The most important part of any business is "cash-flow". You get that right and your business will be a success in conventional terms.

Your questions on different tools/languages do not really make sense unless you are clear about the product you are pursuing. The same about senior/junior programmers.

Though you don't want a take on Agile/Waterfall, from my experience any project which involves serious "design" works better in a waterfall approach because most of the phases of "design" may not be flexible to be accommodated in a two week sprint cycle.

Interesting. I had the opposite experience...the Americans I meet now days - at least the educated ones - seem to be apologetic about America, its foreign policy, lifestyle choices, oil addiction, consumerism and all that.

Will be to offer surrogate mothers - if you offshore childbearing its "win win" in the latest MBA text books.

At my workplace - financial services firm in East Coast - I can see about 30% of IT workforce being women - coders, testers, managers and so on.
All are from India except for one from China.

The best photo is not of Mars...but the women workers of ISRO (Indian Space Research Organization) handling the Mars mission celebrating.

BBC has a good report and the photo...http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-asia-india-29357472

As a tweeter asks..when was the last time we saw women scientists celebrating a space mission?

What exactly is this "questionable ability"?
Most of enterprise software development is working on some code base which is a huge hairball and you do not need any "advanced degrees" to do the job. If you are an excellent / above average programmer you are probably wasting your life in such environment.
You should not equate the skills needed to do the above with ability to write "elegant code".

The last person you want running an organization that might draw negative attention from powerful entities is a guy who grew up (for a period, at least) in a white supremicist cult and then was pursued by them for years after he and his mother fled.
Assange might be paranoid and an ass, but the White Supremacist Cult which you describe is anything but that. Its a relatively harmless hippie type commune. Please do not to resort to falsehoods to bolster your case.

2880 is so far away we have nothing to fear. If humanity survives in some form to the 29th century it will be sufficiently advanced to make a meal out of the said asteroid. It may not even make prime time TV.
If its 2080...yes we may have something to think about.

US has a serious problem with militarization of police. Its ironical that the "munitions" - what an inventive word by the way - are now targeted against your own citizens. The images coming from Ferguson remind you of Ukraine and/or other war torn nations.
All those police snipers/SWAT teams pointing laser weapons at protestors...one mistake by an adrenaline junkie will happen and you will get FPS action against your own citizens broadcast live around the world.
The superheroes, the best and brightest who planned putting military gear into the hands of police should be sent to GITMO.

You are right. But then without tax and revenue from licensing how will the government function?
We can always argue whether a specific regulation is needed or not, but are you are using the usual "small government", "starve the beast" idea?

Look at this way...a connected fridge is utterly pointless, but I can see how it will create new jobs.
There will be people employed to create software and hardware interfaces, test the interfaces, and finally when it breaks down or exploited, to fix them.
At least its going to be some extra buttons or a panel on a fridge...there is not going to be a significant hit to the environment. So lets not use the argument "what is the need".

What an interesting state...cave, Dick Cheney, sink holes, fossils.
Go Wyoming go...

'What I am' does not matter. You will be employed if your skills are in demand, whether than involves frameworks, bit chasing...it does not matter.
Good to know you are employed. Now please stop being condescending.

Sweet explanation on the 'recent grad'.
I am guessing you (and your C++ wife) were programming equivalents of sliced bread when you started your career compared to the "unschooled" Java programmer.
Why is Java popular...its good enough for most of the tasks and reasonably competent people can write non-scary code.
Not every programmer needs to understand "bit bashing" and a mental model of computers at the assembly level. Its an overkill.

Outsourcing is bad, but as an Indian who renewed his passport recently, I have to say the process was smooth.
The document verification/IT/software/hardware part of the Indian passport application/renewal operation is now handled by TCS. You make an appointment online - for both fast track and slow track - and arrive at the local passport center with your documents. The TCS grunts allot a token, make sure documents are in order - if they are not you are sent back to get them corrected, take your fingerprints, photo and for final verification you meet an Indian government employee. He/she either says YES, or says YES with police verification.
In my case it was the latter as my passport had some damage - usual wear and tear, but visible.
A few days later a policewoman came home after fixing an appointment over phone, verified my documents/address and in two weeks I got a fresh passport.
I was impressed by the whole process. AFAIK Indian government and TCS is doing everything right as far as passport renewal goes...it was better than getting my experience in getting a drivers license/immigration papers in Toronto/Chicago/San Francisco.
May be US government should indeed outsource the operation to TCS...if they can do a good show in an anarchic chaotic mess like India, I am sure they can do the same in US.