Actually, the more "fit" to survive folks hire people who are good at stomping on the people who try to steal from them.

Does it not stand to reason that someone with average competence who lacks the experience to demonstrate their capabilities, is worth less to an employer than someone with high quality skills, intelligence and the work experience to show they are worth the investment?

Those folks might be the "bane of your existence", but the corporation as a whole probably considers them to be critical assets; unlike the IT folks, who can be replaced much more easily. It is IT's job to serve them (and everyone else), not the other way around.

OK, 27 states do provide varying levels of compensation.
Source: Innocence Project Fact Sheet.
I live in one of the 23 states that do not provide any compensation for the wrongly convicted.

While there may be things that *can* be done for you in cases where you were wrongly incarcerated, do they ever happen? I think the only reparation you are going to get in the US is that you won't be in debt for the room and board for the last 10 years.

I've seen douche-bags of multiple races who feel the need to always have their bluetooth receiver in their ear. Maybe we have more equal opportunity douche-bags in this part of the US than you. <g>

The problem is that we have highly polarized points of view (like the AC post I'm responding to), and neither side feels they can budge without losing face.

Environmentalists demand that all energy is from renewable sources like wind or solar, without taking into consideration the cost or the environmental damage necessary to manufacture and operate the collection and distribution apparatus.

Industrialists demand high profits from any energy production.

Very few talk about reducing consumption.

Unfortunately, an ISP would likely require you to run some some closed source executable on your machine to do this "verification", and it would be very unlikely that they would support a version of said executable on the OS or distribution that you prefer (unless you prefer the latest version of Microsoft Windows). And it wouldn't take long before some ISPs would use this as an opportunity to install some toolbar that sticks their ads in your face.

BTW, since /. is all about analogies - mine for this situation is: Someone trespasses on your property and points a laser pointer at an airplane ... should the property owner be liable for what the trespasser did because the gate was unlocked, or perhaps because the fence didn't have razor wire on it?

It starts a comment so the rest of the line is ignored.

If by WMDs, you mean nuclear weapons; then none.

If by WMDs, you include atomic weapons; then one (the United States of America).

If by WMDs, you include chemical or biological weapons; then (in no particular order) the US, UK, France, Spain, Germany, Russia, Iran, Iraq, and probably many more. I'm not sure if China used any chemical weapons in the Korean War - if not then they probably stand alone as a significant power that has not.

In the not so distant past the concept of precise strikes was unrealistic, so the idea that you might kill innocents while bombing an enemies manufacturing capacity was considered acceptable. It is only more recently that the West has tried to engage in "moral" warfare. However, weapons do not always work exactly as intended, so innocents still die.

However, the enemies being fought share no such concept of "moral" warfare. So applying your concept of morality to an enemy who doesn't have the capability to perform the types of attacks you consider acceptable is just nonsensical. You would have just as much success by asking them to turn themselves in so they can be shot.

I agree that ecologically intelligent business can out last competitors who are not, but your examples counter your point.

Hybrid vehicles do not have a higher margin, nor will they. The cost to manufacture them greatly outweighs the perceived benefits; and most importantly, the materials required to produce them are much more scarce than the oil used to produce gasoline. And these materials are definitely not renewable.

The material problem also applies to alternative energy. The solar panels and wind turbines require materials that are not available on a scale that would allow those sources of energy to ever meet our current needs, let alone future needs. Oil is abundant compared to what we need to make efficient solar panels and wind turbines.

These are things that the "tree huggers" have been fooled into becoming proponents of, even though the ecological damage that would result would be much worse than the pursuit of oil if we ever tried to scale those up to actually meet our energy needs.

The worse part of this is that reasonable alternatives like natural gas cars is taking a back seat to what the tree huggers imagine we should do. Granted, NG will run out someday too, but it would buy us a whole lot of time and decrease our dependance on foreign oil. The good news is that some ecologically intelligent companies aren't waiting for the political winds to change and are already using NG in their fleet cars.

Up until last year (when I finally took it to the recycling center), I had a 486 running an old version of Debian. It used the old SIMM memory modules, and had some ISA slots for graphics or 10Base-T. It had a hard drive that was wider, longer & thinner than your typical IDE drive and the connector was very different (I can't recall what it was - I think it was the predecessor to IDE). The whole thing still worked, but it had no use other than to show "this old piece of crap still works" (which impresses just about no-one).

But for some reason, I held onto a box of 8" floppy disks; even though I haven't had a drive that could use them in many, many years.

Once you have worked long enough the experience portion of your resume becomes more important than the education part. But until then, a degree shows that you can deal with stress while maintaining a certain level of productivity. More prestigious universities are more valuable because they are usually more difficult to earn a degree from.

Right or wrong, when you get 100 resumes for a position you are trying to fill, an HR will filter out all the people without degrees. The hiring manager will never see them.

I don't think the debate is about whether or not global warming is occurring - that is fact. It is about whether it is a natural cycle, or whether it is caused by man, or some combination of both. I'd wager on the latter.