That may all be said and good, but it seems Apple (and many other electronics manufacturers) might be hard to convince, as Jobs explained to Obama in 2012. An excerpt that captures the gist of the article:

Apple executives say that going overseas, at this point, is their only option. One former executive described how the company relied upon a Chinese factory to revamp iPhone manufacturing just weeks before the device was due on shelves. Apple had redesigned the iPhone’s screen at the last minute, forcing an assembly line overhaul. New screens began arriving at the plant near midnight.

A foreman immediately roused 8,000 workers inside the company’s dormitories, according to the executive. Each employee was given a biscuit and a cup of tea, guided to a workstation and within half an hour started a 12-hour shift fitting glass screens into beveled frames. Within 96 hours, the plant was producing over 10,000 iPhones a day.

" The speed and flexibility is breathtaking," the executive said. "There’s no American plant that can match that."

Don't forget, there were several people that tried to stay "within the system" to stop trailblazer from ever getting the green light, and they were all pushed aside in one way or another. These include Thomas Drake, Jack Goldsmith, Diane Roark, and several of the NSA developers for the ThinThread program (which they thought was a much better choice over Trailblazer, the program Snowden revealed. This is the most heartbreaking part of the story, folks like Ed Loomis almost lost their sanity trying to fight the higher ups on Trailblazer). Working within the system was being shot down by Cheney, Addington and Gonzales.

The 60s were different in that they were one of the few times when there wasn't increasing inequality/joblesness - people married young and could hold on to a job for 50 years - which is the outlier, not the historical norm. Just look at the 19th century by comparison. For a bit more discussion, see here.

Of which, 1,904 (2/3) involved cases in which a foreigner whose cellphone was being wiretapped entered the United States, where court warrants are required for most eavesdropping. A spike in such problems in a single quarter, the report said, could be because of Chinese citizens visiting friends and family for the Chinese Lunar New Year holiday. “Roamer incidents are largely unpreventable, even with good target awareness and traffic review, since target travel activities are often unannounced and not easily predicted,” the report says.

I think this is an important point to keep in mind, although that still leaves approximately 900 "real" errors.

Its also worth pointing out that his commentary tends to be unbiased, honest and refreshing in a world of pundits that will say just about anything with little to no conviction or evidence. Take away all the statistics, and I'd still read his site just as a reassurance that yes: there are other rational thinkers out there.

There is a fantastic TED talk by Kirby Ferguson that expands on this theme (loss aversion in behavioral economics) and discusses some of these exact quotes/points. In short: "great artists steal, but not from me."

You should check out some of the latest biologic-based treatments for psoriasis that are "in the pipeline:" http://dx.doi.org/10.1038/nm0512-638

Biologics typically have the benefit of being very specific against their target with few - if any - side effects. The downside is usually the cost/method of treatment, but thats another story...

"What are the differences between Mark Zuckerberg and me? Lets take a look.

I give you private information on corporations for free, and I'm a villian. Mark Zuckerberg gives your private information to corporations for money, and he's man of the year.

Thanks to wikileaks, you can see how corrupt governments operate in the shadows, and then lie to those who elect them. Thanks to facebook, you can finally figure out which Sex and the City character you are."

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=S9LqnowYVQE

I'm a postdoc that works mostly with biochemist-ey types, and I'd highly recommend adding a math package to whats available to your students. With something like mathematica, you can do:

• curve fitting/minimization
• general math (probability distributions, convolutions, Fourier transforms, etc)
• peak integration
• statistical analysis
• image analysis
• check formulas and their characteristics (being able to verify derivatives, for example, is very important for fitting models)

what I also like about the math packages is the ability to synthesize "test" data to illustrate what can't be done simply in lab (or not at all, depending). And I think its also a great way to start learning a bit of programming/scripting without requiring too much CS (for those not interested in CS), but at the same time getting enough exposure to it so that they won't be completely lost when they see a conditional loop. And, I can personally tell you that science types use them quite widely.

I'm a little surprised you seem more concerned about the OS the programs run on. As long as the students can run the stuff you've listed along with some sort of math package to learn about handling data, just go with what the IT guys are most comfortable with.

But to answer your question: most science labs run whatever they want, but some hardware and/or proprietary analysis software for some equipment can dictate the OS.

It took me a minute to dig this up on Robb Toploski's Journal, I think its worth posting here: