So, to summarize:
The world is an awesome place because:
1) it's safer for humans
2) we have lots of shiny stuff

That is so anthropocentric it's unbelievable.

This is a real problem everywhere.
I have the same doubts about urbanspoon.com which I no longer trust.
Exacerbated by companies like reputation.com.
The internet is proving once again to be less than it was cracked up to be.

OK so violence at many levels is down. Someone has already mentioned economic inequality, and that's certainly a trend in the wrong direction. And power is increasingly in the hands of a few who are increasingly entrenched. Climate change, pollution, loss of habitat and loss of species are at crisis levels. Recovery will take hundreds of thousands of years! The oceans are becoming a sterile garbage dump. The very concept of privacy is being pushed aside.

That's a very narrow assessment.

How will they keep that much salad fresh anyways?

Well, in the "real world" we run numerous applications because we have numerous LOBs.
And when the developers of the software (that the LOB wants) says "we only support db 'x'"...
...you get on with it.
We're not big enough to "force" the developers to port their applications, just for us.
We're not rich enough to develop all of our own apps.

So, like many (most) IT organizations, you have to ignore the idealists and Utopian views, and just serve the business.

Comments like "real SQL server" are unconstructive at best.

Yes, this is a real concern - I am worried that 4 & 6 core servers will not be available much longer.
And I am pretty sure that in a db environment, 2 sockets with 6 cores each will handily outperform a single socket with 12 cores...

An oldie, but one of the greats...http://www.theonion.com/articles/fuck-everything-were-doing-five-blades,11056/

mass distribution of corporate created, centrally distributed content to an ignorant, consumption only masses which are treated with disdain and objects of manipulation by the elite...[blah blah blah]...psychologically manipulate and control a feeble and dim witted public

As opposed to the current state?

(Still) Only ten years away.

OK, the only country dumb enough to be caught?

Write it by hand.
Photocopy it on an analog copier, or if you can't find one, use carbon paper.
Send it by post.

Safer than any encrypted email.

...to understanding women!

So, you are saying that the Bahamas records every cell phone call made in the US?

Simultaneously, I'll bet.