of some code of mine that I owned all of the IP for.

I clearly delineated that they would own the solution, but that they were only receiving a license to use my previous inventions (and here's the part they choked on for a while) and any necessary extensions to my product that were necessary in order to provide them with a solution.

Their lawyer spent weeks arguing that they needed to own the changes I made to my existing product. That didn't happen...

So, as anybody who has dealt with an unfriendly lawyer would tell you - don't ASSume anything. Don't assume they won't be jerks, that they're not idiots, that the court isn't stupid, that jurors aren't stupid, et cetera ad nausem. Make it clear in your contract, as in 'clear to a 4 year old', who owns what, when, and for how long.

Technically you are both wrong and right. Works for hire apply but they do not apply to everything. It is a little vague. This is why most consulting contacts end up with provisos that explicitly state the ownership of ANY work.

Be glad that you've never been in the corporate world at a level to watch the incompetent sychophants rise despite clear reasoning why they should be let go (much less 'not promoted.')

I've seen mid-level executives receive promotions for 'not being in the red' because for the three years they ran a division they re-org'd every year because the years you perform a re-org your numbers were given HUGE discrepancy allowances. One guy lost more than 10 million (on a budget of 7 million) a year for 3 years in a row and was promoted - through this trick.

Worse, I've known people who were CTOs of actual Silicon Valley tech companies (not huge ones, but worth a couple of hundred millions dollars) who DID NOT KNOW WHAT TCP/IP WAS OR WHAT A SOCKET WAS. Not CIOs, or CISO - CTO. It's okay though, he looked the part, and he said yes all the time.

Crazy man. Crazy.

Jesus H you're dishonest. They HOPE to use it to propel objects from LEO to GEO. The reason that NASA is looking into this is in the HOPE that it bears fruit. NOBODY said they WILL be able to make a starship with it.

Some of the statements get rather ambitious, but they aren't statements of fact they're suggestions about what COULD be possible if this pans out.