Thank you!

It is so nice to see a post from someone who lives in the real world. So many among the slashdot community suffer from ideological inebriation, if not outright delusional thinking. What the hell do techies know about politics, war, economics or anything for that matter? About as much as anyone else who isn't an expert in those fields.

It is very easy to take an intractable and unsolvable problem, of which our world offers up many examples, and standing at a distance from the problem, oversimplify it in order to come up with a supposed solution that would do nothing to address the issue, and would often create far larger problems if ever implemented. Leftists and Social Conservatives are both infamous for this.

Life is hard, but it is harder when you are stupid, and the irony is that intelligence makes one capable of greater levels of stupidity because such a person can rationalize unworkable ideas that a less intelligent person would give up on, especially when that person lacks the direct experience that would serve to disabuse them of their fantasies.

Or as George Orwell once said, "Some ideas are so stupid only an intellectual could believe them."

Without experience and feet-on-the-ground interaction and grappling with the problem at hand, even the most intellectually advanced notions about the nature of the problem and its solutions are nothing more than daydreams.

Adam Smith described people like Comsky as "wise in their conceit." The fact that a person is profoundly talented and knowledgeable in one area says nothing about their talents or understanding of unrelated fields. As Richard Feynman put it: "I believe that a scientist looking at nonscientific problems is just as dumb as the next guy.” An artist looking at non-artistic problems is just as dumb. A writer looking at non-verbal problems is also just as dumb. Competence and skill are not generalize-able, but specific. Bobby Fischer was one of the greatest chess players of all time, but his general life skills were totally lacking.

FreeDOS is, like every other open source project, a labor of love produced by those who are intrinsically motivated to do so.

YOU are not really part of their plan.

They do it for themselves so that they can have a better toy to play with.

If you're not interested in sharing the joy of playing with this new and improved toy.... it really doesn't matter.

It is unfortunate that FreeDOS couldn't have been created sometime around 1985.

I have a serious problem with the idea of governments rubber stamping religions as "official" as this goes against the principle that church and state are separate.

Anything that undermines the power of teachers' unions is a good thing.

This threatens that power by threatening their continued illusion of relevance to the education of the young.

Carol Marcus?

I'd much rather take her daughter, Samantha Mathis:

http://celebritynet.cz/photos/0/b/5/0b54be45ee551a354ab31998d2f1a689.jpg

http://www.moviespad.com/photos/samantha-mathis-lost-b6bc2.jpg

http://www.allcelebspics.com/wp-content/gallery/samantha-mathis/Samantha%20Mathis_1295188973516939.jpg

Why should we as a society waste time trying to teach these concepts to people who will never understand them?

Vocational schools and other types of training were once offered for those who were not college material.

Today the unspoken and unexamined assumption that every kid is college material is part of why our public schools are so laughably corrupt and dysfunctional.

I'm honestly confused about the women and minorities bit. What does a person's gonads have to do with their ability to use an API? Does skin color help someone code? Products and their continued availability matter to the people who use those products, and unless I'm mistaken that has nothing to do with sex, race, creed, color, religion, or which professional sports franchise a person is a fan of.

Wolber is pulling nonsense out of his arse to provoke people who can be counted on to display a pavlovian response upon any mention of identity politics.

This is what happens when E Pluribus Unum is replaced by quarreling tribal groups perpetually demanding preferential treatment in compensation for past slights - both real and imagined.

Just as correlation does not imply causation, disparity does not imply discrimination.

World to end: Women and minorities hardest hit

Malware is a problem, as are sexual predators. Bullies on the other hand, can be found on any playground. Online bullies have words as their weapons, whereas the offline version use their fists. To pretend that the online variety are a special threat is ridiculous. If junior can't handle someone saying mean things about him online then he'll always be a momma's boy.

That being said, I think it is a good thing that younger people are choosing to immerse themselves in Facebook and other forms of social media.