GoGo is in the process of upgrading their networks. They are also working on switching from air-to-ground networks to satellite which will allow them to provide coverage over oceans. Newer planes are being built with WiFi in mind. Things are looking up.

I have an Excelsior bachelors degree. It was inexpensive and the credits were cobbled together from all over the place. The main value I got from the degree was that I was able to use it to enter Graduate School. While I learnt a lot of stuff in the course of getting my BS in Liberal Studies, the knowledge I use for my job I got from my Grad School education. It seems to me that this country has a liberal arts based education. To get a bachelors degree you have to take a lot of courses in stuff like languages and social sciences that I was not interested in. I understand that the colleges want students to have a broad educational base, but I feel that that is a decision best left up to the students to decide what they want to learn. I think we should have a more a la carte education system with a vocational focus. We should give more power to the students to let them choose what they want to learn while still giving employers a good idea of the skills that come with a given degree. In essence I used my Excelsior degree to bypass the part of education I didn't like and to focus on the parts I did like. I am grateful to them.

The country must maintain its population and ideally grow. There are many reasons. The economy relies on a growing consumer base and a growing labor pool. The influence the US has on the world is somewhat proportional to its population, so we need a large population to exert our influence on the world. Militarily we need a large population to use to defend ourselves. Also, a decreasing population is an aging population which becomes more and more difficult to care for when there are not enough young people. We are nowhere near overpopulation. Most of the country's land is empty. Food is relatively cheap and can be famed on less land than ever before. 1) Make it more affordable to have children: Increase tax deductions. Subsidize day care. Pay 100% for paternity/maternity leave immediately after birth (some states have a waiting period). 2) Increase immigration. Allow anyone from any country to immigrate to the US as long as they are healthy, not criminals or terrorists and are capable of working and supporting themselves until they have a job. There should be no quotas. Waiting periods should be minimized. A man should be able to walk into any US consulate in the world and be in the US 90 days later after we have verified he meets all those criteria.

If they weren't working in the US they would be doing the same work for US companies overseas. Visas allow the workers to work here where they also contribute more to the US economy as well as US society. They might also start companies and create jobs. True, wages may fall in the short-term, but having a larger educated and working population will help us in the long run.

Has to do with the "Free" part

This is part of Sprint's interesting Network Vision project, http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Zp_jpIdr_uw This allows them to have each tower support all their various networks and should be extendable for future technologies.

Sprint has WiMax which they call 4G, so this is not their first 4G network.

I don't think the ACA is a bad bill, but it misses many opportunities for better healthcare reform. The biggest for the Tech community in my opinion is that it keeps up the relationship between health insurance and employers. In the Tech industry we need the ability to change employers fast and to start up new companies inexpensively. It makes it harder to start a new tech statup if I have to offer employees healthcare. As an employee I'm less likely to work for a new start-up as I fear it failing and losing my health insurance. Also, in technology we have a lot of people working for themselves, these people have always had trouble getting insurance. We need to eliminate the relationship between employment and health insurance. It should be illegal for employers to give you health insurance. Everyone should buy on the open market, there should be no more "groups". In short we should buy health insurance like we buy car insurance.

Los Angeles used to have a little experimental reactor in UCLA. It was quite controversial once residents found out about it. http://uclafacultyassociation.blogspot.com/2011/04/ucla-history-nuclear-reactor.html

When I first saw this I though, "Oh good, no more explaining to Grandma that you need to check for HTTPS://", but it is a bit to type. Why not replace "https://" with "shttp://" or "secure://"?

Because assassination via pacemaker, like in the book Rain Fall (http://goo.gl/IwVPC), can happen to anyone.

At a minimum publicly funded research should be available to the public for free. Ideally journals themselves would be replaced with a decentralized Web based system where anyone can publish and peers can freely review all the articles. Academic journals should be replaced with something akin to blogs much as newspapers have.

Their new email system will now redirect termination emails sent to all employees back to the sender.

Mesdames et Messieurs, dans le cas d'une collision interplanétaire s'il vous plaît attachez vos ceintures ... Ladies and Gentlemen, in the event of an interplanetary collision please fasten your seatbelts...

I'd first look at KhanAcademy. They have courses on Python. See http://www.khanacademy.org/#computer-science-container Python in general is a good first language. I first learnt it with http://www.greenteapress.com/thinkpython/ But, I would highly recommend Head First books to start learning any language. I think they'd be great for an 11 year old. Head First Python http://goo.gl/tKRMu Another option that has been discussed recently as a good first language is JavaScript. It has the advantage of running in every browser and allows the ability to see nice visual feedback right away. When I was in high school I learnt a bit of Java using , which I also enjoyed because Swing gave me the ability to create GUIs right away.