I know I will get crap for this and but here it is from a woman's perspective...

Women actually used to be a larger part of I.T. in general and classrooms at one time were on track to reach an expected 45%. Instead of climbing, those numbers are falling.

You can blame it on parents not giving girls tech toys, and yes that may be part of it, but considering how many female gamers there are (nearly half of gamers are female), that doesn't explain it completely. Remember, the average age of gamers these days (30's) have kids in high school and college, that means these kids likely grew up on video games. There is obvious interest, and there was an interest, they just don't have an interest in a career in those fields any longer.

So the real question is why don't they want a career in I.T.?
The answer is men. Male geeks as it turns out are quite sexist (and geeks develop a minor god complex to boot). E3 has a spectacularly bad reputation among women and there is/was an actually boycott because of repeatedly being groped, talked down to and generally treated bad. Look at how things are marketed there... Booth babes? How much more sexist can you get. Other tech trade shows aren't any better.

In online gaming, there are a TON of women playing games online, you guys act like they don't play FPS or anything hardcore, yes, we do, you just don't see them because most of them hide their gender. Xbox players are the worst, however even on PC, which is better it can still be pretty bad. Personally, I don't hide my gender, however I won't play before 8pm, and I won't play long unless it's with other friends. All it takes is one guys to ask "are you really a girl", and the entire game will change and go downhill. If it's not "you got killed by a girl", it's a guy trying to talk smack to me. If I stay quiet, he will get more aggressive as it goes, if I talk back, he will instantly go ballistic, there is no middle ground, it usually only stops if a 3rd person steps in, I leave or someone gets booted. Then your have the games themselves, IF there is a female character, her clothes get skimpier the more "armor" she gets... By the time she is "armored up" she looks more like a sex slave than a warrior. Which only reinforces the males view of women only being good for eye candy. Try playing as a girl for a week or more and you will begin to see what women really go through when playing online and you will begin to see why they hide.

This is why the classrooms are emptying out. I know not all guys are this way, and as they grow up they grow out of this (some more than others), however the worst of it happens right at the age where we are choosing our careers (teens). Why would a woman pick a career where she's not only objectified, she's verbally abused on a daily basis?

People have no idea that hobbyists have been flying what amounts to home built drones for years, they would be even more shocked if they knew just how advanced they are, with many flying with complete autonomy.

And who do you think is working with and paying those government officials behind closed doors?

The RIAA, MPAA, Wall Street and NRA have all had their hands directly involved with writing new laws, some people want Congress to wear Nascar style sponsor jackets just so we know exactly who is pulling their strings. You can throw out an abusive government, what do you do with an abusive corporation? How many Enron, BP, and Wall Street Execs went to jail over their scandals?

Yes, you should be wary of government, but pay attention to the guys behind the curtain as well. This is especially true when we have corporations who's profits are nearly as large as our government spending.

People are exposed to both sides quite often, yet it doesn't change them, so catching them off guard and asking them to defend it really doesn't prove much of anything. Even he himself admits it probably won't stick.

It's nothing more than a party trick a magician or hypnotist would use.

It's been used in spacebars on Cherry Mx Blue keyboards for a while, just not an entire keyboard.

This is a Cherry Mx Blue switch with a stiffer spring, nothing more. Enthusiasts have been making keyboards like this for a while now (which is where Cooler Master got the idea), and it most definitely does not replicate a model M feel or sound.

If you want a Model M, buy a Model M or a Unicomp.

This is true, on paper.

Every engine has a crack tolerance on the turbine fan blades (and they all develop cracks), the tolerances allowed greatly differ between single and twin engine jets. Remember, when you lose your single engine, you don't just lose thrust, you lose all power as well, so while they have a backup, it typically only lasts about 10 minutes. They don't take chances. Because of this, F16's made in the 80's and 90's actually need engines replaced FAR more often than the older twin engine aircraft made in the 60's by a significant amount.

I worked on these aircraft, for every engine I changed on a twin, I did at least 20 on singles, and no, that isn't an exaggeration. Send them to the desert and things only got worse.

Not only are the numbers easy to change, but the parts, particularly Iphones, are worth good money, which is where I suspect most of them end up.

Not only that, but carriers don't work together to limit the transfer of phones. Sprint users often take stolen or bad esn phones over to Cricket anmd get them put right back in service. Recently the government took efforts to get them to finally start working together on this.

Once we get wireless displays in our phones (and cheaper storage, which is coming), that will mark the final straw, everything will be phone based.

Right now we try to bring the data to the phone, instead, reverse it, put everything on the phone and run everything from that. With this method, you always have your data, instead of always retrieving it from elsewhere. As the phone becomes more and more the primary device, this makes more and more sense. If you haven't seen it, take a look at Clambook. Now adapt that same system (wirelessly) to a desktop and tablet. They won't even be a thin client, they will simply be extensions of your phone.

This means less services to pay for since you only need internet on the phone, as well as fewer items to maintain. It ends up far cheaper and more efficient as you don't even need to buy a tower anymore. As it stands, the only thing really holding it back is a UI that works on a desktop, any guess as to where Microsoft and Ubuntu think we are heading?

Desktops will remain, but they will become more of a tool (like they were 30 years ago). Gamers, artists, etc, anything needing more power will stay on the desktop for at least a bit longer. Some things need the extra power, but the average store bought PC that is mostly for browsing the internet will be dead. The same applies to game consoles, they will go back to being just a game system for more hardcore gamer as most will play from their phone connected to whatever peripheral they choose.

Terrible employees, bad policies... Sure they have some things you might want, but you hate to go in. Both companies completely lost sight of their customers and became more like used car salesmen.

Best Buy doesn't get any of my money if I can help it. It's not just the prices, it's everything about how they operate. Look at Best buys website, looks more like a corporate back end and you NEVER find the lowest priced items like memory in stores. If I have to mail order it anyway, why would I bother with them? And why would I pay $30 for a 6 foot usb cable? Are you nuts? Just because you can take advantage of impulse buying, doesn't mean you can conduct highway robbery and expect no one to catch on.

We have a Microcenter an hour away, but otherwise it's a matter of figuring out what other store might carry what we need for a reasonable rate or we just simply mail order it.

I got rid of my dvd rom years ago, I almost never used it.

Ubuntu and MS both tell you how to install from a thumbstick and MS Office is even sold on them. In a year I would imagine you will be hard pressed to find a system with a rom drive. I do hook up a usb external on occasion to read or write a disk, but that's rare. Netflix, Hulu and alternatives take care of movies, Steam and similar handle games. USB sticks handle the rest.

I don't take dvd's on a plane, it's cumbersome and the drive eats batteries, copy the files to a folder and use VLC if you must.

You're kidding right?
It is NOT a free laptop

You have to send them your old one, even today, my laptop is worth 4 times the laptop they want to replace it with. Why on earth would I send it in only to get back a pile a of junk? If they wanted to send me the new laptop, great, I could sell it and fix mine, but there is no way I'm trading in my top of the line Sony for that pile of poo.

As always the real winners are the lawyers.

We already put a bunch of stuff into physical space, crashed probes into comets, and put a bunch of junk on the moon and mars. It only takes a few microbes to ruin an ecosystem. Nasa has implemented safeguards (after having put some into space), but will those safeguards be taken into account when privateers start heading out?

And what happens once we do colonize Mars or the moon, both of which we could technically do now if we wanted. We could be seen as spreading like a virus at that point, some already see us as such. Take a look at what we have done to this planet so far. You don't think if we had interstellar travel that we wouldn't exploit/trash any planet we came across?

All those movies like Independence Day where they come for our resources, we're it.

Ubisoft has created the perfect DRM system.
Combine horrible DRM with horrible gameplay and no one will pirate it. Of course no one will play it either, but hey, it's the perfect DRM system.

I almost feel as though I should be thanking them for all the time and money they are saving me.