On a side note, is there really a lack of engineers? I went to a pretty good school, and surely did not notice fewer engineers. At the job fair, companies were not on their knees searching around for whatever engineer they could scrounge, there were so many that they could be highly selective. There does not seem to be a shortage of engineers to me, does anyone find basis in that comment? Also, if there are fewer engineers (at least in the computer engineering world), i'd say its because the demand for engineers has leveled off. So many people rushed to become computer engineers because the pay was so high, that the field became saturated. Now salaries have leveled off, and mostly people who are genuinely interested in computer engineering apply.

They just recently added the word "cankles" to the dictionary, so don't count on them removing the word "hack".

whether people are mostly visiting the major media companies' sites or are seeing more independent stuff

I agree with this statement, and would speculate that it is more the latter, at least with the Slashdot crowd.

However, even going to something like msnbc.com online is better than watching msnbc on tv for most people because you can read the stories you want when you want without sitting through all the garbage.