Once you can replace an 18 wheeler's diesel engine with an electric drive system, then you've changed the world and made a real impact on emissions.

Why bother? Just run the diesel engine you already have on biodiesel.

Besides, there are far more effective ways for the president to "Lead" us into a greener future. (Maybe cutting back on those vacations that are half a planet worth of jet fuel away for one.)

More like "vacations that are a full plane load worth of secret service agents and other assorted aides away" -- if the Prez flew commercial it wouldn't be such a big deal.

Remotely wiping a stolen mobile phone ought to still be controlled by the main phone OS. All the modem should be responsible for is receiving the wipe request and passing it to the main OS's monitoring process.

Or an LG Nexus, if he wants a phone instead of a tablet.

The important question, which I am keenly interested in as the owner of a Nexus 5, is whether LG phones have a similar backdoor.

With some (all?) Chromebooks -- and I would expect a Chromebox to be the same -- you can just enable "developer mode" and chroot. See this article for more details.

When I think about the "dark future" of coal, I'm thinking about strip mines that dig into historic towns in Germany (oh, boo hoo, relocate the church and everyone get on with life, right?)

Pretty much.

To me, that's the whole problem with massive industry built on non-renewable resources. When the coal is just lying around on the surface of the desert, sure, pick it up and use it. But, that runs out - then we start digging for it in places that don't really matter, but those run out, and then we get a little closer to towns, streams that feed recreational lakes, and other places that you might rather not mine, but, hey, we need the coal, right?

You like electricity? How about heat? Air conditioning? Rapid transportation? How about food?

All of those things depend largely on "non-renewable resources". Coal, oil, and natural gas, mainly. Shut it all down, and we go back to a life primitive, brutish, and short.

Yea, and in many cases it's approximately 1.5 bitches to remove... Except, oddly, the crash event recorder - it's right under the driver's seat, and can be disabled without so much as moving the seat forward.

Maybe so that it can be easily removed (by the police or insurer) in the event of a crash?

Yes. And they've been teaching kids in the last 15-ish years that "thin skinned" is the only way to be. Don't stand up to bullies, don't defend yourself, let the authorities handle it for you. Oh and of course if you do stand up to defend yourself, it's all your fault automatically no matter what. Because "zero tolerance."

More than 15; at least 35. Of course, "let the authorities handle it for you" was a lie; the authorities would ignore you, punish you, or punish both parties if you did complain to them. Phrases like "it takes two to fight" were their mantra... but if you actually didn't fight back and just got beat up, they'd punish you for fighting anyway.

...are those connected directly to /dev/null. There was no "right way" (in the eyes of the US Government) for Snowden to do anything about these programs, because (again in the eyes of the US Government) these programs are perfectly fine.

To object to the way Snowden did things, suggesting there was a better, effective, way of doing it that he somehow overlooked, is pure disingenuousness on the part of President Obama.

I was going to write exactly the same thing as the comment above.

A bunch of pissants in a country like India that think that they can shake down Google for f-ing $5 BILLION dollars are living in the the 20th century when power was defined by being a country with a flag, a UN seat, an airline, and a president-for-life.

Things are different now.

Especially for a country like India, which is run by corrupt IIT graduates who live on delusions of being a super-power with a moon base and don't have a clue about how to deal with having 500 million people living in abject poverty around them.

With all respect...
  All the comments that you'll be getting from Slashdot readers will be worthless to the point of your question. As you may have noticed by now, every responder assumes that you want to learn to how to do what they consider a dream job in CS to be. And they give replies like 'read Knuth' or 'do MIT on-line courses'.

Since you already have an excellent job with a good future, and you have already studied elementary program texts in CS languages like Java, allow me to suggest that you ask the middle school students in your programming club what they would consider to be cool and useful programs to have. After you get through the fantasy aps like ' a really cool game that the player doesn't end up always losing' and ' a smokin' 3-D interactive girlfriend' or ' a bio-implant that will allow me to get perfect SAT scores without studying', then you might get some interesting suggestions.

Personally I suggest that you and your programming students develop Arduino and Raspberry Pi applications. The elementary 'blinking LED' stuff, simple robotics applications, and digital television art projects made from inexpensive TFT displays will be fascinating to middle school and high school students. (hopefully).

What did they do, threaten to charge his mother with more crimes if he demanded his right to a speedy trial?

Without authority, the use of force is criminal.

You're mistaken. Arkansas cops recently opened up on a guy who was driving away from them...yet none of them has been charged with a crime

First, in general, I am not mistaken. If the district attorney is complicit and refuses to prosecute, that only means it is a miscarriage of justice, not that it is any less inherently criminal.

Second, in this particular case the guy was in fact actively attempting to kill people (according to the news article, at least): "Mounted cameras from three police vehicles, led by Officer Vance Plumhoff, show Rickard weaving in and out of traffic, then ramming a police car head-on. The Honda is later surrounded and as the suspect tries to back up, he sideswipes another cop car, and almost strikes one of the officers." Before he rammed the police car, shooting was not justified. After, it was (as long as the guy continued to drive recklessly... if he slowed down the chase, e.g. OJ-style, shooting would stop being justified).

What exactly are those?

First amendment: freedom of speech.
Fifth Amendment: deprivation of liberty without due process
Sixth Amendment: speedy and public trial by jury
Eighth Amendment: excessive bail imposed

Sure, the government violates these rights often. Doesn't mean they aren't violations.

If Nixon could have put Woodward and Bernstein in prison, incommunicado, for the rest of his term, he'd never have been impeached.