That depends upon your point of view. There's a certain satisfaction and confidence that comes from knowing that your skills are a cut above the rest. Employers also tend to notice these things which is why graduates from highly ranked and competitive programs are more sought after and receive better initial offers from companies hiring them. A graduate of these institutions can also be reasonably well assured that the value of their degree will not be diluted over time by a host of lesser quality graduates who benefited from reduced standards that damaged the reputation of the institution in subsequent years. Now, I do think that students ought to be told up front what will be expected of them, but I don't agree that grading on a curve is a bad thing, either educationally or culturally. Quite the contrary, it's my belief that such programs produce superior graduates who are better equipped to handle the challenges of the working world and that that's worth far more than a high GPA from an average school.

Well, without giving away where I attended school, suffice it to say that the numbers were not equal, neither in an absolute sense nor as a percentage of the population at large. However, two things were true: nobody in the class cared about these things enough to say anything and there was at least one person from each of those racial groups present in the graduating class. I think you'll find that the situation is similar in the science and engineering departments of most American universities. The science majors are there to learn, not to protest or party or be politically active. We left that to the idiot fraternity jocks and the touchy-feely intellectual types in the liberal arts colleges.

This sounds like a perfect use case for The Mosquito anti-loitering device. To summarize for those who aren't familiar, the basic idea here is to discourage loitering of young people by playing a loud and obnoxious tone continually or in bursts at around 17.4 Khz, which while audible to most persons 25 years of age or younger, is much less audible or completely inaudible to older adults. This takes advantage of the fact that hearing, especially at the high pitched edge of the audible range, tends to decline with age. These types of devices can usually be configured to activate or deactivate between certain times, upon detection of motion or manually.

This is totally bullshit and it's being done for bullshit political reasons. Nothing good comes from the politicization of science and yet the politicians cannot resist making a political issue of the lack of "diversity" in CS education. In my own CS experience nobody gave a shit about whether you were black, white, asian or latino and yes we had all of those races represented in the program. What mattered was whether or not you could hack it and continue advancing through the curriculum. The grades were always on a curve and the competition was intense. If you weren't smart enough or fast enough you washed out. In CS, as in other sciences, people respect knowledge, ability and intelligence, not the color of your skin or your cultural background. If you wanted to major in foo-fa the Humanities department was on the other side of campus.

How else will they be able to fund those generous public employee pension contributions?

That's not as big an issue for long time California residents, like your 20 year veteran sewer tech, as it might be in other parts of the country. Here in California we have this little thing called Proposition 13. This was passed by the voters in 1978 and it limited property taxes to 1% of the assessed value (retroactive to 1975 assessed values for those who owned their homes as of 1978) with an allowed increase in assessed value of not more than 2% annually. This amendment to the state constitution is probably the single most lasting achievement of Howard Jarvis and the tax revolts of the late seventies and early eighties. Of course, the state has found other ways to get money besides property taxes, which explains the very high gas and sales taxes in California and the high state income tax. However, very rarely are people in California, especially long time residents, forced out of their properties by rising property taxes. It's also interesting to note how Prop 13 has served to increase home prices in California relative to other states without such tax limitations, even adjusting for the good climate and other factors here in California, as a result of the added perk of this tax savings.

This Stefan Frei guy is just another dishonest shill saying something colossally stupid in public to draw attention to himself and the products that his company is selling. Forcing anyone to buy something or pay a fine to anyone without prior restraint of free contract or due process in court of law is so antithetical to the very basis of western civilization that it ought to be summarily dismissed from further debate or discussion with prejudice.

That's not the official line, but unofficially you'd better believe that he wants everyone to know it. This is young Kim saying to other high level elites, "Don't even think about trying to stage a coup to overthrow me because if I'm willing to kill a family member to make a point, just imagine what I'll do to you." A bit crude and heavy handed perhaps, but effective none the less.

You mean you never wrote the fake reset program on your TI? That was classic although the newer ones support mini SD cards so a student could keep the programs on the cards and switch cards after wiping the programs stored in the onboard memory.

It's not about money for these Silicon Valley types. Oh sure, they want enough for their lifestyle, gadgets and projects but beyond a certain point money doesn't satisfy them. Money to those guys is a means to an end and the end which they seek is power to meddle in the lives of others. People like Zuckerberg want to remake the world as they see fit. They consider themselves to be superior to the rest of us and have no qualms about using unsavory methods to achieve their "enlightened" goals. I would much prefer that they simply took their money and enjoyed it in private, without involving those of us who aren't willing to participate, but no they have to spend it on meddling with the "imperfect" society. Mark and his H1-B supporters can go to hell as far as I'm concerned. Let them move to India if they want cheap workers, but I'll be damned if I'd vote for anyone who supported Zuckerberg and his H1-B ambitions.

Underprivileged? Zuck was the very definition of privilege and advantage when growing up. His background was upper middle class at the very least.

That doesn't suit the purposes of the ruling class and so is not taught. The last thing they want is for the future peons of America to think for themselves critically instead of believing all of the marketing, advertising and bullshit that the elite and their corporations plan to dump in their laps.

You're dealing with Silicon Valley types here, hype and hyperbole are second nature to these people. Most of these guys have their heads so far up in the clouds that they forget what they sound like when talking to ordinary people who live outside their bubble world. Mostly, they're full of shit but the average person doesn't seem to recognize this and so the public eats their crap up because they don't know any better.

Unfortunately, this new interest comes at a time when the big players in the industry, like Apple, are well along in the process of doing away with the general purpose computer and replacing it with walled garden tablet like devices who's primary purpose is mindless consumption. In very real ways programming is becoming ever less accessible to the average person or at least less open to the sorts of spontaneous discovery and experimentation that attract new people into the field. For example, it's difficult now to have the sort of VIC-20, Commodore-64 or Apple II experience that inspired well know programmers like Linus Torvalds and many others to become interested in computing and programming at an early age.

What you need is audio output to a dedicated hardware amp and mixer that controls volume beyond the ability of any software running on the system to detect or interfere with it.

The problem with this approach is that unscrupulous adults take advantage of the lack of critical thinking and mental defenses in young minds to shovel them full of ideologically motivated drivel before they're developed enough to recognize the agenda. Take history for example and the recent trends toward emphasizing minor details, even at the expense of essential persons and events, because it suits a politically correct agenda of ideological education. Another example is the extreme emphasis of environmental topics, converting grade school aged children into green zealots before it has even occurred to them that there might be unintended consequences from strict adherence to that path. It ought not to be the role of the public school system to instil morals or a value system beyond what is minimally necessary to maintain order in the classroom and proceed with necessary instruction. Anything more is a violation of the rights of parents to instruct their children in these subjects as they see fit.