I tend to agree. If the USA wasn't running wars with no clear finish line to support military industrial complex lobbyists and interest groups you would have trillions of dollars to spend on health, education, infrastructure etc. Seriously how do you guys do it? Even if you spent those trillions on subsidies to get manufacturing back into your country you would be better off than waging a single war (let alone at least three - drugs, iraq, afganistan), you'd have a stimulated economy and jobs. Instead your letting China buy your bonds so you can expose yourself to even higher debt levels... the very country that we continually get told is hacking you guys left right and center. The very country that has all the ex-USA jobs shipped overseas, while those with jobs piss into the wind to bail out gready wall street execs and coprorations with more rights than the people and cash to nullify the law. At the same time you ship your youth off to be killed and injured by people on the other side of the world who will continue to do so because of religious belief. It's not a war to them, it is a way of life, fighting them just fuels their hatred. In return you generate more agression towards your country which only then serves to provide an excuse for your civil and human rights to be taken away right in front of your faces and your children molested and radiated at airports. You guys truely deserve the title 'Planet America' because you are so far down the WTF hole the rest of the world is stunned and views you in some kind of alternate reality. I don't know if Ron Paul can fix this but you have to do something massive and out of the box or you guys are screwed. I'm not hating on Americans but seriously the rest of the world has a front row seat to a film called 'How to implode an empire'.

It is not happening in the US so why draw that comparison? Contrary to what the US believes US law doesn't apply everywhere. If it did the US couldn't create legal black holes such as Guantanamo when it suits their needs. Oh and how can one 'intrude' on a global, multi jurisdiction public network? And all proxies are masquerading on behalf of other peers. Fake information is illegal? Facebook and Google might want you to think so but.... in a word... No.

Some would argue that American english is bad english.

Are also less likely to come into contact with carcinogens in their food, air and water.

The power of Sheldon Copper. Seriously I wonder how many non geeks watching Big Bang googled Ubuntu after it got a mention on the show.

Step 1. USA develops it Step 2. Steal it Step 3. Rename it 'Almighty Hapiness Warrior Dragon Plan' I am sure China appreciates the US doing the R&D for them on this project.

So basically the USA is *still* not taking steps to secure its critical infrastructure networks and other countries including China are still taking advantage of said lack of security. Wow! News at eleven. Meanwhile the US and her allies are doing the same thing back. Australias DSD motto is "Reveal their secrets, protect our own" http://www.dsd.gov.au/ I'm sure teams in the NSA and CIA have similiar mottos. The idea of good guys vs bad guys because of the lattitude and longitude of where your mothers uterus deployed you is stupid. Everyone is doing it... you just don't hear about your team because reporting on it would be unpatriotic and not in the national interest.

They (all reasonably mainstream languages) are all fine for this. You can even get the free version of visual studio and do C# / VB.Net and by learning the libraries of one pretty much know everything you need for the other. C# is a lot like Java and flicking from one to the other is easy as is stepping down to C++ or over to Javascript. I'd say Java / C#. Both free, both compliment the other and MSDN is huge, seriously HUGE in depth and breadth. C# will also lead into powershell which may be better suited to what you want to do potentially.

by nerds... " I’ve written about Enceladus about thirty two bajillion times, because it’s fascinating, and photogenic as heck" given just how nerdy this is no doubt it will have fewer responses than more mainstream non nerdy articles on slashdot.

Yeah this is slashdot ... it happens ...