The obvious answer -- and one selected by many millions of Americans -- is never to buy a GM vehicle. GM sold me a really badly designed and crafted vehicle 50 years ago, and I resolved never to buy another car from them. Based on occasional rentals and friend's experiences with GM's cars, it's one of the wiser decisions I've made in life.

I know it's a radical suggestion, but you could try reading the linked pdf. It's really quite interesting.

IIRC Windows got sniped at because manufacturer's diagnostic software runs on Windows. So, all that needs to happen is that a compromised vehicle gets hooked up in the dealer's shop. The car then compromises Windows which then cheerfully reflashes the ECUs in every car it is subsequently hooked up to.

If it will make you feel better, Unix also got criticized because some ECUs ship with live Telnet interfaces and tools like vi, nc, ftp, etc available.

My only experience with Library software was with Follett's package in a school library with about 8000 items. I do not recommend Follett. It runs fine and user complaints were minimal. As I recall, the database self destructed a couple of times, but reviving the DB was fairly straightforward. On the other hand installation and upgrade were unpleasant. The maintenance instructions verged on incomprehensible and one upgrade required rebuilding the entire data base -- a process that turned out to be appallingly slow. I had to wait for a vacation to do that. And from I'm told it is expensive. Fortunately, it didn't come out of my budget.

On my last visit to our local library, the librarian -- who was not a fan of Follett either -- told me that they had just upgraded from Follett to an open source product of some sort thereby saving a bundle of money. She was quite enthused about the new software. I didn't have a lot of time, but I did look at the screens a user would encounter and they looked fine. It looks like the program they changed to is Koha. Here's a link to their catalog on line http://brownell.kohavt.org/

I worked for a number of years in a K-8 school. My opinion. Computers aren't useless, but for the current state of things, there are plenty of things for which they are not an answer. First of all, the teachers need computers as do the administrators. As a practical matter, teachers are tied to their classrooms for much of the day. They need a networked computer and a printer.

Students? Computers are somewhat of a challenge to kids who do not know their alphabet and can not read. OTOH computers can be very useful in 2nd-4th grade. There are a gazillion little programs (Many of which are MSDOS or Windows 3 based and will not run on "Modern Computer Hardware" without an incredible amount of tinkering) that teach basic stuff like arithmetic, English grammar, some basic science, some history. Allowing students to spend part of their day exploring this stuff at their own pace is probably a good idea.

Older students? With rare exceptions, the only thing computers provide is word processing, spell checking, and a refuge from reality. Nothing wrong with any of that -- within limits.

And for the one student in 10 or 20 with exceptional skills/interest in some specific area -- computers, chemistry, physics, art, literature ... anything but playground skills -- computers can be (but often aren't) a gateway to knowledge. That's especially true I think in schools systems with large class sizes and limited resources. I don't think this is being adequately explored.

But handing everyone an ipad or kindle or whatever and expecting technology to work miracles. That's ludicrous.

They should be encouraged, but they need a bit of supervision. They don't lack brains. But they very likely do lack judgment. Trust me on this. You don't need to stomp on them as long as what they are doing is more or less harmless. But you really, really want to know what they are up to.

As for your other ideas. If you spend some time in a school, you'll find that they take all take loads of time and resource. If you are prepared to donate a lot of your time for free, you might be able to implement one of them ... maybe ... Which one?

Didn't bother to read all the comments so maybe this has been covered. But just in case:

Speaking from experience. Make sure that there is a comfortable place in the room from which you, or whoever is watching over the lab can see every monitor. Do not depend on tools that allow you to look at the screens one by one. You want to know what is going on in your lab, who is having trouble, what forbidden conduct is going on, etc. You don't have to pounce on every transgression BTW. If an otherwise OK student wants to play Freecell toward the end of the lab period, maybe it's OK to overlook it. Your call.

But you want to try to make sure that the "troublemakers" -- who may well be smarter and more computer savvy than you are -- have not bypassed the firewall and are not adding pornography as an optional feature on the school's website.

"I wrote my first program at the age of six, and I still can't work out how this website works."

For the most part it doesn't work all that well. Trapped somewhere inside of Slashdot is a simple, minimally featured, bulletin board that would allow an exchange of ideas without breaking browsers and otherwise impeding communication. But they keep it sedated, and the chances that it will escape are slimmer every year.

Exactly. I don't encrypt e-mail for the same reason that I don't weld my car doors shut to prevent theft when it is parked in the dooryard. Encryption is not needed for my eMail and it would be a nuisance for me and for the recipient if I used it.

Hey, what's all the grousing? I was saying just this morning that what this country needs is more idiotic, unenforceable, federal laws.

*First, no doctor is going to volunteer "this is cancer, but it doesn't look dangerous so we'll just monitor the situation" because God help them if that person dies.*

Actually, that is EXACTLY how prostate cancer is handled. Prostate cancer is very common in elderly males. It is generally a slow growing cancer. The treatment can have unpleasant consequences. In general, physicians recommend treatment for younger men as the cancer is more likely to be a comparatively rare aggressive prostate cancer. Men over the age of say 70 will generally be advised to monitor the cancer rather than treating it immediately. The meme is that old men die WITH prostate cancer, not OF prostate cancer.