NO.

The Penis is Evil. The GUN is GOOD.

They also, if they happen to find that they're of a nontraditional gender role -- i.e. gay or just feminine or (heavens help them) transexual -- are stuck in a horrible cycle of recrimination, guilt, shunning, 'repatriation therapy,' depression, despair, and for too many, suicide. Yeah, a real bargain. Welcome to Omelas.

For those who 'fit in,' or are malleable enough to be molded to fit in, sure, it works for them. And there is a considerable support network. (At least, for most American Protestant denominations, if you're the right colored skin and of the right economic class.) But if you are off their beam? If you don't match their ideals? Consider that.

All operators are busy at the moment. Your Call is important to us. Please stay on the line, and Cthulu will be with you shortly. ... VERY shortly.

Because a grocery store needs to hold on to customer information! How else can they... uh... well, er... PROFIT?

So what do I need to do to convince a corporation to get rid of all customer data they have on me? Oh... wait... nevermind.

When they said they would not pull it, but would monitor it, they opened themselves up for litigation. This is the sort of thing that's allowed common carriers at least the illusion of immunity from persecution over what goes through their networks. As soon as Facebook said they would monitor it, that was a statement that they are not a common carrier. By "monitoring" it, they assumed responsibility for it.

Bad move on their part, no matter what you might think of the subject.

And 640K is all we'll ever need. =)

On a more serious note, really... I think it's some sort of corollary to Moore's law: Processing needs will always expand to fill the available processing capacity. In short, we're going to be using our pocket computers with quantum-state processors, and still be wondering why frickin' Outlook is running so slow.

You must not have been in many jobs that required managers. Or, more sympathetically, rarely had a good manager. Which is understandable, a good manager can be hard to find. I've been lucky, I guess; I've had two or three jobs with really good managers.

Yes, "At best they're coordinating things so that the employees can focus as much on production as possible." Don't piss on that; a good manager will set out your team's goals and let you go and do them, but they'll also keep THEIR bosses from getting on YOUR case. Can you do that? It's harder than it sounds. A LOT harder. A bad manager will let upper management filter through them to you. A good one lets your team do their thing.

And if it's not stressed enough: Don't piss on the value of having a manager lay out your team's goals. Not every team is 'Do X really well.' Most real world teams outside of project development have 'Do X, Y, and Z really well' as their mission and your manager can guide you towards which of those needs work, which is going just fine, and which is slipping.

Techies love groaning about managers, but as someone said, a good manager is almost invisible, and is a guide when the team knows what it's doing. When the team looses its way, when they have no focus, when they're falling apart, either the manager is failing, or there's a new manager coming on who needs to lay into the team. (Or the team is filled with a bunch of incompetent fuckwits.)

"At this rate Tunisia (which just abolished its state security) and Egypt (whose people raided their state security HQ) will be freer than the "land of the free"."

That's... really rather fscking depressing. :(

Unfortunately, a bit more than one quarter of the US identifies as Republican/right-wing/authoritarian-follower, or any two of those or all three. About the same amount identifies as Democratic/left-wing. The remaining half are ostensibly 'independant' but trend right-of-center.

This is a country just BEGGING for an authoritarian right-wing dictator.

Well, yeah... but the line 'One of the last PDP-11s on the net!' made a few old-school computer folk in the audience grin. =)

That's because what schools teach isn't what IT employers want. They want experienced people, true; but more than that they want people who are skilled in the tools that the employer uses. Colleges and unis will teach a person the theory and processes behind the tools -- OSI model, networking, packet structure, etc. But it won't teach them how to use the specific network management tools or diagnostics that each employer uses.

Ultimately, employers -- or at least, those IT hiring managers who are distant from the actual workers and clueful IT managers -- want the colleges and unis to teach these tools. They don't want employees with college degrees (and college student loans which will keep them looking for better-paying jobs) whom they have to take the time to teach what tools they use and what the nuances of their network are. They want IT monkeys who somehow instinctively know every facet of their networks and can push the right buttons on whatever tool you put in front of them.

Interesting observatons. They tie into the concept of fifth-generation warfare rather well, actually. Thanks for sharing them; I'll look for Restrepo!

In ancient Athens, jury duty was actually pretty lucrative. A number of older citizens became semi-professional jurists, not only because the pay was decent -- for just this reason, that is, keeping them from being bribed -- but because it gave them some real personal power in a democratic* system. Currying favor with known jurists was not unknown.

* - For very narrow values of 'democratic,' to wit: Own land and be male.

There's all sorts of interesting correlations to Simlacra and Simulation here.

As (ironically) an AC said above: "Serious force is serious."