"Arrogance"? We know we don't know. That's why we're looking. Sheesh....

You nailed the description of middle managers. It verges on being a definition.....

Don't "tell" her anything unless it's just stories about you and your family and how you felt about things and about her. She your hopes and dreams. She'll want to know you better even though you're gone. That's the sort of thing she'll look to for insights in the decades ahead of her... And each passing decade will allow her own experience to see, anew, meaning in your words.

I'm closer to 60 then 50. Most people my age would prefer paper books. No argument. I'm just not one of them. I prefer having 200+ books in my back pocket. My e-reader, ideally, let's me annotate what I'm reading.... So I have searchable relevant markers. I can look up words that need looking up. When reading on my phone on a plane I hold it with 3-4 fingers - lightly - whereas the person next to me with a big fat paper novel soon grows tired of wrangling the big, fat thing. Distraction? Don't be! Grow some self discipline.

If you want a practical demonstration of the effectiveness of hype / propaganda, go to New Zealand or Hong Kong or Paris a week before the Superbowl. You won't hear a word about it. It's like it didn't even exist. So the difference is: the noise we allow into our heads in North America about things like the Superbowl that amount to less than 'doesn't matter' almost everywhere else.

If you don't run any AV software how do you know you haven't been infected? The 'best' botnets don't degrade you're system performance much and don't get in your way because they don't want to subjectively detected by the user. They just did in the background quietly pumping out moderate traffic that doesn't alert or alarm the use of the infected machine. By not being greedy.... They don't get caught... And millions of PCs infected this way amount to a huge resource made up of small resource consumption each. Point is.... How would you know if you haven't used AV software at all?

Chromebooks are the Linux system many of us have been waiting for. Plug a 3TB USB 3.0 external drive into it... And you're away laughing. Fast, secure and cheap.

Lately I've been dealing with Windows systems virtually crippled by the "real time protection" now standard in most antivirus applications. I bought Chromebooks for my family. They are fast, cheap and don't need anti-virus. My wife loves hers. The only way to stop AV packages crippling a Windows system is to disable or degrade the protection.... Which leaves you vulnerable. That's not the answer either. So I ditched Windows. That was the best answer. This has been going on for 20 years and more. Clearly it's part of the Windows ecology. No thanks.

It's pretty good! But many people do make use of the Circle functionality and therefore none of their posts are publicly visible. For them, this is one of G+'s main attractions.

The American Revolutionary War wasn't between the government and the people. It was between the government, supported by Loyalists, and the would-be revolutionaries. Some of my ancestors were Loyalists who glad to Canada. "The People" were far from unanimous about the revolution.

Windows 8 was so annoying we moved on to Chromebooks. They actually do everything we need..... And being able to login 5 seconds after turning the device on is a constant pleasure. OK, the Chromebook can't access Windows file shares so we use ftp the cloud instead. The Chromebooks are half the price of a Windows laptop and generally perform so well users are struck by how fast they are compared to MS bloatware.

Nukes aren't the answer. They are just one more way we try to perpetuate our unsustainable civilization. Just one more lie we tell ourselves. Renewables are the answer, combined with greater energy efficiency and a population policy that understands there is a limit to the number if people this one planet can sustain (and have good quality of life for all). But we're pigs. So we don't like limits. So we try to cheat.

Anyone can present facts. They can also ignore a lot of facts they don't like in the process. While over 31,000 people die by guns in America ever year and nothing is done about it, it's hard to take seriously any "need" for mass surveillance to prevent terrorism..... Which kills almost no one ever year. Lawn mowers are more dangerous.

We can do many things provided we have adequate income to live (food, shelter, transport, clothing, learning / creating). The problem is when the people at the top who own the robots aren't required to also address the social consequences of depriving others of their source of income. Perhaps this is why the apparatus of a police state is being constructed now: to does the revolution that may result when millions can no longer live as they have.... And they've stopped drinking the Kool-Aid that says it's their fault.

I generally live software updates. They usually result in a faster, more stable, now secure system. But a bad patch can be a huge problem best avoided. I do note with interest Microsoft appear to have a history of bad patches on the previous versions of Windows and the answer is often to upgrade to the latest version. This is one of the many reasons why I now tend to avoid Windows completely but for one "legacy" machine. I'm waiting for 64-bit Android. Shouldn't be long now.