enter the real world

An air-conditioned office? Funny how that's what is mostly what people shouting "real world" mean.
If you want to challenge the experience of others then provide your own "metrics" or anecdotes from your own experience.

Considering that part of that was things like industrial espionage of an Indonesian Clove Cigarette manufacturer for the benefit of commercial clients in the USA where presumably kickbacks would be given to someone in US intelligence who gave the job to the Australians - fuck yes. We should not be risking intelligence assets on that shit just so that someone in Washington gets paid a bribe. Since another was Australia's Telstra handing communications data to the NSA and giving full access to some intercontinental cables - fuck yes.
Snowden betrayed a bunch of people going far beyond what their jobs should have allowed TO HIS COUNTRY. He told his country what is going on. He did your country and mine a service. The only losers are the people who went too far and tried an East German Stasi approach to intelligence instead of the targetted approach the USA had used in the past.

Exposing the rot in your country so that it can be cured is different to betraying your country. The bullshit along the lines of "because he told the Washington Post it's the same as telling the KGB" is just damage control by some people who will probably lose their jobs and could even be facing jail time.

What a disgusting little weasel you are. When your made up "facts" failed to impress you've made an empty appeal to authority about a completely different topic. Please use that education and life experience instead of acting like a teenage school debate club member.

Well that's what the propaganda says but in reality they don't have any more stuff than the Washington Post has.
Snowden betrayed some corrupt officials for the benefit of his country. Those corrupt officials like to frame things in another way but they showed they are putting themselves before their duty to their country via actions such as lying to Congress.

One William Gibson interview asked about his "predictions", and I recall his view was that some people liked some of his ideas and made things resembling them instead of him actually predicting anything. I'd say some of the Star Trek stuff came about the same way, although the tablet also resembles the slates used in schools a long time back.

This entire article is a "whoosh". A drawing designed to make people think about a computer on your wrist (which this one does very well) is about conveying an idea and not a blueprint for a real object.

I can't figure why you'd downgrade to Windows 7

To get the same sort of behaviour that users have seen since before Win3.11. As seen with online purchases at HP etc there are certainly people prepared to pay extra for that.

No I'm writing about why it can't happen.
Things may change from outside influences but there are some massive roadblocks including the US Nuclear lobby themselves.

They are all one error really - the FU2 error from Microsoft.

Doesn't matter? Without somebody putting up the capital it doesn't happen. Civilian Nuclear IMHO has two options - very small units that don't cost a lot or (the unlikely approach) find some way to get itself funded.
A windmill doesn't cost much even if it takes ten thousand to match a nuclear power station - but they are not being purchased ten thousand at a time are they?

Sometimes they just indicate bad tax laws. Part timers or seasonal workers getting taxed as if they are full time get large refunds in some places and there's no way they can plan around it - they just have to wait while the government holds their money at zero interest.

Refugees get held accountable. Get born to the wrong parents and you get deported with them instead of citizenship in the place where you were born :(

That is all of them. Remember one of the nasty tricks with the "Patriot" act (apart from it's name) was to rush it through before anyone in Congress who was not responsible for drafting it had a chance to even see the first page.

are accomplished electrical engineers in transmission

Ask one of them instead of name dropping and supplying stuff dreamed up by political interns instead. The most "accomplished electrical engineer in transmission" I know started in the business in about 1950 - he has solar panels on his roof and wishes they were widespread before he retired. They would have made his job a lot easier. If you can't work out several reasons why you are not really thinking about the issue.

I have college level physics education

What do you think it was for then? Use it! Don't fall for the bullshit spread by people with a political agenda.