The subject says it all. So far 7 does all I need I dont need to use touch screens on large displays and I do not trust the cloud, now would I ever store my, or a customers data in the cloud. The govt claims they have access to any of your data not physically in your possession so they could conceiveably track your on line transactions. Be it purchases, sales, savings, or investments. Course they could monitor any router you might go through as well.

California is listed as having over 10,000 earthquakes a year. This figure is more than a tad shy of equaling that (by over 40 times, let alone out numbering it by a factor of two. To say it's double is rediculous.: To quote the USGS: "Each year the southern California area has about 10,000 earthquakes. ... If there is a large earthquake, however, the aftershock sequence will produce many more earthquakes of all magnitudes for many months." http://earthquake.usgs.gov/lea... "

I started as a sys admin at age 50, became a Developmental analyst (fancy name for program developer) within a year, another year and a half and I was a project manager with teams. I put every spare cent into the CAP at work and invested all I could afford. I retired comfortably in 7 years. I was offered a consulting job doing the same thing from the same desk through the head hunters with a 50% raise, but no bennies. My regular insurance carried on into retirement so I didn't need the bennies. Turned it down and bought an airplane as I retired so I could could go play. Note, I had worked over 26 years as a tech before quitting and earning a degree in CS. In my old job I had gained a rep to the point where corporate was requesting me to do engineering jobs which wasn't setting well with the head of maintenance and engineering at our plant. He was adamant that THOSE were jobs for engineering. IOW, I was working myself out of a job. I was having fun and according to my boss, his bosses, boss figured I must be playing around as work wasn't supposed to be fun. I could see the hand writing on the wall. They were trying to engineer me into a bad spot. Play by their local rules, instead of corporates ...My way or the highway. I quit and never looked back, earned a 4 year CS degree in 3 with a math minor. Did well enough I was offered a graduate assistant-ship for my masters from another university. I was hired right out of grad school without having to look for a job. I don't know if I'd have the guts to do that now, but I did then and that's what counts.

I was 50 when I started on my masters at a time when jobs were few. They called me and asked me to turn in an application so they could make a job offer.

Has nothing to do with the issue. There are primaries for the parties. The members vote for who they want to run "In their party". Virtually anyone can contribute to those candidates. As long as they are "US citizens" They are really separate elections. You can vote in only one, but you can contribute to any, or all candidates within limits.

Much of society sees IT in the stereotyped large round glasses and buck toothed, geek!. We actually had one woman in our department that didn't want people to know where she worked. I think she'd have rather been called a "street walker" than a member of the IT staff. OTOH it's not just IT, but most, if not all science jobs. As the one OWSer remarked in an interview after being asked if she knew all the good paying jobs were there, why didn't she pursue a degree in one of those fields replied, "Oh, that's too hard!". IOW they want to get good paying jobs without having to work for them and there is the social stigma in schools against good grades and even more so for science. This is as much the students fault as society and peer pressure. The "nerd syndrome". They are wrapped up in their field and have no interest in socializing, writing, or communicating. They can't understand that for almost any job, it takes a well rounded individual. This shows up in the quality of applicants we see in their attitudes, and inability to communicate. Many have problems putting, complete, coherent sentences together when talking, let alone writing. They may be geniuses, but come across sounding like airheads. We used to have computing contests for high schools at the university. Invariably a couple of schools would have teams of "computer whizzes". Not once did any of them ever finish. We'd give them a relatively simple problem to solve. They could write good code, but knew nothing about problem solving. What did they think we do with computers? Recently on one of the news groups, (might have been here) a guy was complaining about the system. He had good grades and claimed to have sent out over a hundred resumes with out one answer. It was evident he lacked writing and communications skills from his comments. However he could not accept that the problem was him and not the system. He'd lash out at anyone who tried to show him how to improve. Poor communications skills, poor writing ability, and a bad attitude that was apparent in his writing. Communications skills and writing ability are almost as important as your major and can get you in the door, or prevent the most skilled from entering. Problem is, most that lack those skills are the last to admit, or recognize the problem. It's just so much easier to blame some one or something else rather than changing because that takes admitting you're wrong and takes effort, a lot of effort to change. I was a computer systems project manager for a large, multinational corporation. Herding engineers, programmers, and techs could sometimes be like herding cats, but generally went well. In teams like that, being able to communicate clearly between disciplines is paramount. Those with good communications skills made my job easy. Those without didn't stay long.

That's just like Obama...Except he keeps breaking our laws

At least we haven't been straddled with mediocrity...yet. But look at all the useless degrees they keep pumping out. Graduates cant get a job so they spend another 50 grand plus to get an advanced degree in the same useless field.

BS: People in IT are not generally known for their people skills. Don't confuse diversity of experience with diversity of groups, or even if said diversity will be of use. For IT, you will be looking at IT people. If you're the boss, you know that it's a balancing act between qualifications which include people skills. Diversity of experience seldom is of concern in IT. IT workers quickly split into two main groups. Those who are programmers and want to remain programmers. The idea of moving into management either scares them, or they see it with distaste. The second group slides right onto the management track/ladder. The two groups require a quite different secondary skills set. Even their primary skills differ somewhat. However, what group they come from (Diversity) Race, religion, or life style has very little to do with these skill sets. You are concerned with their skill set, not stereotypes which are often wrong. I think we've all worked with a programmer who had zip for people skills, but were outstanding. As long as their fellow workers could tolerate them, they just stayed in their cubical and did what was asked of them. As a project manager I worked for and with women. In those positions they were the same as men. Those in management and engineering were as different from general society as men in those positions. Getting a bunch of engineers on the same page can sometimes be like herding cats. We are talking, well educated IT people, not "the man on the street". Yes they need IT skills and usually the upper percentile for programmers. They need people skills which are seldom learned in college, and have little to do with gender. If on the upward track, they need to quickly identify problem employees and not be reticent to "have a talk" with said employee, or even terminate him/her. OTOH you don't want the aggressive military drill Sargent approach for most positions. Where I worked, people would burn out. If they had a good history, the company would do all they could to salvage said employee, often returning that employee to their original attitude and position. OTOH there are companies where you follow the "party line" or found yourself being engineered out the door. It didn't matter if you were hourly or a PHD. It was a very clickish atmosphere These minority groups are poorly represented because there are few from those groups in IT.

It's more than just white males, it's nearly all of the mainstream, majority groups, while small, vocal "splinter" or minorities receive a disproportionate weight in hiring, politics, and for lack of a better tern, "voice" . Being PC has pretty much wrecked our industry and the educational system(through the entire grade to grad). What ever the group, they should be compared to their numbers in the field, but qualifications should be the trump card. Look at priorities and you will find the smallest, loudest groups receive the highest priority. I really don't care about a person's race, beliefs, gender, or life style, when it comes to hiring. Companies should be after the most qualified and they really do want the most qualified (or most do), but fear that should one of the small minority, non mainstream groups apply, they wit be forced to give them priority in hiring. I've seen job qualifications change from a CS degree, to a degree, to no degree, so a specific minority could be hired into a CS job. It resulted in a Sys admin/programmer becoming data entry and hiring another to fill the sys admin position. When that minority left it went back to requiring a degree in IT. Someone asked, "What are those numbers?" From my own experiences in grad school as a GA and an undergrad with a CS major and a math minor, I'd say Google's numbers are just about what they should be. People in those groups have a very small percent in IT. (those numbers do vary with location) Society and many members of these groups expect the percent in IT to match the percent of that group in the "ENTIRE" work force (not IT qualified) , they would have way over the % of these groups available in the work force. If a couple large employers, like Google, hired the percent society demands, they would most likely have to hire 100% of those groups IT members whether qualified or not.

"We" are not manufacturing issues. They come from the outside, BUT I have to point out that most of us in IT and on /dot are liberal. It was liberal policies that brought "equality", which evolved into unrealistic quotas completely unrelated to the numbers in specific fields. The original idea was good, but politicians and powerful minorities quickly perverted it. Just like the phrase "All men are created equal", means all deserve an equal chance or opportunity, not that all are created physically, or mentally equal.

They are probably playing on an old changer with a cheap metal needle and a stack of 10 at a time, rather than a good turntable. OTOH there are those who pay huge amounts for tube "and wire" labeled as something special and 50 cent 6L6s are going for $30 and $40. Plain old #10 & #8 copper wire with a clear jacket is selling for over 10 times its real value. The 6L6s in my old Super Twin Reverb are worth way more than the amp. You wouldn't want me to remaster anything. My low frequency hearing is way better than normal while it's down over 80 db, much above 6 KHz. At least you wouldn't be getting extra emphasis on the lows:-)) I hear nothing above 8 KHz.

For years the companies kept telling us that "accelerated aging proved..... I told people back then, that testing gives us some indications, but proves nothing. The took what they hoped was the way CDs and DVDs ages, increased the dosage by many time and said, This we pronounce the life of your CD. They didn't know then and they don't know now, but it'd be a good idea to back up those 100 year CDs at least every 10 years. If they are already skipping at 10, you probably better go to 5. If they are skipping at 5...chalk up one more for planned obsolescence.

Hydrogen takes a lot of energy to produce at present and has very little energy per unit volume. It's little different than a battery, except with more loss although you can carry more of if. Electricity is limited to range, heavy, and expensive batteries. At present, neither are practice for all around driving. H2 is fairly safe with spills rapidly dissipating. If you only do short drives, electricity is practical and relatively inexpensive. For trips, recharge takes far too long

I don't need one more technology added that can fail. Besides, there's over 300 million out there without it.