massachussetts not masschussets. I'm not from that edcated state ;-)

Agreed, there are huge societal and infrastructure differences between Masschussets and Missisippi. Mass might be one of the the most educated states in the union. Mississippi is not.

So what you are saying is that NVIDIA and ATI don't release closed source binary-only drivers? I wonder what this whole tainted kernel thing is about then?

I wrote a FUSE driver for a toy fs in Linux a VFS driver to do the same thing in kernel-space, and it's funny, I don't remember getting cooperation "from the " whole "Linux kernel team". Apparently Basil Brush and hairyfeet are involved in anti-Linux FUD.

Is apparently heavily involved with this company: https://www.google.com/finance...

He is a regular speaker at HOPE, and tries to stay involved with open source and hacker communities, and is a looney tune. It's gotten to the point where people who attend his talks play "the Robert Steele drinking game" and have to drink whenever he makes ludicrous unsupportable claims.

I can envision a brave new future with me dealing with their support system after waiting on phone for 30 minutes trying to explain that bittorrenting knoppix is not illegal. Sigh :(

Consider from their point of view with MPAA, RIAA and other trolls constantly harassing them. They cannot police their users. They often turn over lists of IP addresses and customers.

This would allow ISPs to turn over traffic inspection, enforcement, and resolution, and let someone else deal with the headache.

I can see large ISPs having teams to deal with these issues, but small ISPs having their hands forced :(

So if I lend my car to someone who has a valid driver's license, and a note from the doctor, but unbeknownst to me, they stopped taking their psychiatric medication, Then while I am sleeping, they run over 12 people, am I responsible for the murders?

I guess as a white male you can say that stuff and not be racist, but as a non-white male I cannot.

Opposing reverse racism does not mean that affirmative action is wrong. Accepting the premise of reverse racism means accepting that there is in fact a dominant racial group. Referring to people in this group as "whitey" and "crackers" is bigotry and inappropriate.

I say reverse racism is less damaging, because the dominant racial group is already protected (has better jobs, more money, better access to legal and health services). http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/W...

Affirmative action on the other hand is a great attempt at equalizing racial disparities. It is not a perfect solution, but they are effective at getting people more fair access to jobs/education and other means of self-improvement. The devil is in the implementation. For instance if two candidates, one in the dominant group, one in the marginalized group are vying for the same position, the one with the obviously better skillset, experience/other qualifications should be chosen. However if it is not clear who is more qualified, then some weight can and should be given to affirmative action. This isn't about putting unqualified people in jobs because of their race, but recognizing the uphill battle that people who are not in the dominant groups face.

I ended up doing the job for the guy who was hired. He failed miserably and was fired (after years). He was eventually replaced by another UNIX-saavy guy who left the University around the same time I did.

The Solaris admin guy was a friend of mine who had dropped out of the CS program because he needed income, but sincerely wanted to come back as an employee and continue school part time. He probably would have left after he got his degree (if underpaid).

If the decision to hire mediocre but retain people was made, the other two candidates (who were ruled technically unfit) should have been given fair consideration.

I've worked in a state University and perceived serious discrimination in the hiring practices. While it wasn't necessarily widespread there were individuals who were hired that were less qualified because they fit a certain cultural acceptability perspective.

For a Solaris admin job, a guy with long hair who was certified as a Solaris admin and loved Linux and was working on his CS degree at said University, was not hired while someone who had no experience with Solaris or any UNIX-like OS, but was a conventional looking white guy in a suit and had general IT support experience got the job. Both wore a suit to the interview, but the guy who looked a little weirder was way more qualified and enthusiastic about the job. However, a decision to hire a less qualified candidate was made (not by me)

Race wasn't an issue because both candidates were white. An older white gentleman and a young asian woman were also interviewed but were also unqualified (although not any less qualified than the guy who got the job)

It's called reverse racism, and it is bigotry. It is damaging, and it should not be acceptable. However on a scale of damage, it's less damaging than regular racism.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/R...

  “The cry of the poor is is not always just, but if you don't listen to it, you will never know what justice is.”

  Howard Zinn

It's horrible to presume non-whites are foreign, and that foreigners are nonwhite. So says a nonwhite native-born American who would never work at Apple but does in fact work in a diverse tech-company :)

That link did not work.... http://curt-rice.com/2012/04/0... (this link works)

The purpose of affirmative action is to give opportunity to marginalized population (and therefore a slight advantage to those populations) not to establish strict ratios where unqualified candidates will be hired simply because they belong to a historically unhired group.

It's interesting (but not at all surprising) that opening up access to jobs to entire populations of people improves overall talent.

Actually, I don't dislike Java at all, but there is a special place in hell for any vendor that says, "A crappy java applet is all they need to manage the only interface needed". Java applets should have died a long time ago.