Sounds like your ideas on development are just as atavistic and misguided as the ones you have regarding economics. I see a trend here.

Before I work on someone's machine, I ask that person to close all windows that may have sensitive content s/he may not want me to see. This policy establishes a certain amount of trust with the user. Put the onus on the user to determine what s/he considers private and sensitive. Easy-peasy, and it only takes 30 seconds.

Don't worry, there are some of us for whom your irony didn't escape us. :)

The War on Drugs does provide a substantial benefit -- for the police forces who can buy shiny new toys by auctioning off stuff seized via asset forfeiture; the owners of private prisons; drug kingpins who earn their filthy lucre from peddling illicit wares; the members of public-sector prison-guard unions; and the laboratories who get to charge outrageous amounts of money to administer and process drug tests.

The general public, of course, does not share in this bounty and furthermore suffers from higher rates of violent crime spawned by prohibition.

As to why the 'cheap shot', it's because Obama has been expanding upon many of Bush's most-hated policies. In his campaign speeches, he promised to scale back the War on Terror, close Gitmo and rein in the surveillance apparatus. He has done none of these things, and has indeed intensified those efforts.

Technology only goes so far. There are certain limits imposed by the laws of physics (e.g., thermodynamics) that are unyielding.

I like Amory Lovins' twist: 'Global Weirding'.

Have her run ReactOS in a virtual machine and she can run her favourite piece of software under *that*. She can run everything thing else (including a browser) under Windows 7 or 8.x.

Erm, no . If Bill Gates is a million times wealthier than me, do you think he buys a million times more automobiles? He does consume more than I do, but nowhere near in proportion to his greater overall wealth. You're committing a fallacy of composition. The wealthy may consume 10 or 100 times more, but the bulk of the difference in income and wealth are locked up in bonds and offshore accounts. This stuff gets passed onto their progeny, creating a de facto dynastic ruling class.

The people who profit from making all these inane rules are ultimately the manufacturers of the screening equipment, the people training security staff, et cetera. In other words, the military-industrial-security complex. It is with them (and the politicians who sell us out to them) that we must start redressing our grievances. We must also stop sensationalising every one-in-a-million occurrence (terrorism, being struck twice by lightning) and start mitigating the effects of problems that will likely impact us all (e.g., climate change).

The management who 'brushed off' the security staff should be held criminally liable. This goes beyond mere negligence.

I also observe Google progressively closing off more and more of Android's API's, making iOS comparatively less of a walled garden over time. In that respect, Android's comparative advantage is decreasing steadily.

That self-assessment stuff is mostly wankery. I want my boss to be candid about what I'm doing right, and what I'm doing wrong. And tell me then and there, not six months later.

Feedback from our bosses should be like saving a file: early and often. I can't tell you how many times I've heard of a manager showing his/her dissatisfaction too late: during 'the talk' about the direct report being let go.

That may be true if you're a rural customer and/or have DSL. However, if you live in a (sub)urban location and don't have DSL, chance are you're provisioned from a SLC-96. If so, your line is only private between your residence and the SLC-96 cabinet. From that point on to the central office, you're sharing a circuit with 23 other customers (a SLC-96 cabinet has 4 active DS1 circuits, with 1 spare; 4 x 24 = 96, hence the name).