Where did I claim or even infer that the US is at fault ? Reading comprehension, young padawan! Global warming and pollution are issues to be handled by every country. Finger pointing is not productive.

I am happy that the people I interact with have a more positive attitude to life.

"Our" wasn't meant literally. I don't have children either.
But I think we have a moral obligation towards the next generation.

I mean it seriously, we need to think about what kind of world we leave for our children.
There is global warming, leading to more chaotic and extreme weather patterns. There is also pollution in general/
I currently live in Hong Kong. In general that is a great experience but there are days when lots of smog comes from the Shenzen area. I first thought it was fog, that is how bad it can be.
We should all do an effort, on country, company and personal level to make this world more livable for our children.

From personal experience I doubt if you'll get useful info out of the panels and presentations, I mean information that you could not get otherwise. But of course your conference may be different the ones I sometimes attend or where I occasionally have to speak. However in my experience, conferences are good for networking, which is important in longer term career or commercial planning. Would I pay for my work related conferences? Probably not.

Fair enough, but is it a problem? Any company could get secret requests for 0-250 accounts.

FYI Apple's privacy site is here: http://www.apple.com/privacy/p...

Of course there will be plenty of cynism here but I think it is in general a good & commendable effort for transparency. Interesting is the section on government information request:

National Security Orders from the U.S. government.

A tiny percentage of our millions of accounts is affected by national security-related requests. In the first six months of 2014, we received 250 or fewer of these requests. Though we would like to be more specific, by law this is the most precise information we are currently allowed to disclose.

No warrant canary required, it is here in the open.
So what could be the kind of thing asked taken into account the other the other privacy information on the site?

FYI Apple's privacy site is here: http://www.apple.com/privacy/p...

Of course there will be plenty of cynism here but I think it is in general a good & commendable effort for transparency.
Interesting is the section on government information request:

National Security Orders from the U.S. government.
A tiny percentage of our millions of accounts is affected by national security-related requests. In the first six months of 2014, we received 250 or fewer of these requests. Though we would like to be more specific, by law this is the most precise information we are currently allowed to disclose.

So what could be the kind of thing asked taken into account the other information on the site? I was thinking location identification using mac addresses but Apple uses randomised mac addresses.

What else about Apple can we now whine about? Perhaps Tim Cook's recent TV interviews?

Such simplistic reasoning. It is obvious that the above products became successful because they spend a lot of effort in improving the user experience considerably. It is an important step in product development that for some reason most tech companies do not do as well. And making something simple to use is not evident either, otherwise others would have done it before. This is not simply marketing.

"I think an Apple iWatch would be a great asshole-detector."

Good point! When I will eventually wear a v2 I prefer not to engage conversation with superficial/jealous/hating people like you!

I can indeed imagine that in some cases it would be possible to find the answer to the password security questions by doing some googling about the celebrity. With 2 factor authentication this would not have been an issue.
I still wonder how the hackers got access to the email addresses of the celebrities they targeted? Because this is the necessary first step. Sloppy industry agents perhaps?

I realise that it is not free, but it is offered at an accessible price and it is smooth and rich enough for non-professional movie editing. More stable and less hassle than any of the open source editors that I experimented with previously. Also a product wih a future.
Avid had a free DV editor package but that was discontinued. Perhaps you can still find it. Roughly similar in features as a previous generation iMovie.
Currently I simply use the current iMovie on my Mac, I realise that the OP doesn't have a Mac though I must say that it produces excellent results smoothly and its features are largely good enough for non-professional use. I did briefly use Final Cut Express in the past but realised it was too much of a good thing for me.