and in the spirit of pointy-haired bosses everywhere it means little. The administration is going to squeeze whatever good press they can garner from the comment and then do nothing. Oh, wait, there will be a panel of learned IT staff, then a study group, then a plan-for-a-plan group, then a project planning group then a phase I project and then, wait for it, a cut in funding that cancels the project.

Federally guaranteed student loans put the federal government in charge of deciding who can and who cannot attend college. The loans are not given on the basis of financial ability to repay they are given on the basis of an interesting set of criteria that make little financial sense.

Part of the societal benefit of these loans is that they can be repaid by becoming a teacher and other several other forms of public service. This puts the federal government in the business of recruiting for these positions.

Those who do not go into public service find themselves with a large financial challenge - a set of loans that often are out of line with their working life. Some fields of study, while expensive, do not lead to lucrative careers. People in those fields will never be free of their student loan debt - their only relief will be death, or perhaps disability. This puts the federal government, in all it's benevolence, in the same position as the post-civil war plantation owner who loves his indentured workers.

State university systems for their in-state students stand the most to gain - without easy access to loans many students will be forced to choose the budget education rather than throwing caution to the winds and signing up for the much more expensive private institutions.

The one time I was in the jury pool I mentioned that I worked for a large company in the information security department and had been educated on evidence collection seemed to cause a race between the prosecution and the defense to see who would boot me first. I wonder if the defendant was guilty but the prosecution had some blemishes in their evidence.

Someone gets poked with a pencil, ban pencils and so on. This sort of "generals preparing to fight the last war" problem comes from a reactive posture rather than moving to address the real problem.

If you're worried about violence in the school get a really good security professional to watch the kids as they come in. Focus on the ones who "look like trouble".

Profiling has become a bad word in the US when it should be the focus of much of the security push. Profile, focus on behavior and get ahead of the threat.

In the cloud computing means you're not only putting all your eggs in one basket, you don't own or control the basket!

Worry disclosure risk (if the data in the cloud gets loose how bad is it for you/your company?) and be prepared to do your work elsewhere (locally, another cloud, whatever) when your primary cloud isn't available.

It's all the same problems we have today, just with someone else's hardware and a network connection required for everything.

or salvation army or whoever in your city will take them (Austin TX has a very active Goodwill Computer Store).

Full format them first (not perfect, but there are so many drives with data on them that it is unlikely that someone will go to great lengths to read the edges of formatted tracks). If they don't format then break them down (cool magnets and platters that are better for target practice than CDs - they don't shred as easily).

Keep a few around, especially USB keys - better than burning something to CD is you need to hand data to someone.