1000 people is a statistically significant sample size as long as there's no sample bias.

I do think the race issue is worth discussing. As well as the gender issue.

But there's something more fundamental and less likely to stoke passions at play here:

DOING SCIENCE IS ABOUT MAKING MISTAKES. Her "punishment" should be to write a paper on what she was trying to do and why the results were not what she expected. Simple, end of story.

There should be no real punishment of any kind, much less the over the top expulsion and arrest.

The simple fact is that she should be encouraged to make mistakes, not punished for them. And the most basic problem we are dealing with is that our school systems don't understand this fact.

His password is 7 lower case characters. It's a wonder his GMail account wasn't hacked ages ago.

This was true about 10 years ago, but now we exist in a tech world in which there are way more jobs than people to do them. If all you are doing is low-level gofer programmer and you're 40, yes, you are in a dead end job. But if you have managed to amass technology experience that matches your age, you are extraordinarily valuable.

Congratulations!

You just managed to get the stupidest Slashdot question of the year submitted in time for 2011 consideration!

There's always someone willing to pay more. Companies that pay gobs of money at the expense of other factors have high turnover.

Ethics are absolute. Laws are relative. There's no such thing as personal ethics.

I am guessing 100% of Android users are ignorant jackasses?

What a lovely little world you live in. It's one in which people who don't agree with you don't "want a good product".

I use an iPhone and continue to use it because it is a better product for my needs than the Android. I'm not being a doofus like you and claiming that the iPhone is a better phone for your needs.

It would seem that the only honest conclusion is that, of the survey population, more iPhone users than Android users believe that the iPhone best meets their needs and will continue to meet their needs.

Country A has a population of x.

Country B has a population of x*4.

Which country will have a larger pool of job applicants with an IQ above 140?

Any time you sell your company, you know that you are giving control of the future of your IP over to someone else, including the ability to kill the product should the business need arise.

Monty cashed in.

So what?

When he sold to Sun, he made his cash and gave up any rights to say what happened to the software. From that point on, it could have been purchased by the devil himself and Monty should still shut the fuck up.

He's wanting it both ways. He wants to have his cash and influence the direction of MySQL. The fact is, Oracle bought MySQL fairly. Monty needs to stop whining.

If he gave a shit about what happened to MySQL, he would not have sold it.

Instead, he made gobs of money and no longer has a say in what happens to the property except insofar as he is free to fork it.