I work in Silicon Valley and have worked at several startups. I am also white. I am also the minority. In most of the companies where I have worked, the majority of the software people have been Indian or Asian. Other jobs in the companies seem to be predominantly white/American. Why do I think this is? Well, our education system and values are a good start. We have been trying to grow the company and have several head count to fill. Most candidates coming in the door are also Indian or Asian, have at *minimum* a Master's degree or PhD, and are very driven to succeed. We pick candidates solely based on their skill sets. If a green girl with tentacles came into the office and was a good technical and business culture fit, we would hire them. Want to get more African-American and Latinos in our doors? Make them better candidates. Period.

I work for a 28-person startup and we're pretty evenly distributed across the board.

Sounds like somebody got turned down by Facebook...

I am getting close to 40 (geez, really?) and have had no problem. Could it be that the people complaining simply don't have the skills necessary to compete? I think that it is more that these 20-year-olds turned CTO/CIO/CEO simply have no clue what they're doing, and are hiring people that are style over substance. However, I could be wrong. After all, if you cannot use the newest up-and-coming technology, what do you have to offer, anyway?

Obama? Pfft... it's the government officials that we *didn't* vote for that should scare you. While I agree with you, I think the point isn't that snatching people up off the streets happens. It is that allowing things like this just brings us one step closer to that reality.

It starts with.. "Hold my beer"

Well, I guess that it's a good thing that hardly anybody has signed up!

Or maybe this is the effect of the rise of the "MTV-Geek"? Maybe it's the lack of product placement opportunities that turns away alternative marketing revenue streams?

With my and what I know as many of my friends' affinity for not only watching but also buying sci-fi merchandise, I have found the steady decline rather surprising. Is there nobody that wants our money?

It also seems that Sci-Fi that does get made has progressively been getting more "mainstream". With that it seems that any and all shows I like are getting watered down with soap style love-tangle sub-plots etc...Should I just be grateful that there is no SciFi "reality" show yet?

Sometimes but not usually it's the retailer who initiates the stalking.

If you look closely, you'll find most big online advertising companies are using a few, but very similar principles. Google, Yahoo: it's how they make money, however usually through a daughter company to hide the link. It's the traditional approach to targeted advertising.

What happens is that an ad which is delivered to your computer at a product or search page will have a javascript or an image embedded of 0x0 pixels by the ad server. They call these beacon pixels and they allow ads from the ad server to track you for a certain interest (i.e. beacon). Other times the retailer will embed beacon pixels on their product pages directly, but that is not a requirement.

It becomes evil when sites like Facebook get involved, here the idea is they can read your beacons and spread them to your friends on the basis that they might want to buy the product they saw you buy. Not to mention the opportunity to enrich the beacons with target demographics like sex, age, location, etc...

This type of advertising is done on the principle that people who buy something will often buy similar things, accessories, or at the least that their friends will.

It is of course very backwards but just like spam, those few people who actually buy after being prompted with these ads make it all worth while. (And that doesn't mean click on the link but buy something from that site/brand within a few days or weeks.)

Fortunately, AdBlock and similar options do a very good job of blocking that content. Unfortunately some ad revenue based companies have become smart enough to break their usability if the code sent by the ad tracking is missing. So sometimes you will need a "GreaseMonkey" to get around that but it can be done.

In my experience: Even a college degree is no assurance someone is capable of doing a certain job. I've seen MSc. CS graduates who barely knew how to write a piece of code to give me the average of two numbers. Or how to translate some of what they learned into practicality. I've also seen graduates who were able to perform some mind bending feats.

The catch is: I've found there are at least an equal amount of CS pro's out there without degrees who can do either as well as the person with the degree. Also in my experience: the best people keep learning new tech/languages all the time and their accomplishments speak for themselves.

Make sure your resume paints a compelling picture so you get a foot in the door and then show people how good you are. If the company is going to be a good place to work they've probably learned to source and interview properly. Make your accomplishments speak for you.