The openness of Android is a big part of why Android has better marketshare than iOS, so maybe they shouldn't look a gift horse in the mouth.

The hobbit is being filmed in 3d? Ugh...

3d is a gimmic and it is helping to further ruin cinamatography. There are very few exceptions.

And why shouldn't NASA, like practically everyone else, report to the electorate? We've all heard the "science first" routine and then seen the internal positioning and squabbling result in unbelievable cost overruns, a la Livermore and the DOE

Is this somehow better or worse than spending billions on W.'s launch vehicle only to have it scrapped and sent back to the drawing board by Obama?

NASA needs to be given autonomy... they need to be given a long term goal (a generic one like "set up a moon colony as a dry run for a mars colony, then get to Mars", or "set up a mining outpost in the asteroid belt") and then left alone to decide the best way to achieve that. Having every president wanting to leave their mark on outer space like Kenedy did is irresponsible and leaves them with ever changing goals and a rotating set of tools to do the job. We've changed what vehicles they're supposed to be using two or three times now since they declared the end of the space shuttle. At this rate, an American vessel may never lift an astronaut in to space again. That's not even bringing congressional funding issues in to the mix...