Working 9-5 does not necessarily mean a developer is a burnout. As other posters indicated, they may have other priorities in their lives. A technical manager to be a good manager needs to have some working knowledge of newer technologies and methodologies. More importantly the manager needs to have the wisdom on when and when not to use it.

Hmm, Satellites assisting in machine to machine communications, could this be the start of Skynet?

There is nothing new under the sun:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/CompuServe

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/AOL#History

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Digital_cable

FTFY. Remember the days when AT&T actually gave you unlimited service (back when "unlimited" actually meant "unlimited")? Remember how angry we were when they introduced the data cap?

Opium was outlawed to prevent Chinese and Filipino immigrants from bringing their bad habits to the USA:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Harrison_Narcotics_Tax_Act#Domestic_Background

I suppose in your world, oppressing a specific group of people is not at all political.

Indeed:

http://query.nytimes.com/gst/abstract.html?res=F60B14F7345F13738DDDA10894DA405B848DF1D3

So why were the drugs made illegal in the first place? Maybe you are not aware of the history of the drug war, but before the 20th century recreational drugs were legal -- one could buy cocaine and heroin over the counter.

Marijuana is not the only illegal drug. Cocaine has a longer history of being illegal, and the prohibition of cocaine has been a pretext for arresting black men since it was first banned. The arguments for banning cocaine were not merely absurd, but shockingly racist, with claims about "cocaine niggers" being driven to attack white women and talk of how black cocaine users became more accurate with a gun. Southern police forces used cocaine as a pretext for upgrading their guns, claiming that "negro cocaine fiends" could not be stopped with a shot through the heart using standard police calibers.

Not only that, but despite the recent progress on legalizing marijuana, numerous other drugs have been banned -- including several that were simply declared to be illegal by the DEA before Congress even voted on the issue. So do not let yourself be distracted by marijuana any more than by alcohol, tobacco, or caffeine -- the war on drugs is alive and well, and the police are as heavily armed and as violent as ever.

1. It is well known that drug laws have been and continue to be used as tools of political oppression. One need only look at the arguments presented to Congress in the early 20th century during the debate on criminalizing cocaine, opium, and marijuana to see that these laws were intended to target certain unpopular minorities, especially black men. Much of the lobbying for the drug war has come from business interests and, disturbingly, from law enforcement agencies themselves -- literally, the executive branch using the drug war as a way to expand its own power.
2. Also typical of police states are the systematic denial of civil rights, the broadening of laws to the point where trials are pro forma only, and a vast and powerful police force. The USA exhibits all of the above -- the vast majority of cases never go to trial, defendants who intend to exercise their rights must wait years and are often bankrupted in the process, and it is rare for defendants to face only a single criminal charge. Additionally, laws are passed specifically to give the police and prosecutors greater authority to arrest and imprison people who would otherwise have walked free. Increasingly, paramilitary police teams are deployed at all levels of government to serve routine search-and-arrest warrants -- with the use of such teams being motivated by a focus on the safety of the police and the successful execution of the warrant, rather than on the safety of the public or the protection of civil rights.

In other words, the only reason we have to say that the USA is not a police state is that our police are more tame when compared to infamous governments like the Soviet Union. Sure, the police will face penalties if they cross certain lines when interrogating a suspect and sure, civil rights do occasionally matter to the courts, but at the end of the day we are a police state -- a mild one, perhaps, but a police state nonetheless.

Does being the world leader in imprisoning people count? We have more people in prison than China, North Korea, Iran, etc. -- and that is more people in prison period, not merely per capita.

It is one thing to say that the spec is incomplete, but when the spec is bad there is not much a developer can do. If you are told to make the wrong thing, well, either you make the wrong thing or someone else will be paid to do so. There is only so much a developer can do in that situation.

Why does a country need coal to become industrialized? This comes to mind:

http://www.wired.com/wiredscience/2009/10/kamwamba-windmill/

Obvious recycling alternators from old cars is not a solution that scales well enough to industrialize a nation, but at the same time this was being done by a teenager with only rudimentary knowledge of engineering.

Brown-skinned people do not universally hate America. Arab people do not universally hate America. If that is not clear to you, take a look at the enormous number of brown-skinned and Arab people who have immigrated to this country. Many of those people came here to escape the kind of people who attacked us. Many came here to escape persecution and corruption by their government. What do you think happens when they give up their old lives to come here, then face constant suspicion and harassment by the government?

It is no wonder the CIA has trouble finding Arabic and Farsi speakers. We are shooting ourselves in the foot, and we are doing so for no reason other than a popular belief that Muslims, Seikhs, Hindus, and anyone with brown skin must be connected to terrorists. In other words, outright stupidity.