Agreed -- I also grew up in the country, in an area which was traditionally dependent on manufacturing jobs. Not only did we have the full gamut of shop classes, but we also had access to a nearby vocational high school where most of your junior and senior year would be spent learning a trade. Many large metro areas also have such vocational schools, but most people (most non-lower-income people, at least) never hear about them because they're un-trendy and poorly publicized.

On the other hand, my high school had no AP or computer programming classes, which kind of sucked for me.

This surprises me. If the cable companies used to do this, then why do they pay royalties to the networks nowadays? Why is Aereo getting sued if they're doing the same thing the cable companies can do?

From a legal basis Aereo's business model seems sound to me -- all they're doing is helping me receive a broadcast TV transmission which I'm entitled to receive over the airwaves anyway.

On the other hand, a ruling in Aereo's favor would be a boon for the cable companies and could kill the concept of free, broadcast TV altogether. As things stand, the cable companies pay the networks to retransmit feeds of their programming. If Aereo wins, the cable companies would be able to save money by erecting Aereo-style antenna arrays for their cable feeds, bypassing payments to the networks.

As things stand, cable customers are getting screwed because they're paying the broadcasters for the same programming twice -- once in the form of advertisements, and again by paying for the network broadcast feeds. On the other hand, by using my own antenna, I'm receiving dozens of free channels which are being subsidized by the cable customers. If Aereo prevails, broadcasters may terminate over-the-air broadcasts altogether to avoid losing their lucrative royalties from the cable companies, leaving me out in the cold.

I don't see it -- the summary was taken word-for-word from a podcast? As in, someone transcripted and submitted it, including the quotes?

That podcast certainly wasn't the first source to report on the Citicorp Center design flaw -- there was article in the New Yorker in 1995 about it ( http://www.newyorker.com/archi... ).

According to the article, they are outsourcing the work to an offshore IT firm. This IT firm, in turn, will give the work to a US location, which staffs itself with H-1B workers. The effect is that US-based workers are being laid off and indirectly replaced with H-1Bs.

In 2005, Newsweek published a false report that American soldiers had desecrated copies of the Quran at the Guantanamo Bay prison. The report was proven false, and Newsweek retracted it, but it was too late -- the report had already sparked riots which injured over 100 people.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Q...

Was the Bitcoin report written with the "same high editorial standards" that Newsweek had followed in the past? It looks like it.

Imagine being a subscriber of AOL, PC-Link, Compuserve, Prodigy, Delphi, or GEnie, and not being able to send messages to customers of other services.

It has already happened once, and we are repeating it.

"who could help cure cancer"

PhDs in the life sciences are more likely to be unemployed than employed at the time of graduation, and the trend is only getting worse

Why would a medical research lab hire some random coder to cure cancer, when PhDs in biology can't even find jobs?

My Blackberry Q10 has a removable battery, and it reboots itself whenever I set it down on a desk too hard. Most or all smartphones with removable batteries that I've used in the past did the same thing.

If we can't even engineer a phone so a non-soldered battery stays connected on a mild shock, how are we going to allow for users to replace every component of their phones?

Aha -- you beat me to the punch. Yes, this is one thing (the only thing?) that Windows 8 tablets really excel at, as Windows has long-standing (since XP) and mature support for pen digitizers.

If you limit yourself to e-ink readers, I predict that you will suffer from endless problems with finding software that does what you want. You may have to bite the bullet and get a general-purpose tablet PC.

Go for a lightweight tablet with a Wacom stylus (digitizer), as this kind of stylus will give you a far better user experience for highlighting and handwriting than an ordinary capacitive stylus would. The Surface Pro has a Wacom stylus, but is too heavy for comfortable one-handed use. I would recommend looking into the Samsung Galaxy Note Tablet (running Android), or the Samsung Ativ or Thinkpad tablets (running Windows 8).

In the Windows world, Qiqqa is a cloud-synced reference and citation manager that will sync annotations, although you can't export the altered document like you wanted. It's likely that both Windows 8 and Android have numerous PDF annotation applications which will suit your needs. You may have better luck in the Windows than the Android world, because you will want your application to have native Wacom digitizer support (distinguishing between finger and pen presses, allowing you to scroll with your finger and highlight with your pen). There may be a PDF annotation application in Android that does this, but Wacom digitizers have historically been far more common in Windows than Android, and the good Wacom support in Windows applications reflects this.