The NSA can have anything it wants. First of all, they are not in the habit of asking permission, and they simply don't tell anyone what they are doing. Second, there have been perfectly legal ways for the government to buy your data for as long as marketing data has been kept and sold. It's perfectly legal for a private corp to buy your purchase history (via a credit card), the data that Google has mined out of your "free" email service, your transactions with any vendor who has a low integrity threshold (who doesn't?) So what keeps the government from buying it also? Nothing at all. If I were doing it, I'd set up a front corporation (like "Air America" of CIA fame) to buy the data so I don't get screaming headlines.

The reason for all the hyperventilation is that three things have happened: agencies who lack the subtlety of NSA have gotten into the market, and they've done it directly—that is, they've outright seized the data instead of using the kinder gentler approach of greasing corporate palms. Third, the amount of data they have sucked has gotten so huge that it is impossible to manage without an army of low-level clerks. This is why an Army private and a contracted data massager can give the whole show away. With this many people involved, you are going to have leaks. I am surprised that there have been only two.

I wonder. In order to fully capitalize on the amount of data they are collecting on us, will it be necessary for all of us to be employed by the US government as DB admins? Welcome to the new Greece.

You think those places are "safe" from the NSA? You are naive. This is global surveillance.

The "right to privacy" is indeed an inference not supported by the letter of the law. Freedom from unreasonable search and seizure is mentioned. But you all seem to have forgotten that our dear congress have given away that right—along with habeas corpus in the frenzy of legislation that follow 9-11. So why are you surprised when the government makes use of its duly legislated powers?

I'm afraid the zombie bunker market is non-viable. Why buy an expensive food printer and cartridges when you can buy my recently published 101 Ways to Cook a Zombie for $90 at any reputable book store? Trust me, it's a bargain!

You're completely right. It's one fundamental failure of our society: not only is our primary educational system broken because it is adjusted so that everyone can be successful, it is broken because success is defined as sending everyone to college. The colleges and universities are broken because everyone is expected to get at least a B.A. in psychology—and Institutions of Higher Learning can only continue to collect their exorbitant tuition if most students are successful, at least in this limited sense. The result is a general failure to educate, a tremendous waste of time and resources. Students aren't taught what they need to know, they are guided around an obstacle course that will get them certified as...well, someone who has navigated the obstacle course.

Yes, there are students who have a serious purpose for attending college (and it's not just getting a paper that says "MBA: Pay me lots of money" on it). In the past, one such purpose was to study one of the traditional "humanities" fields, such as philosophy, history, or literature. I don't know if anybody goes to college any more for such a reason—that is, because they recognize learning as having a value all its own. I don't think universities or our society even pretend to believe this anymore. That's a pity; for there are a few, a very few, people who are born to be scholars. A healthy culture values scholars almost as much as plumbers. Our present culture values neither. Maybe it values nothing of worth.

Today, the few exceptions to the general practice of just navigating the four year academic obstacle course are people who go to college to study physics or another science, or a branch of engineering. If they succeed, it is because they understood that they learning involves work, and that because a B.A. or B.S. is worthless, they must get an advanced degree in their specialty, maybe even a Ph.D. On the other hand, there are also community colleges that have programs that teach a trade—such as electrician, beautician, welder, or auto mechanic. Some students buck the "four year degree" pressure, and learn something useful—useful both to them and to society. But all these are exceptions: in most cases, "going to college" is all about having been to college. It's about being able to say you've gone through the correct motions, and now you deserve a prestigious job.

I had a wonderful handyman who can do just about anything, but has a terrible self-image partly because he never went to college. He thinks he's an idiot. Due to his low self estimation, he made some serious errors in judgment in his life. (He just got sent to jail for something he did in 2004. Long story.) While he was working for me, he opened up to me and told me about how he felt. I told him that there are many different kinds of intelligence; one man is good at academic study, another has smart hands. "Your brain controls your hands", I told him. "You have smart hands, so your brain is smart too." It seemed to help. And I didn't just say it to make him feel better; I said it because it's true.

Congratulations—my memory of the 60s is remarkably vague. True, we don't have typing pools anymore—we have lots of drones sitting in front of computers making PowerPoint slides. Judging from the past, automation causes certain types of work to become obsolete, but it creates new categories of work. And the new jobs aren't necessarily any more meaningful than the ones they replaced. I don't think that is going to change, even if you say "AI" over and over again.

You've been smoking too much weed again.

It was predicted in the 1960s too. I don't know which idiot futurists were pushing the notion, but I believed it. I was sure that the big problem of the future (the 1970s, I guess) would be an excess of leisure time, foisted upon us by automation. Didn't happen though, did it?

Anybody can write an article like this. And convince anyone who smokes enough weed.

Ah, young grasshoper, thou hast evidently not learned the subtleties of Scientific Management. Members of this group use a very special sort of language. That is, it's sort of a language, composed of technical terms (a.k.a. "jargon"). To quote TFA:

The terms in bold are technical terms that thou might mistake for English. I shall translate them into normal English for thee, so you can fully understand that they are not English:

• aligned: "to break"; ex: "Stalin aligned the party's thinking by killing every member who disagreed with him."
• elements: people, but with the connotation of "objects", or perhaps "resources"; ex: "The Battle of Black Mountain was the outcome of a long series of injustices inflicted by the coal mine bosses on their elements".
• organizational structure: A way to stupefy people until their collective intelligence is roughly equal to a cubic kilometer of crayfish, while making them believe it's the only way to get things done; alternate meaning: a sort of meat grinder; ex: Attila the Hun dominated by means of a very flat but effective organizational structure.
• priorities: Anything that the elite of the organizational structure think is important; ex: "Chickens do not understand the farmer's priorities—until it's too late.
• new technologies: vague; refers to anything considered by the heads of a power structure to be a priority; ex: "Well just keep promising them new technologies and raking in their money until they catch on".
• mobile: They have a getaway strategy.

By the way, I did not comprehend your references to "Metroid Prime" and "8 gigs". Perhaps I am missing one of your little jokes again, ha ha?

What necessity to sell new OSs? MS has gotten us to the point where we will pay for a new OS whenever we buy (or make) a new PC. Wouldn't it be an advantage to them to keep charging the same amount of money for Windows 7 for the next 20 years? Think of the development and support savings! There's more than simple sales revenue behind the release of Windows 8. There is a deep, incredibly complex marketing scheme that no one will ever understand—including the million monkeys in Steve Ballmer's basement who invented it.

Well, maybe Windows 8 does have backwards compatibility problems? Have we missed them while ranting about the crappy GUI? I was at a junkyard yesterday, and it was hard to keep my mind on the deal I was trying to make (selling my totaled car to them) because their IT guy was having a very spectacular loud hissy fit. Apparently, the junkyard's software that keeps track of the various car parts wouldn't run under the Windows 8 OS that he had to buy with the new computers he was installing. Just anecdotal evidence, but a data point nevertheless: perhaps America's junkyards are not very happy about Microsoft today.

I think you're saying that we're re-entering the "thin client" phase of the Eternal Wheel of Karma. You think people will use small lightweight devices, and the real work is done by program and storage servers. Maybe you're right. Until the Great Wheel takes another turn, anyway.

But there will still be a rather large market for servers and data storage, won't there?

When I say "desktop", I mean the thing humming next to me that contains 6 internal 1 Terabyte drives (yeah, time to upgrade), a PCI-E graphics card that needs its own power connectors, a PCI-e USB 3 card I added recently, and one or two e-SATA drives. I call that a "desktop". It sounds as though you are saying that the new "desktop" is what I call a "laptop". A laptop is a clamshell-like device that has a keyboard and a mouse that I always take along. I'm probably confused about what you meant by "...when people say desktop that's what they mean.", so I'm going to ignore it.

From what you say, it appears that you believe MS is truly expecting to turn laptops and even desktops into touch interface devices. I realize you don't have to apologize for MS and that you are just trying to explain what you think their plans are...but I think their plans are nuts any way you chop them.

Let me first dispose of the notion of a touchscreen desktop. I'm not going to be groping that huge screen, even if they build one that looks like the interface in Minority Report. You seem to be suggesting that instead of the screen, I'd be tracing my finger along some sort of touchpad. Why? We've gone through all this before, and most people think mice are better than the alternatives. I see absolutely no reason why I should use a "touchscreen" that I don't even touch.

Laptops with touchscreens? Maye, just maybe some people will buy these. It could come in handy when I lose the mouse. But why do I need a completely new GUI to use the touchscreen? Can't I just double tap on an icon to run the program? Drag folders and documents across the desktop? I sure wouldn't be happy if the GUI on my desktop looks totally different from the GUI on my laptop. Also, I think it would be a distraction to constantly take my hand away from the keyboard to stab at my display. Yes, I have to take my hand from the keyboard to use the mouse too, but it's a shorter reach, and the movements required to traverse the screen are very small (at least the way I have my mouse set up).

As others have pointed out, tablets and smart phones are for people who want to consume content (read books, play games, surf the web, etc.). I have 2 tablets; I'm not some sort of anti-touchscreen bigot. I love reading books and playing games on these devices Sometimes, I even read my email on my smartphone—but I don't answer it. For that I go to my desktop, which has a real keyboard. You need different tools and more resources to create content, like audio, video, graphics, programming, and writing. Those are two distinct purposes, two distinct markets, and I don't think MS will successfully merge them. Their greatest fault has always been the notion that they can change the market with nothing more than wishful thinking and an ad campaign.

Thank you for your reply! Please forgive my obtuseness, but I want to restate what I understand you to be saying, so that I can totally get rid of my fear of the number 8.

I think you are saying (please correct me if I'm wrong) that the only difference between Win 7 and 8 consists of some GUI changes, and that the new GUI can be made to revert to that of an earlier version of Windows. I'm not so much attached to the Start menu, but to the general appearance of my desktop: I can really turn off that awful blocky surface I see in the ads? As far as GUIs go, I'm a bit conservative—my Windows 7 GUI looks remarkably like...Windows 2K. I hated the stupid 3D window borders in XP, and the Macwannabe transparent crap of Windows 7—which is just visual junk to me, so I go for the "classic" look, which I thank MS for leaving available to me, at least up to Windows 7. Does Win 8 allow me to make my GUI look like I was back in Y2K? I suppose I could live with XP if I had to. The Doctor's fundamental position on GUIs is: never, ever change a GUI unless it's really broken. It is inexcusable to present a new GUI that users have to learn to navigate when the old one they already know does the same job. Especially when you have to teach grandma and grandma how their new computer works. Optional GUI variations are great; forcing people to use a new GUI is not.

I have to say I'm paranoid that I'm still not understanding all this correctly. I was under the impression that Win 8 had "touch screen features". These features don't interest me, as I'm not planning to buy a touchscreen desktop any time in the future, even if it does look like the one in Minority Report. So these features can be turned off, and everything can be done with keyboard and mouse as in days of yore? And the code underneath the GUI (the real operating system, in other words) in Windows 8 is identical to Windows 7? That would be cool then; I can just ignore the version number—I can just regard Win 8 as a sort of very expensive GUI service pack for Windows 7.

I'm afraid that I've been very confused by Microsoft's advertising campaign for Windows 8. Perhaps they should sponsor therapy groups for all those traumatized psyches.

So let me see if I got this right. Because MS failed abjectly to anticipate the tablet and smart phone market (unless one takes Windows Phone seriously), and has no viable position in that market, their new plan is to force people to train themselves in the new Windows mobile OS by making them buy a desktop OS that somehow imposes this requirement. I suppose they want people to buy new computers with touchscreens, so they can be properly trained?

No, nobody could be that stupid.