Unless you're at IBM's TJ Watson reserach center, and have access to the Watson project. It could do this without breaking a sweat. In fact, I'd love an "ask Watson" app!

Paypal mapped it out years ago. The fact that Visa (and AmEx, Discover, etc) haven't been all over this idea by now makes me wonder if they're even paying attention.

I, for one, welcome competition amongst our financial overlords

You're an editor at some network-central industry rag. One of your staff writers heads up to Boston to attend the Sports Analytics Conference. He rubs elbows with big names in professional sports, attends a few break-out sessions that discuss gathering data to reduce player injuries and data acquisition inside basketballs, and then writes up a rambling article to justify his expense account. What's are you to do? Still hung over from the "Watson vs. the humans" Jeopardy! party, you write the headline: "Go for it on fourth down? Ask Coach Watson." This creates such a media firestorm on /. that all coaches in all major sports retire simultaneously. Talk about march madness!

Perhaps Watson could just replace editors?

So, to claim the $20 million, all I have to do is drive my robot out to an abandoned warehouse in Arizona, let it drive around and take a picture of one of the LEMs (they left them in the warehouse, didn't they?) and then publish the picture?

SCORE!

What manned craft do we have that can go out to L2 and back?

That would be MUCH farther than any manned craft has ever traveled. Even if we had a spare Apollo system laying around, even that couldn't get there (and get back - there's no body to slingshot around). I'm not saying it's impossible, but at least with Hubble, we already had something built that could go visit it.

Not that I'm expecting some catastrophic screw-up on the scale of the Hubble, but if there is a problem with the JWST, once it is sitting out at the Earth-sun L2, we won't be able to go visit it and repair it. I haven't heard of any contingency to allow it to come back to earth, so they've really got one shot to get it right.

I'm hoping everything is nominal.

VirtualBox wasn't mentioned in the article, but when the acquisition was announced, I was really worried about that project. However, the release of VirtualBox 4.0 seems to show that they're still hard at work - not just fixing bugs, but developing new ideas.

I can only hope other Sun projects are doing as well as VirtualBox.

How do you think they're going to recover the cost of that super bowl commercial?

and all of those white hoodies?

Are they assuming a real trip to Mars will include artificial gravity the whole way? Sitting in a can for nearly a year is tough (made tougher by the one-shower-per-week Frenchman sitting next to you), but doing the same without the benefit of gravity would be a whole other ballgame.

Did they at least simulate the unblinking red eye and monotone voice of their mission computer?

Not that being president qualifies you in any way to light anyone else's cigar, but why argue over which former president is better than another? Is there any doubt as to which president is the most improtant? The answer is simple:

OUR CURRENT PRESIDENT! He is the only one that matters - he is the only president who can have an impact on the lives of all living Americans (and a large portion of the citizens of the earth). Debating about past presidents is a waste of time. Pay attention to the one sitting in the oval office, and spend a few extra minutes wondering who will take his place when he's done.