Aside from the long standing problem of professors teaching what was the hot thing when they were working in the private sector and now passe or obsolete, there is not much more fragmentation and specialization in STEM careers. 20 years ago, if you knew C, C++, and Unix, you had one foot in the door of most places. Now, employers need to fill positions that often use obscure development tools and environments. They're less likely to hire a generalist and less likely to be willing to train a generalist. That said, it's now vastly easier to search for a job than it was 30 years ago. You may have to go far afield to get one.

There's only one problem with an otherwise perfect hypothesis: Most soldiers on base don't walk around armed. Hell, even Marines guarding embassies overseas aren't often armed. Look at stock photos and you can see that while they may be walking around with M16s, there are no magazines in the gun.

As though dozens of voices cried out in terror...and were silenced.

One can argue that DNA is software or rather the FPGA, hence it can be reprogrammed.
Some "stupid" is programmed into the SSD but other "stupid" is hereditary.

Hey, if we could edit out the "stupid" gene, I'd be all for that. Hint: people who think they are oh-so-smart have this gene.

States don't all get the same number of electoral votes. California currently has 55 electoral votes.
Here is the electoral map by county for the most recent presidential elections: http://www.princeton.edu/~rvdb...
http://upload.wikimedia.org/wi...
http://upload.wikimedia.org/wi...
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/U...
Etc.
Yet all of California's votes went for the Democrat. People living in eastern California haven't voted for the Democrat since 1968. Do they feel represented or do they feel like the bastard stepchild of L.A. and San Francisco?

The assumption is that money buys votes. It doesn't. It buys advertising on a lot of levels along with all the people who are needed to promote a given candidate. By requiring everybody to vote, candidates would have to spend even more money to be sure that they reach the half of the voting population that doesn't vote.

What we really need is to get rid of the winner-take-all for state electoral votes. Imagine you live in a county that regularly has a majority vote for one party but because a little more than half of the rest of the counties in the state regularly voted for the other party. Your votes no longer count because the electoral votes got flipped. What if this happens over and over? How represented would you feel?

The build envelope looks tiny. Let me know when I can make large custom electronics enclosures. And what about reliability and durability of the results? When these things can consistently survive the all-corners, all-edges, all-sides drop test, then I'll be impressed.

Many document submission sites of the US Federal Government not only require you to use Windows but also require you to use Internet Explorer. If that isn't bad enough, some require you to fill out forms using this godawful IBM/Lotus form editor.

I mean, who wouldn't want to be able to choose one? That opens up all kinds of possibilities.

And the huge volumes of crappy code upon which the entire shaky foundation of internet is built.

People would still want to know how it all works so they aren't stuck going to the dealer for service. So how do you reconcile the two?

One fragment leaves.

Apple has never been a commodity computer company. Herd mentality always seems to head in the direction of the cheapest tech out there even though there are far superior offerings out there. Just look at how VHS won out over Beta. That's video tape for those of you too young to know or care how we got where we are.

Things were so much simpler 25 years ago. If you knew C, C++, and/or Pascal and were willing to relocate, you could find a job fairly easily. Nowadays, there are so many niche tools, APIs, and languages that universities can't teach a broad enough curriculum to allow graduates options.