Apple is *proud* of its totalitarian business model, which is politely referred to as a "walled garden". Live in our little apple world where no one is free! No freedom means safety! You don't have to worry about bad words, or nipples, or someone pointing out that Jesus probably got laid all the time! We have complete control and domination over everything which operates in our ecosystem!

The apple philosophy is perfectly consistent with that of the NSA, the security state, and fascism in general. Add on some friendly govt subsidies and freedom to continue abusing the hell out of the american tax system...

No one on earth trusts a word you say. Every single person remotely connected to human civilization has heard about what you've done. You have violated your own country's highest laws, violated the laws of countries around the world, and have spent enough money doing so that the USA could have supplied free healthcare to a sizable portion of its population.

Why would you ever speak to the media under circumstances like this? You know no one is going to take you seriously. You know no one is going to believe anything you say, no matter what you say. You cannot even really supply evidence at this point because you have violated trust at so deep a level, and gone to such extremes to do it, that no one will believe the evidence is real. All you accomplish by speaking is to further antognoize and enflame nearly the entire population of your country (and the world?). Is there anyone with half a brain working at this organization to do PR strategy?

The only reason I am not leaving the country in terror over the NSA is that they appear staggeringly incompetent at everything they do. Perhaps this is their strategy...?

Two megalithic corporations do not a competitive market make.

Another poster has already responded to you regarding why your defense of Microsoft Skype is absurd. I'll elaborate on my assertion that they are also compromising their other products. I was being generous when I said "every reason to suspect". It is clear they are compromising windows, as well as outlook. References below:

http://www.washingtonsblog.com/2013/06/microsoft-programmed-in-nsa-backdoor-in-windows-by-1999.html

http://blogs.seattletimes.com/opinionnw/2013/07/16/microsoft-reportedly-gave-nsa-a-backdoor-to-hotmail-outlook-com-skydrive/

I could go on about how many of their products are known to be compromised, but I'm just going to leave it at that. Since you are posting as AC, and ignoring obvious evidence, I assume you're a M$ shill. They don't pay that well, man. Get a job elsewhere.

Given the state of affairs in the United States, I would think that every country on earth should be reviewing their reliance on American tech (especially in cryptography). Do you really want your parliament having discussions over skype? Or using Microsoft Windows to conduct their Seriously Secret activity? Microsoft is implicated in compromising Skype, so there is every reason to suspect they have also compromised Windows and every other piece of software they make. Google mail? Apple phones? RSA security? The list goes on.

If I were a foreign government I would dump serious subsidies into my domestic software development industry. This extends to our allies as well. After all, if the USA is willing to spend insane resources and flaunt the law/morality by spying upon its own citizenry to a degree hardly less severe than 1984... why wouldn't they be using the very same backdoors on you?

People should consider hard the opinion that "the UN is meaningless because it can't enforce anything".

The point of the UN is that there is an open forum where countries can debate issues relevant to the world in good faith. The same principle applies to political debates in the USA. No one is enforcing what is promised in political debates, yet they are still meaningful. The day debate become meaningless because nothing is "enforced" is the same day that raw force is what a society is being governed by, rather than rule by law (or the consent of the people). Politicians have a huge incentive never to let it get that far because, at that point, the only way citizens can effect change is with force. There are a LOT more citizens then are politicians, or police, or military.

Politicians (senators, or kings, or lords, or whatehavyou) appear to forget all that every once in a while. They are then reminded at the end of a gun, or underneath a gallows.

The blind leading the blind.

It was a soundstage on mars.

'It's become very public and very personal. Literally, neighbors are asking people, 'Why are you spying on Grandma?'"

Were they my neighbors, I would be asking the same thing.

Were they my friends, I would shun them.

Were they my significant other, I would leave them.

The notion in the USA that the minions are innocent and "just following orders" is ridiculous. Unless conscripted (which these people are not), they are as complicit as their masters. These people are damaging the USA in profound ways. They deserve it to be uncomfortable every step of the way.

Nexus 5 $350 no contract, direct from google:
https://play.google.com/store/devices/details/Nexus_5_16GB_Black?id=nexus_5_black_16gb&hl=en

iphone5s is $650
http://store.apple.com/us/buy-iphone/iphone5s

The only real comparison is to compare phone prices without contract, because on contract the additional cost of the phone is included in your bill which you pay over the term of the contract.

The N5 is so close to half price of the iphone5s as to make no difference. I used to grudgingly admit iphones could beat out androids back in the G1 days. The only thing apple has left these days is brand.

The biggest thing I have noticed correlated with pedigree schools is "being an elitist dick"(TM). It's anecdotal, but the better developers that I've met didn't go to ivy. By ivy here I don't mean colloquial Ivy, but tech Ivy like MIT and Stanford. The ivy devs I've met haven't been any better, but many will certainly tell you that they are, and that their $300k in debt is worth it.

The best flag that shiny startup you are applying to is doomed is when you read a requirement like "Must have a degree in x from a TOP university". It is something people who don't know how to evaluate new hires use as a yardstick. If you are so bad you need to resort to that then the odds of you bringing together a good team pretty low.

There are truly extraordinary programmers who not only don't listen to music while they code, they don't listen to music at any time. They don't see the point. I don't put myself in the extraordinary programmer bucket, but I have only the most superficial and passing interest in music. For example, I never have it on when I'm coding. I feel that it distracts me slightly and that I want all my mental resources available to focus on the problems I'm working on.

Everyone thinks their specialty or interest is something that the rest of the human race is missing out on. I am often amused when I talk to musicians and fine artists because they think my life is incomplete since I can't play the cello (if they are a cellist) or do an extraordinary oil painting. I could say I feel their life is incomplete because they often don't seem to write very well (I did philosophy) and can't do anything which eliminates work for humanity (I am also a programmer), but I don't, because it's shortsighted.

Humans currently have a very limited time to exist. Step 1 for a human is making sure you can provide for yourself and survive (most humans want this). After that, let people do what they want. It is their limited time to spend in the way they think will make them happy. *This includes children*.

" If there is anything I have learned, it is that most humans have a desire to throw out the old and accept the new without any sort of hesitation"

The above quote is in stark contrast to my own experience in life. I'm not much older than you (29) and I have found that people often require extremely powerful motivators in order to accept "the new" otherwise known as "change". There are different personalities of course, but the personality "I want to learn it once and be an expert forever" is pretty common in my own workplace. A lot of people don't push themselves to learn. I don't mean outside the workplace, either. I just mean learning the proprietary in-house tech we have. Folks learn it as much as they absolutely need to then kind of check out when it comes to the more in depth stuff. Not all people of course, but not an insignificant part of the population either.

Other examples abound. How many 60 year olds were texting a decade ago? It certainly isn't that they are too stupid, because a lot of them do it now. Old people are just as smart (smarter?) as young people with the unfortunate disadvantage of poor reaction time. It's that they had methods of approaching the world which were well worn and change is scary.

The tech crowd is not plagued with the "change is scary" mantra to the same degree as other crowds. I've found that it accepts change faster than most other demographics I've been a part of.

Just be sure to be patient with your kids when you are teaching them logic. Humans (all humans) suck at logical naturally, but they REALLY suck when their brains are developing. Remember how learning basic math was challenging? It wasn't challenging simply because you hadn't seen math before. Your brain was not as equipped as it is in adulthood to deal with logic.

You may find that your kid takes a long time to pick up certain concepts, fails completely to pick up other concepts, while they pick up still others without blinking. Be patient. Try to let them guide their own learning process. They will get everything eventually, but the path to getting it might seem roundabout to you and fraught with strange failures.