Might be true but if you are a US corporation you should be more afraid of China since they are interested in stealing your trade secrets and handing it to their businesses:

http://www.pbs.org/newshour/bb/military/july-dec13/cybercrime_07-08.html

Despite all the revelations of NSA spying they are not gathering trade secrets and handing them to American companies. Since neither Cisco nor Huawei is focused on the consumer market your argument takes the wrong perspective.

If you read a bit more than the review article you find that scores on the test of scientific literacy they used is highly correlated with years of education. Since the tea party is heavily skewed toward older white males you'd expect them to have more years of education than the general population. Years of education was not controlled for.

Yes, but what you leave out is that he got an economy in freefall, because of a financial crisis so bad that his opponent (McCain) had to suspend his Presidential campaign to head back to Washington to vote on a bailout for the financial system (he even wanted to skip out on the debates). His predecessor had turned the Clinton surpluses into deficits with tax cuts and two wars. So, he started with huge deficits and an economy shedding about 200,000 jobs a month and had a choice between austerity and stimulus. He chose stimulus and now we have anemic job growth and deficits that are headed back down. I've been to Greece recently and am grateful that he didn't choose austerity. Now, faced with a weak economy the GOP is shutting down the Government because they can't repeal the Affordable Care Act and they'll shave a couple tenths of a percent off GDP growth, making deficit reduction that much harder.

I've seen both sides of this argument. I have seen companies try to replace a system and be unable to replicate the functionality that they need in a new system. On the other hand I've seen companies decide after trying to replicate poorly documented business rules in new software that they need to take a long hard look at all the rules and jettison most of the software customization that is unique to the business. Some of it is there for reasons that no longer apply. Some customization is no longer used. Some customization is counterproductive. The trick is to identify which customizations are worthwhile and having somebody at the top who says no to customization that isn't really necessary so that it doesn't grow endlessly. Ask yourself how different your business is and how critical the customization is. An IT guy, especially a new one needs to get buy in from the top because he will not be able to say no to requests to keep and add business rules.

Losing your credit card and getting a new number won't solve the problem because the ID thieves can just open an account or take out a loan in your name since they have your name, social security number, date of birth and all the other information a bank uses to confirm that the person opening the account is you.

Linked in claims that it won't send e-mail to your contacts on your behalf without your permission. What they don't say is that they won't send e-mail to their existing members that happen to be in your contact list. They also don't claim that they won't exploit the knowledge that I am both in your contact list and an existing member. So, I have had a number of e-mails and web pages that list a particular individual as "somebody you may know" because she once answered a classified ad from her yahoo address and linked in has access to her yahoo e-mail account. I am nearly certain that she never asked linked in to connect us; if she had the message from linked in would say "Person X has requested a connection." Instead, for three years they have kept suggesting that I may know person X, and given that I have no other connection than a couple of e-mails in response to an advertisement, they are exploiting her e-mail contacts in a way that they don't make clear to their users when they are granted access to e-mail accounts.

No worries, the more complex the product the more complex the printer will need to be and the less efficient doing it on a small scale will be. We could all produce many things at home now but we don't. In part, it is more efficient to produce things in mass quantities. Then there is the up front cost. In part it is the complexity of producing certain components. There is a reason IC plants are so expensive; you can't print a chip without a lot complex machinery, a specific environment, etc. So, even if somebody comes up with a printer that can print a laptop it will have a large up front cost, require maintenance, and not be cheaper than paying a company that specializes in making laptops for many decades to come.

There is a difference between spending money to come see me and sending me a check.

You are wrong on two fronts. First, there are plenty of scientifically documented benefits to music and arts education. http://blogs.scientificamerican.com/science-sushi/2012/08/21/even-a-few-years-of-music-training-benefits-the-brain/ http://www.nasaa-arts.org/Research/Key-Topics/Arts-Education/critical-evidence.pdf Despite the overwhelming evidence, my son's school system just fired all their elementary school music, art, and PE teachers. http://www.nasaa-arts.org/Research/Key-Topics/Arts-Education/critical-evidence.pdf

Many here have hit the nail on the head. The political right pushes issues that embed religion and patriotism. The left pushes issues that help the teachers unions. The evidence that supports change that doesn't help one side of that debate or the other gets ignored. DARE doesn't work, kids learn language like native speakers before the age of 12, high school age children do better with later school starts times. If you taught language early, started high school late, and dropped DARE you'd save money and achieve better outcomes. http://moderatelyliberal.blogspot.com/2011/05/lip-service-to-education.html

I second Second Life. It goes beyond virtual dancing and virtual sex. You can create virtual objects, write scripts that control the behavior of those objects, play in world games (often hunting for clues or prizes), explore others creations, practice another language, hear live music (some of it truly great) and develop a complete online social circle.

What makes the fancy scientists think that this will be any different? I've given my wife 5,000 excuses for not going to the gym. They never work.

I'm not sure why you can't. They offer a number of options.