Often, "new improvements" mean surface-level improvements that don't improve use and efficiency at all.

For example, I think Microsoft's Aero and related interfaces are neat-looking, but they don't help me achieve anything using the computer. They just make it a bit slicker.

If you turn on the classic Windows interface, you eliminate a fair amount of overhead and get back to the basics of a very functional interface.

The same seems true of Linux GUIs. I appreciate what they're doing in trying to keep up with Windows and Mac OS X and the glitzy new interfaces those have implemented.

However, how much of this actually adds to the basic interface? Does it increase efficiency of the the user? I'm not so sure.

I miss the days of installing a new Linux distro on a ten-year-old machine and finding out that it ran as fast as a new machine with Windows.

Thank you for the feedback. I included those political ideologies to avoid being disingenuous and hiding the origins of our diversity mania in class warfare brought about by an ideological need for egalitarian altruism. I did not want people to feel that I was sneaking politics in a back door by not mentioning. However, your point is well-taken and I will use it in the future.

Technology improves over time.

Once there's a working prototype, it can be improved in thousands of ways that are less challenging to produce than the prototype itself.

Right now, there are some challenges in making Iron Dome into SDI. However, there's also a working model which can be refined until it has SDI-ish capabilities.

If you looked at a computer in the 1970s, you might think it could never simulate a human cell. And yet, we're almost there.

It's funny how American democracy looks more and more like the "democracy" the communist party was preaching back then.

I think it has to do with degrees of removal from reality.

When there's a realistic system in place, people go along with it because it makes sense.

When there's not a realistic system, there's usually an "ideology" used to compel people to obey.

This drifts farther and farther away from reality and as a result, the state uses more control on its citizens.

They in turn react passively by being less productive and more corrupt.

Hessian and bhlowe, are you two having fun sucking each other's dicks over there?

I'm sorry, I thought third grade was over and we'd all graduated to better things.

That's like saying that you can't reserve a table for a night out with the guys because the group is not diverse enough.

Exactly. It's enforced diversity, so that you can be Utopian and Progressive.

If you don't do that, you're morally wrong, and bad, and it's a defect of your character, and we want you out of our society.

There can be no "guy's nights" or all-white fraternities.

Everyone must be mixed.

Then we will finally have peace, love, harmony, compassion and progress.

Why wouldn't you agree to that?

Are you a bigot? There can be no other reason.

But if get a white guy, an black guy, and a white woman and an oriental guy who all use Ruby for developing web apps on Unix, that would be diversity. Is that correct?

United Colors of Benetton. U2 videos. President Clinton's biggest fans. Or perhaps one of the post-1990s sitcoms.

Yes, that's the dream, and we want to live the dream. That way we'll be just as amazing as the groovy-cool people we see on our TVs!

Tech jobs are low status jobs, and they are primarily done by men with manual technical skills instead of professionals with organizational ones.

This is interesting, because it conforms to what I think of as a great CEO: someone who can organize many different abilities into a team and get them to complete a task under imperfect circumstances, without being an unrealistic authoritarian.

Diversity means different viewpoints, different perspectives, different approaches. Diverse speakers will appeal to and engage a more diverse audience. Diversity is more interesting.

You can have that diversity within a single ethnic group.

Just go find people with different approaches to life.

Your approach seems to be racist, in that it assumes members of racial groups are all identical.

We're not. We are diverse as individuals. Quit trying to turn us into the Cosby Show or The Brady Bunch.

Enforced Diversity is NOT the opposite of Discrimination.

More accurately, it's a type of discrimination.

Being biased in favor of a mixed-racial group is racism against all who aren't mixed-racial.

Modern liberalism and subscribing to political correctness is a sign of mental disorder.

Conforming to the herd is always good, especially if you can insist you're not conforming. That is the ultimate "paradox" of liberalism: because it identifies with non-conformity, it can easily be a form of conformity and remain undetected by most.

In the meantime, those who are ahead of the curve are moving past liberalism. 1789 (the French Revolution) was a long time ago, and since then we've learned that what "sounds good" does not necessarily equal good results, and good results are all that matters.

The chattering classes and TV watchers haven't picked up on this yet, because they're subject to the the most powerful media machine ever created. It preaches at them what it thinks they want to hear.

This will change. In fact, it already has. We're just waiting to catch up with the curve.

If you want to have a real conference, you should be trying to develop a discussion which requires different perspectives.

Why do you assume that only people of other races can have different perspectives?

What exactly are these perspectives they bring to the picture?

This sounds like people who want "diversity" so they can have different ethnic foods to get at the drive-thru.

A happy society is one where people share an ideal of what should be, and thus they act toward similar goals without a police state enforcing rules on them

Diversity ruins this idea.

Diversity puts people in an ugly position: either disregard your native culture and become an anonymous person who gets his/her culture from shopping malls and TV, or keep your native culture and be an outsider.

Conventionally, criticism of diversity is labeled "racism," which is a logical fallacy that excludes the possibility that someone could criticize diversity for some reason other than racism.

The realistic view is that diversity of any form does not work. Racial, religious, ethnic, cultural, class and even values. Mix the different and you make them all opposites. They're different for a reason: over history, the human race has branched out into many unique tributaries.

However, it benefits our overlords to have a society that is not united. We fight among each other and ignore the long-term problems that our society is piling up by ignoring the obvious.

Diversity is thus, like many other gestures of dying societies, a surrogate and a substitute but not action that can actually save us from our own decay.

Like many others, I've watched Rome wind down and begin to burn and I realize that most people have a singular response to this, which is strong and violent denial. This is why they call you racist, crazy, etc. if you criticize diversity, the welfare state, democracy, consumerism, egalitarianism, police actions or any of the other fictions our society has come to depend on like crutches.