Not particularly technical, but vaguely geeky in their own right.

The company I work for has an entire division devoted to executive compensation analysis. It largely consists of surveying executives to discover trends in various industries' compensation packages. We do the bulk of the work as a "disinterested third party" so companies can obtain an unbiased analysis of executive compensation trends (for a fee - which is one of my company's revenue streams).

Organizations then purchase the analyses of these trends to aid them in determining how they should set up compensation plans for their executives. Organizations with thousands of employees, dozens of executives, and hundreds of managers will usually have at least one FTE (and often several FTEs) of their own dedicated to participating in compensation surveys, analyzing results, and investigating whether the organization should be altering the executive compensation packages by going more heavy in, say, deferred compensation programs versus direct compensation, etc.

The standard practice for the people that do this is to send out both the data collection surveys and the results in spreadsheets, typically in Excel (a few decades ago it would been Lotus 1-2-3).

Analysis of the data is usually performed in SAS or SPSS.

Keep in mind ... there are NO places in the USA where tornadoes occur regularly. Take Kansas (where I grew up), it is in "Tornado Alley". Ooh, dangerous! Not really. There's dozens of tornadoes per year in the state, but tornadoes have a pretty small damage path, usually only a few square miles. Let's say it is an absolutely horrible year, though, and there are 100 tornadoes with an average damage path of 20 square miles, that would be 2000 square miles of damage. Kansas is ~82,000 square miles in size, though. So even in a year far worse than has happened in recorded history, as a Kansas resident for a worst case year you are 40 times more likely to be unaffected by a tornado than you are to be affected.

The downside is, damage from a tornado if you are directly in the damage path tends to be absolute. Grass and foundations tend to be the only items left intact.

I agree, but it didn't seem to be that difficult for silk garments:

"Fabric made from worm spit!"*

*Okay, not quite spit, not quite worms, but it would be the layperson's interpretation if they were to see the process of a silkworm spinning its cocoon.

My concern over the smaller screen is that I can touch-type on an iPad on-screen keyboard (when in landscape orientation). I wouldn't be able to do that on a 7" display. I'd prefer to have one more inch of keyboard on the iPad for more comfort in touch-typing, but the current size is barely adequate.

I agree, my speed of typing is lower on a tablet than on a real keyboard. The level of noise from typing on a tablet is much less though. Instead of needing to taking notes on pen & paper during conference calls (because a real keyboard would be too noisy) and having somebody do data entry from my notes, now I can take my notes during the call directly on a tablet (that can run throughout a workday on its internal battery easily) and they are ready to be sent directly from the tablet as the call concludes. Faster notes to the developers and project manager, better accuracy (because nobody has to do data entry from my handwriting).

It may be a limited use case, but that use case is half of my work week.

Yes, I'm in too many meetings. I take most of the pain so our other developers with fewer social graces don't have to (it keeps us all employed).

I don't think you understand math ...

"Pi is not a real number" -

Wrong, Pi is a real number, it is an irrational number, but it is a real number. It is not an estimation, but there are many different approximations for Pi that are used for the sake of convenience.

"There are numerous types of 'Math' that we simply can not prove true or untrue. We still use them, because to the best of our knowledge things work in a specific way."

I'm not sure what you are talking about here. There are many mathematical statements that we know are proven, others that we know are provable (but have no known documented proofs) and likewise many that we know are false, many that we have shown to be unprovable, and many that we do not yet know if they are provable or not. But pretty much any mathematical statement that is used in any mundane fashion (typical engineering or simpler discipline) is rooted in proven theorems (meaning proofs exist - the fact that the word "theorem" is used does not mean "unproven").

Maybe the iPad Mini should be the iPod Maxi instead ... ... I'm waiting for the iPad with a 15" screen to be announced so I can tell people how much I need to go get a Maxi-Pad!

Wait. No!

Can't tell if this is a troll, shill, or rabid fanboi ... ... whatever, it can't be serious. :-)

Given that the system knows where in the building students are and were, I imagine the parents will likely change their minds and praise the system if a student goes missing. They'll know when and where the student was the last time they were on campus, and I would assume through which door the student left.

Keeping tabs of 1200 students you are responsible for is a daunting task, as an adult, I wouldn't want to be tracked in this way, but I don't have a problem with my kids school ID cards being tracked while on the school's campus.

I think you are attending the wrong dance clubs ...

If you were to purchase (for example) a tire for your car, normally about a $100 item, and you were told the price was $10, wouldn't you be wondering "Why is this only 1/10 the normal price?"

Being 90% below the expected price is not the norm for an overstock situation, even on low-volume items.

"don't work as well." != "not deploying ... throwing metal shards."

The last thing a person needs while in the process of a vehicular collision is to have their steering wheel explode like a fragmentation grenade.

While "don't work as well" is true, it so much of an understatement as to be NOT TRUE.

I believe the adjective is redundant ...

... oh, wait, I'm 46 years old.

Other than that, the entire original summary could be me ... spooky.

Very true, it is one large funnel, with taxpayers at the big end pouring in cash, and various cronies of those in power taking turns holding their money bags under the narrow end.

I'll put my name on the "watch list" by saying that DHS has a second goal: looking for citizens that would attempt to organize a revolt against those in power.

Foreign terrorists are way down the list of threats actually being considered.