Along the same lines, good grades do not mean that you will be successful in the work environment.

The same as bad grades don't mean you won't.

It is a first pass, enough to get your foot in the door.

Which means that there may be many very good employees that you won't even let through the door simply because they think so critically that they won't toe your line.

If they get C's in highschool, it is because they are lazy (both intellectually and in terms of work ethic).

Of course it couldn't be that they just were bored out of their skulls studying things that they had learned five years earlier reading encyclopedia for recreation, right? As I remember High School: Get an "F" for not doing the homework because I was busy discovering new things, get an "A" for passing the test. End result, a "C" average.

So you defend the idea that a human's potential can be summed up by a few numbers taken at arbitrary points in their life? A college degree is no longer a plumb, it has become a necessity to survive in modern society.

I had a low "C" too in high school, yet managed to maintain a 4.0 during my first three years of college and graduated with a 3.5. I concentrated on what interested me and blew off the rest during both.

Free access to anything is anti-capatilistic. Money must be exchanged for the people to enjoy the sights in the land of the free.

...is worse for others. Guess it really depends on how big your pockets are.

Or stuff that matters. You really aren't interested in the least on how the US can get others to put "boots on the ground" when they themselves are relunctant to do?

The data Google collects is the price paid by the users of its "free" services. I can't see how anyone can argue that an exchange of value is not taking place here.

Anyone who exchanges one thing of value for another can be considered a customer. Data is the currency that Google accepts as payment for many of its services in lieu of cash. I could see a reasonable court ordering that data deleted if proper service is not provided.

That is, afterall, the currency they currently accept for many of the services they provide.

That is very well known, and they trade that payment for cash from advertisers.

I still remember going through the duck and cover drills.

Not necessarily, could be they don't want to have to bicker with a bunch of other nations over which experiments take priority.

It could also be that they have experiments they want to perform that wouldn't be allowed on the International Space Station.

Never heard anyone refer to one of those devices as a tablet.