And this is the problem with virtually unlimited copyrights and DRM, it removes items of popular culture from general availability.
Our culture has been monetized and taken from us, to be sold back to us.

"There has grown up in the minds of certain groups in this country the notion that because a man or corporation has made a profit out of the public for a number of years, the government and the courts are charged with the duty of guaranteeing such profit in the future, even in the face of changing circumstances and contrary to public interest. This strange doctrine is not supported by statute or common law. Neither individuals nor corporations have any right to come into court and ask that the clock of history be stopped, or turned back."
-Heinlein

Matrix 2 you say?

I remember The Matrix it was a great movie, I always thought it was too bad they never made any sequels.

http://xkcd.com/566/

The correct answer is of course - everyone wins!
The world would be free from Zuckerberg and Apple would get back a new and improved zombie Jobs

As much as I hate HR, the reason they do this is because the US K-12 education is continuing to decline as 'no child left behind' and other administrative testing programs tied to funding drag down the average to the slowest student, so getting an employee who can do basic math/reading/writing requires a college degree in many circumstances.

You've got it all wrong, you're already a criminal... the system of laws is setup so that everyone is in violation of some law, that way those in authority can simply choose who they want to detain and they will be 100% justified everytime.

Are you crazy! Did you even think of how the extra costs would effect the quarterly stock price?
Clearly you lack the business sense/experience necessary to be a C level executive.

Is that an african or european swallow?

They already tried this, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Long_Beach_class_cruiser/ making a boat nuclear powered raises the maintenance costs through the roof, there's a reason only subs, where there is no other option for performance requirments, and carriers, where the scale makes it feasible, are the only types of nuclear boats still in service.

looking at their configuration all I think of is how much of a mess it will make when it blows of my roof. there's a reason people install panels flat to their roofs. not to mention the added weight and live load reaking havoc on a standard truss roof not designed for that load configuration.

No you'll sleep during the day, did you forget that all of us cancer free zombies are nocturnal.

the term your looking for is specific strength or breaking length http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Specific_strength/, and this length can be overcome by not using a constant cross section i.e. tapering the cable. also this is assuming constant gravitational forces which diminish as you move away from earth and the cable will be rotating with the earth supplying it with a sizable centripetal force, eventually balancing out at 36000 km when you're in orbit.

I spent a few years of my life researching the physics ideas behind a space elevator in my teens, often cursing Arthur C Clarke's exercise for the student, learned bits of calculus, dynamics, material science among other things answering the question for myself, made a BS in mechanical engineering pretty easy though.

How about instead of Billion/Trillion dollar new technology, we do an unemotional risk assessment of the situation and go back to a more reasonable level of airport security.... except of course that doesn't make anyone any money which is all airport security is about these days, selling another machine using fear as a selling point. 9-11 should have resulted in some simple security fixes, locks on the doors and changes in passenger attitudes to hijacking, both of which have happened, everything else is CYA security theatre fundraising.

when they figure out a way to use this to make me some artificial bone wolverine like claws.

My school had a similar work at your own speed system, the problem was that the system was designed so that the 'slow' children could finish it in the schoolyear, I finished it in around 4 months and spent the remainder of the year performing 'special ' assignments that were nothing but busy work to keep me from distracting the students who still had work to do.