"Ah, the old "the system will never be perfect, so we might as well not try to improve it" argument."
Sure but this is not an improvement. I am all for increasing taxes for school and frankly even for more federal aid for areas that have low incomes but a centralized system for all funds will have a negative impact and is unworkable.

But for all practical purposes Tokyo is about 70 years old.

"As opposed to London, Paris, and Tokyo, which were designed and built during the last 50 years, and thus are more efficient."
Paris and London are both very old and they were not "leveled" during WWII.

I find people so amusing.
Why would anyone have any doubt that the NSA is using the best tech available? The majority of people seem to be happy with what is going on. Frankly if you voted for President Obama you voted for mass surveillance. He knows all about, he authorises it, and he supports it.
Frankly I am all for people pushing for better laws and regulations but the weeping, wailing, and gnashing of teeth over it when they voted for it is just over the top.
Grow up people. Every nation will spy on every other nation to the best of it's ability. Only laws can restrict them from local surveillance and only your spies can protect you from the other nations spies.

The local climate is South Florida.
So what you want to do is restrict people from being active in their community and improving their community. I guess things like Beach Cleanups should also not be allowed since only rich people can spend the time cleaning a beach?.....
Yeah Sorry but what you are proposing is a totalitarian system where the central government mandates everything. The funding would never be "equal" because you would not have unlimited resources so those areas that lean one way or the other would be starved for funds and swing areas would get more resources. So school in Utah where it is both very hot and very cold that needs AC upgraded would have to wait while a School in Ohio would get a new football stadium.
It can not work and is a terrible idea.

You left out
1. Wireless will never have the bandwidth of fiber.
2. They will be limited to very close to line of sight. Sucks to have national park, state park or even a large farm in the way.

"IF traffic were spread evenly across the network, there wouldn't be a problem, but it's not. So you kind of need a backbone of some sort."
In theory caching would work but that would have issues with syncing.

"The difference between WW2 codebreakers and today's NSA and what have you being, of course, that WW2 codebreakers were used against to crack the communications of a defined enemy. So yes, it's perfectly reasonable to object to a practice that considers literally everybody, civilian or not, foreigner or not, to be an enemy."
Actually the spying was on all nations. It was only after the US started Lend-Lease that the spying was restricted by the US. The USSR spied on the US all through the war even when they where our "friend". Frankly that action is why the spying on "friendly" countries became common. For example during the Yom Kippur war the US spied on Israel to and made them live up the the cease fire.
The US was spying on Germany and German companies long before 12/7/41. They spying on Japan also predates the war.
Sure work to put laws into place and make them good ones to protect US citizens but also understand that every nation will spy to the best of it's abilities. If you thin Nations in Asia, the EU, South America, or Africa are any different than you are simply fooling yourself.

Citation?
Cuban Missile Crisis

" I am torn between admiration of the technical brilliance of building software like this and horror as to how it is being used."
Why? Over most of history spying has saved lives more than taken them.
I find it so odd that people on Slashdot sing the praises of the "Codebreakers" of WWII but are shocked and freaked out that they are still around today.
BTW the US and Britian both spied and used code breaking before the war started so... Yes they were spying in peacetime!!!!! Shocking.

Sigh... You really need to go back to your Logic class...
A false dilemma fallacy requires that the choices be limited. I did not say that those were the only two options. You have many good and bad options to the dilemma. What I was showing was simply that a much better option was available and that they the one being defended was not a good option.
Yes there are worse options but the one your are defending is very far from a good one.

Really?
So you are saying the local PTA that raises funds for a school should be forced to pay it all to a national fund?
So for example my school had no AC so my mother worked to raise enough money to put in AC at my elementary school. So she should have just dumped the money to some national system?

"The hardware knowledge argument has become virtually irrelevant in the EC2-world where you can spawn VM pretty much transparently."
But not cost free.
The every cent spent of VM comes right out of the bottom line. Take a look at the all the hard work Facebook does at optimizing.

"After all, this website is full of people who have no reason to have known about an obscure niche language, regardless of it's significance and importance."
This is Slashdot and not CNN or People magazine online. This is News for Nerds.
"I'd say it's more troll like to judge people for not knowing about a language that is, at best, obscure and not well known outside of academia and research."

Ahh... You see that is where you are missing it.
Lots of people don't know about Haskell and that is fine.
I judged people not because they lacked knowledge but because they dismissed the value of that knowledge and make no effort to increase their knowledge.
Or to put it in simple terms.

Hear about the death of the creator of something you never heard about.
1. Google it and learn what it is.
2. Dismiss it because you don't know about it.
Which is the better path?

YikYak is a good example of why we can't have nice things. It could be really cool but for the most part it is full of idiots.

"So I agree with you, there is no reason for your opening post to be thought of as a troll."
Actually yes there is.
You see we have this thing called the internet and the internet has services one is called Google and another is called Wikipedia.
You see something you do not know about you have too options.
1. Look it up and find out what it is.
or
2. Dismiss it because it is outside your area of knowledge.

By dismissing it you are being a jerk. This is Slashdot so a cool programing language is still a cool programing language even it it is not super popular. Here are some systems written in Haskell
https://wiki.haskell.org/Haske...

In other words it is really dumb to take pride in what you do not know.