I am on faculty at a Florida university and we have about 5% disabled students on campus/full time students. (larger number part-time because they won't, physically, be able to meet a graduation time frame. Yes, we also have 22% of our International students who are Indian, but none of them that I know of are disabled. My office is in the heart of the campus and my window looks out over a flood of students every class break: skateboards do predominate, but wheel chairs and canes (and crutches of course-- those skateboards again I guess) are also very present.

Now, to address the underlying problem that you don't want to talk about:
1) you clearly have a problem with people unlike yourself, as in disabled, international, or maybe even LGBTQ (although that was not clear from what you said and if I am wrong I apologize for over reaching)
2) Disabled people are often unseen: they often don't move quickly and easily from class to class and will often wait until halls and sidewalks clear before they move on.
3) people in wheel chairs especially can't be easily seen in a crowd because they are below eye level, and, most importantly:
4) If you have a built in distaste or dislike for a group you can respond by either seeing them everywhere (your "Indian students" example) or not seeing them when they are present (your "how many people do you see around in wheelchairs?" question). What you are showing, and I hope trying to see, is that prejudice controls the patterns that you are looking for and therefore seeing. You are the victim of your prejudice.

Now, while it is not popular to be thoughtful and reasoned in a comments reply anywhere on the internet, I think it is time for me and others to begin to talk honestly and clearly to people who feel empowered to attack a broad spectrum of people for little or no reason, and to give them a chance to think about their statements without attacking them. Instead I hope we can begin to address their real issues and show how to have a reasonable discussion. Will it work? Only if we care about honest and rational discourse and act on it ourselves. You sir, yes you, have the opportunity to change your approach and join us. Please do, I would love to talk with you in a neutral setting.

Ever since the 70s I have cried (into the void mostly) about the "triumph of style over substance." This is just another place where style has won out. Even in situations where I was interested in substance (activity based UIs vs file based UIs) it all turned into a style battle. I admit now, after 2/3s of my life that I have lost. Style is all people really care about and all that they look for. Knock on from that is consumerism, 3 month purchase cycles, 5 year "durable goods" cycles (like houses) and other economic cycles that are destroying the ecosystem.

We have lost, my friend, soon I will just retire into the wilderness.....

OK, I've been using word processors since the 80s (in fact had one of the only gen 1 processors that had a three line screen on the top of the keyboard so you could see what you were typing and make corrections as you typed. I forget if you could scroll back????) and still don't like the ribbon. Yes, I understand why some people who bought into the ideas that were underneath the design would like it and continue to like it, but I didn't buy in, so I don't like it.

Remember Gnome 3? I have used it from the first Beta to today. Is it the best desktop UI in the world? No, of course not. Your complaints are justified for you and what you want from a desktop UI. But I bought in to the idea of an activity based UI rather than a application/file based UI. We all ended up with what we wanted in the end because... we use Linux. The approach that the DF is taking sounds to me like "give everybody what they want" AND then see what we have the resources to support. That makes a great deal of sense. It kind of puts the GF to shame. And adds a note to the Systemd kerfluffle.

The new DF motto: "Striding into the Future while Supporting the Past"
I hope anyway.

What is most frightening is the research done in the last twenty years concerning trees as forests and trees and their links to other underground networks of life. Radiolab (yeah the cutesy one) has a half hour piece on some of this work called "from tree to shining tree" listen to this and then read this story again. Then you can realize the real cost of 1/3 of the CA forests dying.

What I do is use foreign sources, like the BBC and Al Jazeera, on my start page (along with Google news and the NYT) to try to get a nuanced and non-American view of what is happening. I still find Al Jazeera the best, with the caveat that I recognize their bias and allow for it.

Years ago, an old and dear friend from Israel who had moved back to the US for a while, told me that when he first came back to the US he used to scream at the news people every time they had a story about Israel in the news> They just didn't understand Israel, the news was given in the American context, it was stupid. Now, it seems, we are foreigners in our own country, screaming at news sources that are not from "our America" and so we seek what defines our sense of reality. We do need a solution to this, but it seems that rather than a solution to the greater problem, people just want to kill everyone who disagrees with them. Just as the Congress refuses to compromise to make our government work, the people refuse to compromise to make our citizenry work.So we choose the one person who reflects our desire to make the world in our own image.

This is part of the plot for a comedy movie at the time (1966). I forget the name, but remember some of the faces of the actors. All I remember was "Emairgency, Emairgency, Everyone is to get from the street!" repeated ad nauseum and burned into my poor childish brain. Google saved my brain, "The Russians are Coming, The Russians are Coming" was the name of the movie and you tube has some clips. Enjoy campy humor.

Just this: http://xkcd.com/1732/

And some that are mostly fruit. The ones with oranges (mandarins of course) are really excellent. They also have some with spiced pork, eggs and pretty much anything ... you could ... probably .... not .... imagine. yeah, well, pickled vegetables are an acquired taste anyway, but the fruit ones are really my favorite.

I know one of the people working for GE on this project. He's no slouch and has positioned himself well: remember that 124 year thing? But he does know his stuff on hardware security. I'm interested to see what GE can do, it can't be easy to mobilze a behemoth like that.

agreed: "OS X is not Unix, just based on BSD."

I am doing some numbers for a small piece of research and using SPSS Statistics. Once I have finished what I need to do it's time to export and.... the only choice is Excel, not because of the software, but because the receiver doesn't know how to use anything else. People at work think I am old (correct) cranky (not really, just opinionated) and crazy (well, ok) because I keep telling them the same thing: FOSS or give up control of your information. Once it is in MS formats it belongs to MS and they can do whatever they like with it. To keep control over it you need free formats, it really is that simple.

I'm getting too old. I remember when Bob Sears (no relation to sears and Roebuck) was faced with a mistake he made on a bid he had estimated and put his name on. It would have meant a loss of about $50,000 on a 1.15 million dollar project-- basically all the profit and a little more. He talked the the owner, the architect and finally came to me ( the project manager) and said: I'm going to eat the loss. Make damn sure we do everything the best you can do. Keep standards up and don't try to cut corners. I'll make it back up to you later (I worked on a salary + 10% of net profit contract). I agreed with him and both of us (as well as my men who I would normally share out 10% of my 10%) understood and agreed. It is a matter of honor.

So, those of you who chase the bucks, go to it. "Speed on brother" (as my dad used to say) "Hell ain't half full."

Jesus, this makes me feel old, but I refuse to give up my honor and chase the bucks just for the sake of having more shit to muck around in.You all go right ahead as you were.

Kings in the Dark and Middle ages were all Roman Catholic. The Church followed a teaching/verse from the bible that said that you cannot charge interest on money ("Neither a borrower nor a lender be" was taken to be a rule that people should actually follow!). As Kings began various wars, battles or land grabs they found themselves running short of gold and silver so they turned to the jewelers of the time (the Jews) who had the stuff in ingots and were willing to lend it for 2% interest. They also set very restrictive rules for repayment, since they didn't feel they could trust the kings and especially their descendants to pay off these debts, especially if they weren't successful.

SO, imagine the hilarity that would ensue when the Jewish "bankers" went to get their gold and silver back and it wasn't there. Imagine what the king's easy way out would be (Hmmm: filthy Jews are always telling lies and stealing gold from us!) Jews became the butt of not just jokes and ill-will, but it was encouraged into serious hatred and persecution over and over again. You would think the Jews would learn, but 2% of a bunch of gold was a lot of profit those days. Look at your credit card debt today to see what happened when the Pope stopped enforcing the "Neither a" rule. Bring back the Jews I say.

Sorry, but if you had taken some history classes you might be aware that racism is a thing in America. Here is a great example that I ran into reading something on William Lloyd Garrison, an abolishionist newspaper owner before, during and after the civil war. He was on a speaking tour with Frederick Douglas, the freed slave and British educated speaker, when, after he spoke, Douglas came on and was almost immediately booed and had rotten vegetables thrown at him on stage by the audiance. The people in the audience, who had cheered and given a standing ovation to Garrison just moments before, didn't want to hear or listen to a "filthy black" on the subject of their own emancipation. These were the people who wanted the blacks freed from slavery. The story is deep and continues all through American history, into my own life (as a son of the South). My mother who "didn't have a racist bone in her body," often talked about her many "colored friends" without ever failing to mention their color. She was so proud to have these connections to "the blacks."

Now I love my (dear, departed) mother but I must be realistic, she was someone who saw color always and forever. It was a primary marker of an individual and controled her relationship with that person. How she responded (patronizingly) to people of color was wrong, but not something she even recognized. She was, in this sense, a racist.

I argue that you, when you say "why is it that we never hear about the poor Chinese?" are trying to compare the history of black people held in slavery (and not the kind and generous Old World idea of slavery, but in a new and brutal form developed just for the New World) for hundreds of years against a people who came here as immigrants expecting to work hard and achieve success at the "golden mountain" (the Chinese name for San Francisco). Add to that the simple fact that Chinese and Indians arriving here today were born into higher estates in their home country which gave them a strong foundation education before arriving here to pursue advanced degrees and jobs. They are the top 1% of the top 1% in their home country.

Finally, I would argue that patriarchy works against everyone, male, female, black, white, Asian or Middle Eastern or European or American. We all lose when the best people for a job are sidelined because the vetting and choosing processes for employment or status in any social hierarchy are "gamed." When someone games them, no matter who they are, then everyone suffers. Unfortunately, people have become polarized by false arguments, straw men and logical fallacies promoted in the media and by people deliberately (or not) trying to warp reasonable discussion into something false and twisted. This story is just one of a daily barrage of these"cultural battles" that need to be addressed using reasonable discourse and thoughtful attention to reality and fact.

Perhaps, sadly, this is just the final "whimper" of our society disintegrating: if we don't promote reasonable discourse here in our own little forum that is peopled with educated, caring and intelligent people what can we expect from our children, politicians and others?
 

And please note they are posting as anons, let's just ignore them if they won't give at least a name to post with.