Well, except maybe linkedin.

Nah, it's easier to do neither. And a good business model, apparently.

I think you mean "until they go out of business." The reason that they go out of business isn't terribly important, but as long as they're in business, this is the business they're in.

They're not bitching because someone is overhearing it.

They're bitching because someone is carefully recording it, cataloging it, pinning your name on it, and selling the information to anyone who wants it.

Shucks; now I'll have to RTFA.

Such a waste! For that price, he could have gotten 5M one-£ hooker-bots.

Classrooms today that are equipped with computers, smartboards, and whatnot don't seem to be doing much better in terms of basic literacy and reasoning than schools equipped with little more than slates and chalk a hundred years ago.

I'm not saying that there isn't something positive that we could do with more tech in the classroom, but the current tech doesn't seem to be helping all that much. Tech for the sake of tech is just another expense.

When will the first North Korean porn site open?

And how long after that will it be taken down?

And how long after that will its proprietors be executed?

These are two different things: one is a feature that (presumably) you, as the owner, could enable or disable, as you feel is most appropriate. The second is a limitation that the government legislators might impose on your use of your phone, whether you like it or not.

I'm worried that this sort of thing would lead to phones that won't allow me to answer when they detect that I might be driving.

Sure; we've tried every other fad that's come along, might as well try this one also.

I'm leery of educational programs that focus on a specific set of tools and methodologies and don't include a solid grounding in the theory behind computer science and the philosophy (for lack of a better word) of software engineering. Languages, frameworks, and programming paradigms come and go, and many have the shelf-life of cheese. The theory and basic problem-solving skills are eternal.

For example: the local equivalent of CS1 used Pascal, but only as a notation for expressing ideas. I never used Pascal again (and I don't think you could pay me enough to...), but I use the concepts of functional decomposition and top-down design every day.

Learn the basics and learn them well, and your skills will translate to new areas easily and you'll find it easy to keep up-to-date. Focus too deeply on the current technology, and new technology will be your constant foe.

Although very generous, I think it's a bit of a stretch to call Google's grant to SMU a "collaboration", or to only mention Google and omit any mention of USDOE and other entities that have been funding this research at SMU and elsewhere for many years. For example, this this report from 2006, which points out the potential of the thermal hotspot in West Virginia...

It doesn't have the cool Google Earth graphics, however.

I think the author might not fully understand who most admins are. They're people who couldn't write a shell script if their lives depended on it, because they've never had to. GUI-dependent users become GUI-dependent admins.

As a percentage of computer users, people who can actually navigate a CLI are an ever-diminishing group.

Before I saddle up the war horses, can you provide a citation?

This is a serious allegation; tying arrangements are dangerously prosecutable under antitrust laws, as Microsoft should remember.