30 years have accomplished exactly what was set out to be accomplished. It's now considered acceptable for a CEO to make over 1000 times what the guy actually creating value makes. Well, acceptable by anyone with an MBA, and you don't have one, so what do you know you moron get back to work, and don't worry your head about what percentage you take home of what you produce.
Trust me, they knew what they were doing with `trickle down'. It's based on the premise that, given an arbitrary level of national economic output, people who have more money should get more money. The question of who doesn't get it is left as an exercise.

...and would have a one year warranty.
People really shouldn't post while drunk.

Do I count just the RCMP, or do I include CSIS, FBI, the NSA, and DoubleClick? I dislike badly worded polls almost as much as bad number ranges.

I have some formal training in HCI and a love of accurate terminology, so I have the ability to articulate problems with a user interface - I can voice my opinion and experience with weak design. A regular user doesn't have those skills, so they appear silent. The end result is that you call us IT types whiny.
"Less sophisticated users" aren't getting along fine. They struggle to use it and/or call for help because bad user interfaces (and arbitrary vendor changes) interfere with the creation of an accurate mental model of how the software is supposed to be used or what it's capable of. The confusion created in their mind is real.

And contrary to popular belief, the unarmed man is the first person an attacker goes after; why not, he doesn't have a weapon?

Which leaves you open to attack from his armed buddies. Are you the same lightknight that I kept cleaning the floor with back when quakeworld was still a thing?

It's called setting your threshold higher than 1 and relying on the moderation system. I prefer 3, people with time to burn like 2, someone who doesn't care for linearity might set it as high as 5.
Slashdot hasn't changed in this regard for over a decade. Moderate if you're given the points and metamoderate daily.

Bingo, sir.

Nah, probably just the more mundane cable porn.

Oh, and that's a totally safe for work link. Really.

No, really, I mean it.

Damn you, goatse, for making everybody suspicious. Nobody's going to click on that link.

"Significant" is a charitable understatement. Anonymizing information is hard. No, really, you think it's hard? It's harder than that.

You missed the great Astroturf Invasion of 2008. Basically, any account with UID over 1 250 000 has a 85% chance of being a paid shill for MS, Oracle, or the CIA. tomhudson got blinder, I started getting paid for knowing linux stuff (I use awk more than perl), and CmdrTaco retired. Oh, and timothy figured out how to turn off his spellchecker so he doesn't have to ignore it anymore.

From the perspective of a former cycle courier with almost a decade of experience: If everybody followed the letter of the law, traffic in cities would come to a grinding halt in short order.
You just go ahead and follow the rules. You'll find people cutting in front of you (and then slamming on their brakes) in short order, and myriad horns blaring at you as you wait for pedestrians to leave the crosswalk (or, depending on your jurisdiction, leave your half of the roadway if a two-way street).
The laws aren't there to tell people how to drive. They're there to have a system of blame in place when something unforseeable and hazardous happens.

If they're handing you a Masters after 3 semesters, you must have had one hell of a thesis that everyone should read (and watch a vid of your defense), or it's an absolutely worthless piece of paper.

Do not be dismissive of your enemies merely because you believe them misguided. They are no less clever, motivated, resourceful, or well trained than you are.

Trust me, you're not tuning them out. Multinationals pay top money for top-of-mind branding, and they get evil and skilled psychologists working on it. They're better at the game than you are.

Oh, and here's a hint for any psychologists out there: if you ever admit that you work for advertisers, expect me to forget what ahimsa means - cf. Bill Hicks, "Marketing".

You're fucked. I'm sorry, there's nothing I can do about it except keep on not being be a nutjob.