it's not really clear how they could be effectively instructed

That's actually a failure of your imagination, not the students'.

Your attitude would have kept me hauling boxes at Standard Brands, instead of traveling on both sides of the pond doing object-oriented programming and writing articles.

these days it's increasingly eccentric to live that deep in the bush.

And how do you force where your student's parents might have had circumstances force them to live.

Genius has bugger all to do with geography.

You have very little to teach me, and it doesnt sound like you're anything but a negative example.

I'm sorry, for you.

the exciting revenue possibilities of distance learning? (And distance billing?)

As an academic, you do realize that your department can be restructured, your job can be re-evaluated, and the face-to-face Socratic teaching model you seem so fond of is going the way of the Tasmanian tiger.*

What you "feel" is not as important as what you "know."

Your teaching method of letting learning happen by "rubbing up against a problem" is extremely expensive in terms of time and resources.

In a country as vast and as spottily populated as Australia, where even the doctors sometimes have to fly to their next patient, telepresence is so much more efficient.

The original Motorola handset, 40 years ago, was a brick (in size, weight and shape.) Its has been on a severe diet ever since and its NOT gaining it back.

That said, a cel phone in a glove with a microphone in the pinky, a speaker in the thumb, a pico-projector on the back of your hand and a gestural interface like the Leap Motion implementation would render both phones and tablets obsolete.

... sell anything to your daughter.

If a customer doesn't agree to a meeting and come in with a requirement list and a purchase order, they are utterly hopeless.

HP threw away Apple's pre-Macintosh market because they never got it either.
Xerox threw away Apple's Macintosh market because they never got it either.
Erie/Bucyrus threw away John Deere's and Case's market because they didn't dit it either.

... they have to keep you either.

You don't want to buy a smart phone for work?

You don't want to work.

I fully agree that your employer should be forced to buy phones for those employees that require it, but with off-shoring, out-sourcing or just plain "scarcity of financial resources" (read: "their ass is too cheap to pay when they can get the expense off of the books") you just know its going down that road despite the fact that you don't need an NBA to figure out that its a stupid idea.

Accountants only have high-school, after all how much learning do you need to figure out addition and subtraction.

PS: That's how our economy got in such a mess and why its not improving.

Industrial scale geothermal works fine where the crust is thin. (Hawaii, Iceland, Japan, Yellowstone etc.)

Solar would be used in places where there is lots of sun to melt salt. (Like death valley, Saskatchewan, the Sahara desert, most of the middle east, the Gobi desert, the Atacama desert.)

Nuclear could/should/would be only used where the crust is too thick or where a source of water is problematic.

stop building nuclear power plants out in the open air and bury the damn things half a kilometer underground.

Takes care of explosions. (Even if it blows up, get your people out before it blows, seal the shaft and who cares?)
Takes care of terrorist attacks. (The terrorists are NOT going to dig half kilometer long tunnels to get to your fissiles.)
Takes care of leakage. (Its half a kilometer down so its not going in your water table.)
Takes care of waste disposal. (You just dig a bunch of side chambers.)
Takes care of expansion. (You just dig a bunch of side chambers.)
Takes care of exposure. (It never sees the light of day, it never gets above ground.)

You can build the cooling towers, the power distribution towers and the offices above ground but BURY all the rest way down deep.

Really, Provost Utah voted to accept Google fiber.

Was there ever any doubt that they would?

An SSD is a hardware component. It actually resulte in some major speed increases.

Other hardware components have not been faring well (PC motherboards are still made with AT type mouse and keyboard connectors. That just kills innovation in the form factor. A corporate PC hasn't substantially changed in twenty years.)

The OS and office suite market have both matured. (Which is why Microsoft is fighting like hell to sell their concept of software as a subscription service.)

The PC market has matured. Sales are in free-fall until the inevitable bottoming out

Trying to avoid the upgrades is pretty much useless.

My wife's NT 4.0sp2 box got upgraded to XP when it died and she had no choice.

My wife's XP box got upgraded to 7 when it died and she had no choice.

My wife's 7 box died and she said "Bugger this for game of soldiers!".

It got upgraded to a 27" iMac running OS X.

While she has land-filled 3 PC boxes, my old 2002 Titanium PowerBook G4 is still running, my old 2004 21" iMac G5 is still running, my 2011 17" MacBook Pro is still running and my iPad 3 is still running (of course. :-)

For consumer grade, Apple products are built pretty sturdily.

I was an OOP developer for about 20 years and IT development manager for about 5 until my MS become too severe and I am now on disability.

I am now using AmTrak if I possibly ban because I HATE the TSA.

Those minimum-wage knuckle-dragging troglodytes seem to delight in picking on the disabled, the weak or the sick. (If you can't walk away fast enough, you're screwed.)

Their conduct has always been disgusting.

They were idiots when I first ran into 'em in 2002 and they were still idiots last christmas.

Madoff was running a Ponzi scheme, taking investors money and pocketing it instead of investing it. Madoff had NO INTENTION of making good on his promises.

That's not even close.

Though the idea of using drones for espionage is not a good one either.

Imagine selling electronics and supplies for miniature surface to air missiles that can be produced by 3D printers.

Paranoia + inventiveness = profit.