Don't we put enough crap into the world's oceans? I mean we literally have an island of garbage floating around, why add to the pollution? Why can't we, as another poster said, thrust it off into space, or, thrust it toward the sun and let the sun's gravity suck it in and destroy it?

A link to a tool or instructions on how to remove the darn thing! I have been hit by some form of google re-direct twice and the last time I just gave up an re-formatted the hard-drive (it was due for a clean Windowz install anyway).

I agree the two monitors is nice, but it's a laptop. TFA points out that carrying a docking station (along with extra monitor) with you is not practical, but neither is carrying a giant 4.5kg brick, plus think of the real estate you will need in a conference room. As far as plugging in at the hotel, I find most hotels I stay at have modern TV's that have VGA/HDMI inputs and I just plug in to the TV for my second monitor, and voila, a dual monitor setup.

What a very sad state we are. The whole healthcare reform bill ended up "costing", what, around 1 Trillion dollars? And what was it supposed to accomplish? I see, well, when people are resorting to crime to get healthcare I would say the reform act got it wrong. Seriously, for 1 Trillion the government could have just bought insurance policies for 100 million people.

I can see why Verizon is moving down this path. Higher speed, more reliable connections, and more users makes for a very expensive network. If people really don't like it, they will switch to another carrier who offers unlimited data, or resort to only connecting via Wi-Fi or tethering. What I don't understand is this low cap. 2 Gb is not very much data, especially considering all the advertising that shows streaming video and watching TV on your phone or tablet. The 2Gb limit is especially confusing when you look at tablet's. The tablet's will (IMHO) eat up a lot of the market share for laptops and netbooks very soon and people will want to surf seamlessly between connections (LAN, WLAN, 4G, etc.). In the end, I could easily see Verizon making a lot of money in the short term, but as other networks grow and offer better deals we will see the bandwidth caps go higher and possibly more data tiers.

And when is page-break-inside finally going to be supported? Man, that would be helpful.

What good is a standard if no browser fully supports it and when some browsers (*cough* IE *cough*) flat-out ignore them.

OK, I am not sure what time frame you are looking at. You mentioned an awful lot of topics and comp. sci. would normally be studied for 4 years. I do not consider office tools a part of a traditional comp. sci. program, but they should be taught nonetheless. Assuming there is 4 years of high school I would recommend:
Year 1/Semester 1&2: OS and Office Tools - In this course I would expose the student to different operating systems: Windows, Ubuntu Linux, and Mac OS. I would have the student master some basic end-user activities, like installing software, installing new hardware, modifying system settings (i.e. env vars, etc) and finally touch on some shell scripts (batch files, .bash scripts). I would then move into basic office programs. I would show Word and Open Office and introduce the student to basic word processing and touch on some advanced editing (tables, formatting, formulas, etc.). In spreadsheets I would show the basics plus introduce macros, which are programming based. Also pivot tables and graphs. There would be plenty of material for 1 year of school, especially considering this as an "elective" which would not be studied more than 1-2 hours per week.
Year 2/Semester 1: Introduction To Programming - Just like it sounds, I would focus on basic programing. The tough part is what language - Pick whatever you are really comfortable with and able to teach. I personally would choose a slightly non-main-stream language like Ada. Focus on basic program structure, good commenting and the fundamentals of the language.
Year 2/Semester 2: Advanced Programming - Move into advanced aspects of the language, structs/records, user-defined types, compiler pragmas, memory management (pointers).
Year 3/Semester 1: Introduction To Data Structures - Classic CS course. Array/Stack/Queue/List
Year 3/Semester 2: Advanced Data Structures - Another Classic. Various Trees/Graphs/Heap
Year 4/Semester 1: Introduction to OO - Focus more on the design aspect. Also use a language that is a "pure" OO language. We used Eiffel, but the latest .NET stuff if pretty good too. I honestly would not use C++ or Java as the language hinders some of the pure OO techniques.
Year 4/Semester 2: Advances OO - Get into the more complicated OO stuff. Design patterns, multiple inheritance, repeated inheritance, etc.

That would cover a good bit of computer science...

FTA: It said the document outlines the US agenda "for partnering with other nations and peoples to ensure the prosperity, security, and openness that we seek in our increasingly networked world."

And the |-|4c|3r$ will be right there reading the strategy and figuring out more ways to exploit the net and make money or engage in other activities (terrorism, etc.). This sounds like a useless document.

I keep hearing about intrusions that result in data theft, including credit card numbers, etc. Can someone tell me why on earth this information is being stored as plain-text and not as encrypted files? Unless of course the data is encrypted and the passphrases are stored in open-text files with a filename of "password_to_our_files.txt"

They should give that reward to the US soldiers who were directly involved in the operation to take him down.

Before any agency, public or private, starts making claims of getting to mars it would seem prudent to have demonstrated some baby steps toward that goal. SpaceX is one agency charged with replacing the Space Shuttle, and it seems years away from that. There are no detailed plans on the propulsion technology that would be used to get to mars, or even the moon. There are no plans for building various outposts that a mars vehicle could dock with to re-supply. I think mars is a stretch. Until we are avid moon visitors I hold any claims of getting to mars as a joke.

One must ask, "Why are the manufacturers pre-installing this bloat?". My guess is that it helps manufactures keep low prices on machines that otherwise would be out of reach for many consumers wrt to price. Consumers are hungry for slick deals and manufacturers need creative ways to re-coup money lost on razor thin profit margins. So, the manufacture reaches out to other companies and say "Hey, I will put a link to a 30-day trial of your software on our core image of all new laptops, just give us $10.00 per laptop." They do that 10 times and now they can sell the laptop for $10.00 over cost and still make $100 per laptop.

Ask yourself this, if you saw an option on the build-your-own-laptop build site that said "Clean O/S Install - No Advertising or Bloat" with a price tag of $99.95 would you check the box? What about the average Joe consumer looking for that great deal?