The Indie game has had a long run on the Windows platform before it becomes part of the Humble Bundle. That said, the return on sales to the Windows gamer has always been about 3/4 of the whole. The return from the Linux gamer about 1/8 of the whole.
The obvious conclusion to be drawn from looking at the HB stats is that. while the Linux gamer will pay generously for the steeply discounted Linux port , the Linux market remains pathetically small.
The Humble Bundle has been looking rather stale and predictable of late ---- with many games making a return engagement. Either the pool of quality Indie titles is smaller than their fans may be willing to admit or the Indie developer is finding newer and more profitable outlets for promotional sales.
As I post, the new Windows-only Humble Bundle has sold over 320,000 units. currently at a rate of 2 sales a second or better, and is closing in fast on its first $2 million in sales, with twelve days yet to go.
"I have the opportunity to help improve / replace the website of my small U.S. town (~6000 people).
The website for our small home town library is maintained by a four-county cooperative. Its appearance and resources are far better than we could have hope to achieve on our own.
It makes sense to work with your neighbors. To budget and staff a project realistically.
But, dammit: when you're writing for a Linux magazine, you eat the dogfood, you don't find reasons to prophesize that Linux will never be a contender. Which he did. Repeatedly.
The geek would benefit from Cassandras and fewer Karl Roves.
How can that be? Turns out, our storage appliances, our Cisco phone system, our VMWare servers and lots more if you include the multi-function copiers and stuff are all Linux machines.
The key word here is "appliance."
A single-purpose device that users never give the slightest thought to until it fails. The operating system and user interface are deeply embedded, heavily customized, and off-limits to everyone but the technician who maintains it.
Linux, itself, is very widely accepted, used and relied upon. It is very proven.
In the back office. In the server rooms.
The domain of the IT pro ---
which can look very much like the home of a 43 year old UNIX mainframe.
If perhaps not quire so clean, spacious and tidy.
The problem is that the PC was embraced as a disruptive technology that gave more power --- more leverage --- to the user.
The problem is that the geek's relationship with the user tends to be rocky and at arm's length. You see this all the time in arguments over what a system or application UI should look like.
The mass market Windows laptop can be produced and sold in the millions, with very little effort.
Walmart.com, for example, finds it worthwhile to keep about 300-400 different flavors of the thing in stock --- and can reasonably expect to see a good return from after-market sales of hardware, software and accessories.
Sales of a customized "Developer's Laptop" --- whatever that may mean --- will be microscopic in comparison. It is not an easy market to reach, harder still to satisfy, with not much to show for all the effort you put into it.
Among the more than 900 U.S. and international middle school students invited to the ceremony on the Johns Hopkins University campus, all earned exceptionally high scores that place them well within the top one-half of one percent academically of all same-grade students. Past participants in the CTY Talent Search include Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg, Google cofounder Sergey Brin, and performer Lady Gaga.
More like symantec/McAfee/Avira take away. Windows on it's own is fine. But combined with antivirus software, it's crap.Worse, you can't leave windows box without antivirus, so you're screwed
Or maybe the geek sees only what he wants to see.
Previous versions of Windows Defender have been strictly anti-spyware, while Microsoft offered a separate, standalone tool for broader antimalware protection called Security Essentials. In Windows 8, the two are merged together so Windows Defender is actually a more comprehensive antimalware tool.
Windows Defender is part of Windows 8, and it's enabled by default so you get protection right out of the box.
With Windows 8, Microsoft takes the SmartScreen protection --- which has been a very effective tool for guarding against malicious downloads when using Internet Explorer --- and extends it to the entire operating system. Now, SmartScreen will warn and protect you even if you're using an alternate browser, such as Firefox or Chrome, or just downloading a file across the network.
MSE has a reputation for being light weight and effective.
It is also perfectly clear from even this brief overview that the security analyst looking at the mass market PC does not view UEFI, secure boot, and the app store through the same prism as the geek.
Between the increasing popularity of tablets and laptops, I suspect the days of building your own desktop PC have been numbered for a long time now. Besides, how can you geeks be forced to upgrade your whole computer every few years if you keep stubbornly refusing to play ball by doing things one component at a time? Not to mention the fact that self-built PC's can't be locked down behind a software walled garden
Put away the tinfoil hat.
In consumer electronics, automated manufacturing and the integration of components on a single board is 10 to 15 years older than the PC. The pressure to cut costs by reducing the number of parts and manufacturing steps in this market is relentless and always has been.
The integrated CPU and high performance GPU on-board is inevitable. The integrated SSD is the logical next step.
But here is why it will never happen. The world's pharmaceutical companies that make money through yearly flu vaccinations will be fighting this thing tooth and nail.
This is so stupid.
Big pharma begins with Bayer and Aspirin.
Big pharma has become bigger and stronger with every advance in medicine.
Most of the victims of the 1918 flu were healthy young adults. Most polio victims were children.
Solve problems like these and you keep tens of millions, hundreds of millions, of customers in the health care market for another half century or more. The return on investment is worth every penny.
"I'm one of the founders of an open source company which offers a popular open source product (millions of downloads) targeted primarily to small businesses.... Companies that have downloaded our product from one of the many free download sites have a question they want answered, so they call our support line.
It would easier to suggest an answer if I didn't have to summon up a Ouija Board to understand the question.
"Millions of downloads" suggests distribution through sources like Download.com. It suggests your product appeals to a much, much, larger group of users than you realize --- and it suggests that access to free or low cost technical support is too limited.
First impressions matter.
It wouldn't hurt to be a little less unbending about the bill when a new user runs into problems early on and calls for help.
Flaky hardware will make Windows and its software crash every time, while apps running Linux on the same flaky machine work fine, as I've seen on two different occasions.
"Two different occasions." eh?
Rather a small data set.
Personally, I would rather see hardware problems exposed sooner rather than later.
Why should an automobile last longer than an OS?
Because we have been manufacturing cars for over 100 years and most of the basic engineering problems were solved no later than the mid 1950?s?
The three hour parade starts at 77th St and ends at 34th Street.
8,000 marchers.
Including ten marching bands
Clowns. Dancers. Massive floats, outsized, peanut-shaped vehicles and other four-wheeled curiosities.
2 million pedestrians lining the route.
I find it hard to believe that shredded bits of paper are going to survive such a trampling in recognizable form. Harder still to believe that anyone could have collected and reassembled enough pieces of the puzzle to make a story like this seem credible.
I will not miss them. They are a cancer on progress. Volunteer entertainers are popping up everywhere just to get a million likes instead of a million dollars. They can't compete against that kind of currency.
The geek defines himself by the big media product, pop cultural artifacts like Star Trek, Star Wars. and The Lord of the Rings.
But there is something in the law that protects megaupload from this kinda BS. They complied with a search warrant and held the files on their system like FBI asked, now they are being shut down cause they kept them.
The question, I suspect, is whether the files were still being offered for download.
In plain English, whether there was good faith compliance with the previous warrant, which was intended to secure the evidence, not to facilitate an on-going infringement by allowing Megaupload to keep the files on a public-facing server.
Another court can rule completely differently, and Hamburg has some fame for ruling quite strongly in favor of big media conglomerates and contrary to the interest of the internet users. Only if the highest court in Germany, either the Bundesgerichtshof (Federal High Court) or the Bundesverfassungsgericht (Federal Constitutional Court) rule, it sets legal precedent.
But you have to be realistic about these things.
Hamborg, officially Free and Hanseatic City of Hamburg, is the second largest city in Germany, the fifteenth largest German state, and the sixth largest city in the European Union. The city is home to over 1.8 million people, while the Hamburg Metropolitan Region (including parts of the neighbouring Federal States of Lower Saxony and Schleswig-Holstein) has more than 5 million inhabitants. Situated on the river Elbe, the port of Hamburg is the third largest port in Europe (after the Port of Rotterdam and Port of Antwerp) and tenth largest worldwide.
That's because an IP address is not a human being when it comes to matters of law.
The decisions of a US district court can't be expected to carry much weight in Germany.
On 12 May 2010, the Bundesgerichtshof (Federal Supreme Court - BGH) granted an injunction to a music rights marketing company against the private operator of a WLAN under contributory negligence rules.
The BGH agreed that the plaintiff had no civil law entitlement to damages for breach of copyright by the defendant, either as perpetrator or participant, since it had not been proved that the defendant had shared the music himself or deliberately helped a third party to do so. There was every reason to assume that the person to whom an IP address had been allocated would be responsible for an infringement committed from that address. However, in this case, this assumption had been credibly refuted by the defendant's claim that he had been on holiday when the offence was committed. Neither had he intentionally participated in an infringement by a third party.
However, under contributory negligence rules, the BGH found the WLAN owner liable for failing to prevent a protected work from being made available to the public (Art. 19a of the Urheberrechtsgesetz - Copyright Act). By operating a WLAN that was not sufficiently secure, the defendant had wilfully and, with sufficient causality, contributed to this infringement and failed to meet his duty of due diligence in this respect. Even private individuals - if only in their own interest to protect their data - could be expected to verify whether their WLAN was sufficiently secure to prevent its misuse by third parties standing outside.
Actually, a surprising number of doctors are psychopaths, especially surgeons. Emotional detachment and all that.
Emotional detachment is what you should be looking for when you are seeking professional advice. You need someone who will tell what you need to know, not what you want to hear.
I fail to see how that is supposed to be a reason for not allowing a TLD. Critique and satire are important cornerstones of individual and free expression It is shamefull for a democratic government to be acting in such a way. A democracy hears its citizens, accepts critique and initiate change wherever reasonable. Censoring speech because you're afraid of people not praising you all the way - that's the way of tyrannies.
The global top level domain is a single word, a subject head. To call it "speech" is quite a stretch.
There is no global democracy, No universal definition of free speech.
No easy way to craft one without sounding either provincial or imperialist if you try. History. Culture. Legal traditions. All get in the way.
There is, I think, something to said for humility, maturity and common sense when dealing with other cultures. You don't have to go miles out of your way to be offensive. To make trouble.
Teach your kids that old games are often better than modern ones: get a Sega Dreamcast and pirate to your heart's content.
Your kids will want to play the games that other kids their age are playing.
The retro gaming experience can be fun.
But don't expect your kids to share your enthusiasm for the genre.
The oldest of all Birthday/Anniversary/Christmas gift gags is built around the man who gives his wife and kids the things he wants for himself. The more thoughtless and inappropriate the gift, the louder the laughter.
It isn't dehumanizing to keep track of students on campus, it is responsible.
The middle school and high school in this pilot program have 4,200 students.
The Northside district of San Antonio has 100,000 students --- or about 1/2 the total population of the metropolitan census district in which I live.
In our state no one gets unrestricted access and mobility on school grounds. You must have a legitimate reason for being there and you have to present ID.
Jones Middle School and John Jay High School 4,200 students
THREE GOALS
1.Increase student safety and security. Our students' parents expect that we always know where their children are in our schools.
2.Increase attendance. Through more efficient attendance management, schools can generate additional revenues by identifying students who are not in their seats during roll call but who are in the school and locate them. (Increased attendance = increased state revenues)
3.Provide multi-purpose "Smart" Student ID card. The Student ID will provide access to the library and cafeteria, serve as a photo ID, and allow for the purchase of tickets to schools' extracurricular activities. Other uses will be rolled out during the pilot program.
I can't think of many big campus-like environments in the adult world --- whatever their purpose --- that don't restrict physical access, movement and access to services through the use of keys, cards, badges and so on.
Game the system and you will be out of a job.
Parents send their kids to the STEM magnet school because they are looking academic rigor and discipline in a safe and secure environment.
I think the United States experience has proven that adequately.
I have a doubt.
The US is rapidly becoming the most racially, culturally and, quite openly, sexually diverse country in the Western world.
The Republican rhetoric is Apocalyptic.
The reality is peaceful change.
But the geek sub-culture as exposed through the prism of Slashdot can seem as insular and confined, aging white and frat-boy male, as the Party of Stupid
Slashdot Mirror
The Indie game has had a long run on the Windows platform before it becomes part of the Humble Bundle. That said, the return on sales to the Windows gamer has always been about 3/4 of the whole. The return from the Linux gamer about 1/8 of the whole.
The obvious conclusion to be drawn from looking at the HB stats is that. while the Linux gamer will pay generously for the steeply discounted Linux port , the Linux market remains pathetically small.
The Humble Bundle has been looking rather stale and predictable of late ---- with many games making a return engagement. Either the pool of quality Indie titles is smaller than their fans may be willing to admit or the Indie developer is finding newer and more profitable outlets for promotional sales.
As I post, the new Windows-only Humble Bundle has sold over 320,000 units. currently at a rate of 2 sales a second or better, and is closing in fast on its first $2 million in sales, with twelve days yet to go.
"I have the opportunity to help improve / replace the website of my small U.S. town (~6000 people).
The website for our small home town library is maintained by a four-county cooperative. Its appearance and resources are far better than we could have hope to achieve on our own.
It makes sense to work with your neighbors. To budget and staff a project realistically.
But, dammit: when you're writing for a Linux magazine, you eat the dogfood, you don't find reasons to prophesize that Linux will never be a contender. Which he did. Repeatedly.
The geek would benefit from Cassandras and fewer Karl Roves.
How can that be? Turns out, our storage appliances, our Cisco phone system, our VMWare servers and lots more if you include the multi-function copiers and stuff are all Linux machines.
The key word here is "appliance."
A single-purpose device that users never give the slightest thought to until it fails. The operating system and user interface are deeply embedded, heavily customized, and off-limits to everyone but the technician who maintains it.
Linux, itself, is very widely accepted, used and relied upon. It is very proven.
In the back office. In the server rooms.
The domain of the IT pro ---
which can look very much like the home of a 43 year old UNIX mainframe.
If perhaps not quire so clean, spacious and tidy.
The problem is that the PC was embraced as a disruptive technology that gave more power --- more leverage --- to the user.
The problem is that the geek's relationship with the user tends to be rocky and at arm's length. You see this all the time in arguments over what a system or application UI should look like.
The mass market Windows laptop can be produced and sold in the millions, with very little effort.
Walmart.com, for example, finds it worthwhile to keep about 300-400 different flavors of the thing in stock --- and can reasonably expect to see a good return from after-market sales of hardware, software and accessories.
Sales of a customized "Developer's Laptop" --- whatever that may mean --- will be microscopic in comparison. It is not an easy market to reach, harder still to satisfy, with not much to show for all the effort you put into it.
The geek kicks off on stories like these.
But a small word of caution: LWSD has a very good reputation
Lake Washington School District named to AP District Honor Roll
Among the more than 900 U.S. and international middle school students invited to the ceremony on the Johns Hopkins University campus, all earned exceptionally high scores that place them well within the top one-half of one percent academically of all same-grade students.
Past participants in the CTY Talent Search include Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg, Google cofounder Sergey Brin, and performer Lady Gaga.
Whiz Kid: Sammamish Middle-Schooler Kartik Iyer Honored for SAT Scores
More like symantec/McAfee/Avira take away. Windows on it's own is fine. But combined with antivirus software, it's crap.Worse, you can't leave windows box without antivirus, so you're screwed
Or maybe the geek sees only what he wants to see.
Previous versions of Windows Defender have been strictly anti-spyware, while Microsoft offered a separate, standalone tool for broader antimalware protection called Security Essentials. In Windows 8, the two are merged together so Windows Defender is actually a more comprehensive antimalware tool.
Windows Defender is part of Windows 8, and it's enabled by default so you get protection right out of the box.
With Windows 8, Microsoft takes the SmartScreen protection --- which has been a very effective tool for guarding against malicious downloads when using Internet Explorer --- and extends it to the entire operating system. Now, SmartScreen will warn and protect you even if you're using an alternate browser, such as Firefox or Chrome, or just downloading a file across the network.
Windows 8 raises the bar for PC security
MSE has a reputation for being light weight and effective.
It is also perfectly clear from even this brief overview that the security analyst looking at the mass market PC does not view UEFI, secure boot, and the app store through the same prism as the geek.
Between the increasing popularity of tablets and laptops, I suspect the days of building your own desktop PC have been numbered for a long time now.
Besides, how can you geeks be forced to upgrade your whole computer every few years if you keep stubbornly refusing to play ball by doing things one component at a time? Not to mention the fact that self-built PC's can't be locked down behind a software walled garden
Put away the tinfoil hat.
In consumer electronics, automated manufacturing and the integration of components on a single board is 10 to 15 years older than the PC. The pressure to cut costs by reducing the number of parts and manufacturing steps in this market is relentless and always has been.
The integrated CPU and high performance GPU on-board is inevitable. The integrated SSD is the logical next step.
But here is why it will never happen. The world's pharmaceutical companies that make money through yearly flu vaccinations will be fighting this thing tooth and nail.
This is so stupid.
Big pharma begins with Bayer and Aspirin.
Big pharma has become bigger and stronger with every advance in medicine.
Most of the victims of the 1918 flu were healthy young adults. Most polio victims were children.
Solve problems like these and you keep tens of millions, hundreds of millions, of customers in the health care market for another half century or more. The return on investment is worth every penny.
"I'm one of the founders of an open source company which offers a popular open source product (millions of downloads) targeted primarily to small businesses. ... Companies that have downloaded our product from one of the many free download sites have a question they want answered, so they call our support line.
It would easier to suggest an answer if I didn't have to summon up a Ouija Board to understand the question.
"Millions of downloads" suggests distribution through sources like Download.com. It suggests your product appeals to a much, much, larger group of users than you realize --- and it suggests that access to free or low cost technical support is too limited.
First impressions matter.
It wouldn't hurt to be a little less unbending about the bill when a new user runs into problems early on and calls for help.
Flaky hardware will make Windows and its software crash every time, while apps running Linux on the same flaky machine work fine, as I've seen on two different occasions.
"Two different occasions." eh?
Rather a small data set.
Personally, I would rather see hardware problems exposed sooner rather than later.
Why should an automobile last longer than an OS?
Because we have been manufacturing cars for over 100 years and most of the basic engineering problems were solved no later than the mid 1950?s?
First of all, I believe Macy's on this.
The three hour parade starts at 77th St and ends at 34th Street.
8,000 marchers.
Including ten marching bands
Clowns. Dancers. Massive floats, outsized, peanut-shaped vehicles and other four-wheeled curiosities.
2 million pedestrians lining the route.
I find it hard to believe that shredded bits of paper are going to survive such a trampling in recognizable form. Harder still to believe that anyone could have collected and reassembled enough pieces of the puzzle to make a story like this seem credible.
Macy's Thanksgiving Day Parade Route 2012: Where To Watch In New York City (MAP
"I work in a small ISP."
This sums up the problems with most "Ask Slashdot" stories.
This "small" ISP could have 50 clients or 15,000.
There is no way to know.
Budgets? Staffing? Your guess is as good as mine.
I will not miss them. They are a cancer on progress. Volunteer entertainers are popping up everywhere just to get a million likes instead of a million dollars. They can't compete against that kind of currency.
The geek defines himself by the big media product, pop cultural artifacts like Star Trek, Star Wars. and The Lord of the Rings.
But there is something in the law that protects megaupload from this kinda BS. They complied with a search warrant and held the files on their system like FBI asked, now they are being shut down cause they kept them.
The question, I suspect, is whether the files were still being offered for download.
In plain English, whether there was good faith compliance with the previous warrant, which was intended to secure the evidence, not to facilitate an on-going infringement by allowing Megaupload to keep the files on a public-facing server.
Another court can rule completely differently, and Hamburg has some fame for ruling quite strongly in favor of big media conglomerates and contrary to the interest of the internet users. Only if the highest court in Germany, either the Bundesgerichtshof (Federal High Court) or the Bundesverfassungsgericht (Federal Constitutional Court) rule, it sets legal precedent.
But you have to be realistic about these things.
Hamborg, officially Free and Hanseatic City of Hamburg, is the second largest city in Germany, the fifteenth largest German state, and the sixth largest city in the European Union. The city is home to over 1.8 million people, while the Hamburg Metropolitan Region (including parts of the neighbouring Federal States of Lower Saxony and Schleswig-Holstein) has more than 5 million inhabitants. Situated on the river Elbe, the port of Hamburg is the third largest port in Europe (after the Port of Rotterdam and Port of Antwerp) and tenth largest worldwide.
Hamburg
That's because an IP address is not a human being when it comes to matters of law.
The decisions of a US district court can't be expected to carry much weight in Germany.
On 12 May 2010, the Bundesgerichtshof (Federal Supreme Court - BGH) granted an injunction to a music rights marketing company against the private operator of a WLAN under contributory negligence rules.
The BGH agreed that the plaintiff had no civil law entitlement to damages for breach of copyright by the defendant, either as perpetrator or participant, since it had not been proved that the defendant had shared the music himself or deliberately helped a third party to do so. There was every reason to assume that the person to whom an IP address had been allocated would be responsible for an infringement committed from that address. However, in this case, this assumption had been credibly refuted by the defendant's claim that he had been on holiday when the offence was committed. Neither had he intentionally participated in an infringement by a third party.
However, under contributory negligence rules, the BGH found the WLAN owner liable for failing to prevent a protected work from being made available to the public (Art. 19a of the Urheberrechtsgesetz - Copyright Act). By operating a WLAN that was not sufficiently secure, the defendant had wilfully and, with sufficient causality, contributed to this infringement and failed to meet his duty of due diligence in this respect. Even private individuals - if only in their own interest to protect their data - could be expected to verify whether their WLAN was sufficiently secure to prevent its misuse by third parties standing outside.
BGH Finds WLAN Operator Liable
[2010]
TorrentFreak, to, to its credit, posted this link as an Update to its original story.
meanwhile somewhere in redmoon, a chair flies through the air.
IN THE NEWS
AT&T Launches Microsoft Office 365 for Midsize Businesses
EPA Subscribing To Microsoft's Office 365 Cloud Apps For 25,000 Employees
HP, Microsoft Office 365 Modernize Department of Veteran Affairs [600,000 Employees]
Announcing Office 365 for Government: A US Government Community Cloud
Microsoft Office for iOS, Android to have Office 365 subscription tie-in: Report
"rules are for other people".
"It's only against the law if you get caught"
I fear for the mental health of the Slashdot poster!
In tissue-thin disguise, you can hear these same sentiments being expressed in many a post about a geek's encounter with the law.
Actually, a surprising number of doctors are psychopaths, especially surgeons. Emotional detachment and all that.
Emotional detachment is what you should be looking for when you are seeking professional advice. You need someone who will tell what you need to know, not what you want to hear.
Case in point, Steve Jobs.
I fail to see how that is supposed to be a reason for not allowing a TLD. Critique and satire are important cornerstones of individual and free expression
It is shamefull for a democratic government to be acting in such a way. A democracy hears its citizens, accepts critique and initiate change wherever reasonable. Censoring speech because you're afraid of people not praising you all the way - that's the way of tyrannies.
The global top level domain is a single word, a subject head. To call it "speech" is quite a stretch.
There is no global democracy, No universal definition of free speech.
No easy way to craft one without sounding either provincial or imperialist if you try. History. Culture. Legal traditions. All get in the way.
There is, I think, something to said for humility, maturity and common sense when dealing with other cultures. You don't have to go miles out of your way to be offensive. To make trouble.
".sucks" is adolescent.
The geek spends too much time there already.
Teach your kids that old games are often better than modern ones: get a Sega Dreamcast and pirate to your heart's content.
Your kids will want to play the games that other kids their age are playing.
The retro gaming experience can be fun.
But don't expect your kids to share your enthusiasm for the genre.
The oldest of all Birthday/Anniversary/Christmas gift gags is built around the man who gives his wife and kids the things he wants for himself. The more thoughtless and inappropriate the gift, the louder the laughter.
It isn't dehumanizing to keep track of students on campus, it is responsible.
The middle school and high school in this pilot program have 4,200 students.
The Northside district of San Antonio has 100,000 students --- or about 1/2 the total population of the metropolitan census district in which I live.
In our state no one gets unrestricted access and mobility on school grounds. You must have a legitimate reason for being there and you have to present ID.
F.A.Q.
Northside ISD San Antonio
112 schools
100,000 students
RFID Pilot Program
Jones Middle School and John Jay High School
4,200 students
THREE GOALS
1.Increase student safety and security. Our students' parents expect that we always know where their children are in our schools.
2.Increase attendance. Through more efficient attendance management, schools can generate additional revenues by identifying students who are not in their seats during roll call but who are in the school and locate them. (Increased attendance = increased state revenues)
3.Provide multi-purpose "Smart" Student ID card. The Student ID will provide access to the library and cafeteria, serve as a photo ID, and allow for the purchase of tickets to schools' extracurricular activities. Other uses will be rolled out during the pilot program.
"Smart" Student ID Cards
I can't think of many big campus-like environments in the adult world --- whatever their purpose --- that don't restrict physical access, movement and access to services through the use of keys, cards, badges and so on.
Game the system and you will be out of a job.
Parents send their kids to the STEM magnet school because they are looking academic rigor and discipline in a safe and secure environment.
I think the United States experience has proven that adequately.
I have a doubt.
The US is rapidly becoming the most racially, culturally and, quite openly, sexually diverse country in the Western world.
The Republican rhetoric is Apocalyptic.
The reality is peaceful change.
But the geek sub-culture as exposed through the prism of Slashdot can seem as insular and confined, aging white and frat-boy male, as the Party of Stupid