The missing step here is a practical fusion reactor.
The reason we need to think about industry on the moon is that if we are going to be a space faring culture, eventually, we need to have resources that are not locked up in the gravity well of the Earth. It is too expensive and is going to continue to be too expensive to life everything needed for space travel from the earths surface.
Before that I had a significant experience writing programs, at least for a 13 years old in the nascent PC world. The problem was that it was very mechanical. The problem is that most kids in the 9-12 year old range do not have a great deal of abstract thinking skills, so can't really program computers, any more than they can do algebra. Yes, they can do some coding, but not the analytical work. Yes, some kids can do algebra at 10, but not many.
So this is why things like Alice are used to teach the concepts to pre-teens and children. Using heavy scaffolding, which means I wrote most of the programs myself and just let the kids type it in, I have taught 11-13 year old kids to make games in python as a web based application.
For pre-teens with minimal abstract thinking skills, the most interesting thing that can be taught with programming is cause and effect, a critical skill for children. This leads directly to more abstract skills as the child ages.
Presumably this was not good enough for U-2, so we have this intrusive method of stuffing iTunes user accounts with unwanted music. For the record I was never a U-2 fan, and now it just seems like some desperate cut rate band.
The new Star Trek says violence is the way. That the violent people win. And brings a new level of suspension of rational thought. That the Earth would have no defenses against a rougue star ship. That a meeting would have no defenses against a rough droid. That we would be running across the city chasing a suspect. That civilization could build a starship, but could not protect the citizenship. It is not so much a dark world, but a world that reflects the fears of technologically illiterate audience.
Life is pretty bad when your star trek movie makes less sense than the Fifth Element, which at least had good actors.
This has been true through most of human civilization. Machines has increased the amount work that a human could do, and with power production amplified it. With electronics we code the actual human knowledge so that less skilled workers can actually approximate the output of a more skilled worker. This has been actually been since the advent of the Jacquard Loom.
In any case, another thing that has been happening since electricity is that work hours has been decreasing for many people. Many people work less than 40 hours a week because the level of technology and kind of work they do makes that a optimal time to work. So we are at a time when we really need to make wages so that 30 hours a week provides a basic income. This is how we create jobs. Part of that is going to be an $11 a hour minimum wage.
I assume that this would be like buying a useless windows license, and there would be no point to sue.
Lenovo did something very very bad. It put users privacy and personal information at great risk. It was not just replacing ads. It was security certificates, potential back doors, full system security failure. The point of this lawsuit is not to recompense for damage, but to make sure there is a line that will not be crossed when PC manufacturers try to maximize profits for inexpensive consumer machines.
Of course we know that the manufactures have to sell out the users in order to generate a profit. This is the deal that consumers make. The consumer gets a cheap PC in exchange for being exploited in the long term. It works and most consumers do not seem to have an issue with the deal. But there must be a line, and those that cross it must be punished.
Sony could have taken all the ideas and shut down the company like MS did with Nokia. They could have gathered enough intelligence during due diligence and then just paid to end the process before the sale.
What worries me is that these people who think they are so educated are not really able to differentiate between what they know and what they don't know. I would say that a course in philosophy might fix this, but that would fix the issue of ego that is probably at the root of the problem.
It is not something a government is going to do. That is why it is unlikely that humans are going to leave the earth local area for a while yet, at least on a government craft.
What we have to ask ourselves is there is value to actually being there. If there is value in actually learning to live in the harsh environment, to see what it is really like. We know that going to space is hard because no matter how carefully you try to work things out, there is always a gotcha you forget about. It is working out these problems in real time that teaches us how to cope and survive. This is true even in regular life, and some people fail, and die early. I clearly think there is a value to actually being there. I think that we do not have the technology to bring people back, so setting up a system where there is an even chance for some heroes to live out their lives and explore the planet would be good. If it is ok for someone to climb mount Everest even though several people die every year, but not to explore another planet? Mars One may be a scam. I don't think we are going to be able to explore other planets in person without higher risks than we have accepted thus far.
Those who can, do; those who can't, write. Those who can't write work for the Bell Labs Record.