I believe an XKCD is appropriate here: http://www.xkcd.com/1118/

In our current world there is rather blatant and easy justification for war. I don't know what world you live in, but you sound like someone who's never stepped out of their own living room. Things can look relatively easy from a living room window. Here's the easy justification for war: there are people in this world who do not hold any reservations about using violence to get what they want. In many instances of this the offending party can be stopped without resorting to violence, but in cases which happen all to often the only way to stop them is by reciprocating the violence. There's similar justification for secrecy; there are many people in this world who hold no reservations about exploiting vulnerability. Do I believe this justifies the situation? No. I don't. But we can't change the past, or undo other people's wrongs. The situation is what it is. If you feel being there was an injustice, fine. Punish those involved, but with the situation given it would be equally wrong to leave a devastated state to be exploited. That would be at LEAST equally unjust, if not more so. There are many, many people who see the military as a direct way of helping the most vulnerable people defend themselves against the most violent. These people get to make a positive impact on others' lives which is on orders of magnitude greater than they could otherwise. So while I agree with you that there ought not be war, just like there ought not be violence, I don't foresee a future where there will be no war or violence.

This is a great example of how a market can work together to achieve a goal. I think this kind of collaboration should be encouraged by the state. Here's a similar example of how and how not to: In cameras there is a consortium which promotes a lens mount standard called four-thirds. A few companies have made cameras and lenses to fit it. More recently they made a standard called micro four-thirds. This is for mirrorless interchangeable lens cameras. Only Panasonic and Olympus have adopted it. Even so, a BUNCH of companies have now made similar cameras, all with different standards. Some companies have more than one standard for their MILCs! I understand each party has different goals, but some form of collaboration would be much better for the consumer, which is I guess my mistake. They don't care about consumers. They want you to buy their lenses and cameras and things.

Right now he's reading things on a desktop...which likely has an LCD display. This would, in my book, nullify most arguments against LCD display tablets. No, they aren't perfect, but they're no worse than the alternative. Maybe the new wave of Win8 tablets would be good? Alot of them have active stylus inpt capabilities. I use a Dell Latitude ST for all of my ME classwork. All of my textbooks are on it. I use OneNote for assignments. It works very well, even with Windows 7, which is not a very touch-friendly OS.

This last semester I went from having notebooks to loose-leaf grid paper. It allowed me to share my notes with people without handing them the whole notebook. I could go back and insert notes where I'd missed something, or during review. Grid paper allowed better organization of the notes themselves. This simple thing thoroughly increased my organization and productivity in class. I went from 'chicken scratching' to people honestly marveling at how well organized and legible my notes were. This semester I'm going to try an android tablet with a legitimate pen digitizer. I've got an HTC Flyer and scribe pen, but it's only a 7" screen. I am playing with Quill as my program of choice. I will probably end up picking up an HTC Jetstream, which is a 10.1" device, though I'll likely keep the Flyer. I like the 7" form-factor for everything except writing on.

KDE has done a wonderful job of doing just what you describe.

It's not dead because all of your VMs and interpreters have to interact with SOMETHING, and that SOMETHING has to be written in a low-level language. I strongly believe in using only the lowest-level language necessary for the job, but for OS development that's C.

I'm typing this on a Dell Vostro V131. It came preloaded with Ubuntu. Dell has been selling Linux laptops and desktops for a LONG time. Where have you guys been?

Another reason why Georgism looks more appealing. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Georgism

I've read this one before... O! That's right! Here it is: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Diamond_Age

Something I've liked about KDE recently has been the push for movable, sizable, and groupable widgets and sections in the UI. Some follow some sort of convention. Most don't. I'm hoping Calligra standardizes their UI stuffs, as right now it's kinda random.

Compression is your friend. Also, weeding out things you don't use. Hording is problem in the digital age as well.

They also want ALL cars to have back-up cameras: http://news.consumerreports.org/cars/2012/02/car-backup-camera-rule-delayed-again-by-nhtsa.html REALLY?! It's more likely that you get bitten by a shark while being struck by lightning than run over someone backwards.

Desktop environment != distribution. It never has. Even Unity can be run on other distributions. This means we've ALWAYS been there. I don't know anyone who associates what distribution is being run to what KDE, GNOME, XFCE, OpenBox all ring a bell? They're DESKTOP ENVIRONMENTS, not distributions. You can hop on your Unity Ubuntu and install KDE, or Debian and install Gnome3, or Arch and install Unity if you so want! It has NEVER mattered what distribution someone runs, as it has never been synonymous with what DE they use, or apps they run for that matter.

What current candidate thinks the TSA should go away? I want to vote for them.