Has no one heard of the Netduino - it's been out for a quite a while. Arduino-like, and programmed with .NET Micro Framework:

http://netduino.com/

"PS: Even worst-case, this would be a chilling effect only if your iPhone app included an in-app payment system."

While I agree with most of your post, I don't agree with this last point. I've been warming up to be an indie dev on mobile devices, and this chills my enthusiasm in a very general way. I don't know when some butt-munch is going to pull a bogus patent out of their pocket and sue me over something that should never even have been granted a patent, let alone cost me legal fees to defend against. It's like a minefield now, and it is really going to be a serious impediment to innovation. We need to collectively tell the government to knock this stuff off, and fast, lest we find ourselves in the technology wastebasket soon.

The next couple of years are going to be very interesting in the U.S., with the Republicans controlling the House, but the Democrats retaining the Senate and Presidency. It seems that the only thing both parties agree on is the dismantling of the middle class - so perhaps policies that help the super rich and powerful secure more of our middle class wealth will not be gridlocked.

Offshoring technology jobs is bad for our economy in many ways, both short and long term. Anyone who tells you otherwise has something to sell. It doesn't take an advanced degree in economics to have some common sense.

You lost me at "tax and spend". We should get past bumper-sticker assertions, especially when they're not even right. I guess "tax less but spend more" isn't as catchy, but it seems to work for the Republicans.

There is a lot of criticism in the comments - for instance:

Hardware mfgs won't go for this
Consumers won't care
There aren't enough people who _do_ care to make a difference

Some of this may be true, stark reality. But if that's the case, then I ask, what do we do instead?

A lot of us feel strongly that the rise of constrained, "walled garden" computing, especially in mobile devices (phones, iPad, etc.) is a Bad Thing(tm). These mobile devices, along with increasingly complex embedded systems, may well be the future of computing. These days, computing = access to information. Do you really, really want your information device to be nothing more than a puppet for someone else to control? We've all read the books and seen the movies - we know where this road ends. I don't want to go there.

Already, the corporate-owned and operated consolidated media is doing its best to spoon-feed everybody the daily ration of irrelevant crap or pre-digested "here's what to think" news stories. And due to the trend we're discussing, soon the only place we'll be able to get any information at all is with our fully-controlled, censored, happy happy joy joy goodcitizendevices.

But this gets worse, because once the corporations control everything, it's only one small step away from government abuse. Been paying attention to the trends lately? Don't get me wrong, I'm not anti-law enforcement, but there must be balance. When all tech is locked down and we have no choices, it will be too late to wonder if we should have just allowed it to happen.

So, honestly, if this FSF effort isn't the answer, what is? Because as long as we want to remain a free people, we can't just stand by and watch, if not facilitate, as a select few take full control of the systems we rely on for our information.

"July 1969 A.D. We Came in Peace For All Mankind."

If Mankind can return during my lifetime, I'll be delighted. I don't particularly care which section of Mankind leads the way - I'll rejoice with them when we venture out again.

Think what we could accomplish if we all worked together? Maybe someday we could get out of our own back yard.

You don't know how this works, clearly. Lands End is a manufacturer. Walmart is not. They each have different goals and different business processes. Now it's possible that LE uses the same cheap labor that some (if not most) of Walmart's suppliers use; I don't have any information either way, but it's entirely feasible that you're right. However, the process and materials probably vary quite a bit. Walmart ends up carrying cheap stuff because they leverage their large potential market to negotiate ridiculously low wholesale prices with manufacturers, and reducing them each year. Mfg's end up having to make a choice at some point: sacrifice quality, or lose out on the huge volume Walmart offers. Lots of Mfg's feel that sacrificing quality is the right call, and do so: but their products that get sold at higher prices to competing sellers are often of the original, higher quality. Lands End makes their money by using higher-quality, more-durable fabrics and processes than many of their competitors, and selling fewer items at a higher margin than Mfg's who sell to Walmart. There is a profitable market in people who will pay $40 for a $3 (cost) item that's twice as durable as a $2 (cost) item that retails for $15; just as there is a profitable market in doing the opposite.

But home schooling pretty much fails to develop a kid's social skills.

This bit of misinformation seriously undermines discussion about the real issues with home-schooling. Yes, some parents home-school to "protect" their kids from the bad, evil world. Those kids will have social problems no matter what. The majority of the home-schooling community solved that problem a long time ago by, you know, getting together on a regular basis with other families. That's arguably healthier for the kids, as they'll interact with a broader age range than they would in a standard public school.

The most serious issues with home schooling are a lack of enforcable standards -- which mean that some parents end up with kids that are even more ignorant than public-school-educated kids -- lack of advanced knowledge, and lack of facility. The first could possibly be addressed with a well-designed standardized test suite (though the government typically sucks at creating good standardized tests).

The last two -- challenges in finding appropriately-experienced parents in advanced subjects; and the difficulty in getting access to e.g., proper lab equipment -- are much tougher crack. In grade school, this is less of an issue, but many middle- and high-school students who are home-schooled end up with significant gaps in knowledge when it comes to certain advanced topics, and this makes their post-secondary education more challenging.

On top of this, pulling the brightest children out of public schools only further deprives the schools of funding and positive peer models, creating a self-fulfilling prophecy of public schools as failures. There are real issues with the way public schools are managed -- not the least of which is that the policies for managing them are created largely by groups who have absolutely no qualifications in education or childhood development -- but home-schooling is not the solution.

I have college diplomas in the fields of mechanical and electronic engineering (technologist and technician for the Canadians). I also took all advanced math, physics and chemistry classes in high school. I don't remember ever seeing the notation "4+3+2=( )+2" before.

Didn't all of that education teach you to learn what solutions others have used before you decide you have a unique problem? As many others have pointed out above, the parenthesis are an artifact of the reporting in the TFA; the actual test questions (as seen in the associated videos) used a blank space. This is a common technique, well-supported by research, to introduced pre-teens to algebraic concepts before using named variables (like 'x').

This test shows, IMO, that students who were tested don't see '=' in a way we'd expect: they are reading equations as "problems", and the '=' as a "solution" indicator. This is probably reinforced by early math problems of the type "4+3 = ?", and the behavior of the '=' key on calculators (which are now used extensively in grade-school math programs).

The notation was not the problem, because that's not the notation that was used.

Now, now. Just because these youngsters need pictures of the food on their cash-register buttons in order to do their job doesn't mean they're stupid. :-)

You're absolutely correct, it doesn't. And, in fact, they don't need them at all. Comments like this just show your ignorance of how organizations work at large scale. The pictures are there because they are universal.

1. McDonald's (for example) is an international company, and they serve their core menu in dozens of languages. It's much easier and less error-prone for them to produce a picture-based keypad than to translate everything without error
2. Fast food companies did research indicating that it's faster -- even for highly-literate people -- to find an item by image rather than by name. Faster means better service with fewer staff, which means more profit.
3. Many fast food chains, and McDonald's in particular, hire people with disabilities. This is a huge win for such people -- real, productive work that can help make them at least partly independent. Many with cognitive or developmental disabilities have written-language challenges, and the picture "menus" are much easier for them to use efficiently. It doesn't make sense to have two versions of something if one works for everyone, does it?

And those are just the three reasons that are most obvious to me. Now get off your high horse!