So apparently the whole of this story is that the village of Frauenkirchen has a trademark for its latest tourism campaign - "Mittelpunkt Europas" ("Centerpoint of Europe", more or less, or more idiomatically just "The Middle/Heart of Europe"). This is a trademark, laying a legal claim to the use of that particular phrase as a brand, not to the idea of being "in the middle of Europe" or anything remotely related to patents. Nice stretch, but no story.

According to this Bloomberg story, the New York Times is only accurate in that Google and Verizon negotiated net neutrality on everything but mobile networks, and hence Verizon will be allowed to do traffic discrimination on those lines.

But I find it a little odd to write up that story as "Google and Verizon negotiating an end to net neutrality" rather than as "Google and Verizon negotiating to preserve net neutrality on most internet connections."

20B dollars per year spread over 28 million people just about doubles Afghan income (from $800 per year figure above). When you're talking about that kind of subsistence level of income, that doubling of income means a much larger multiplication of disposable income for investment, which is what Afghanistan really needs - roads, education, police stations, and all the other things that there just isn't enough cash for. The mineral wealth will not do any good if it's just treated as additional wealth to be used on consumption; it will transform the country if used as much-needed capital for economic growth.

The Chinese would. In fact, they already are.

Actually, it is special. It's cheap. Which was the whole point, from the beginning.
SpaceX isn't aiming to do anything new, they're aiming to do the same thing for less than half the price (per kilogram, Falcon 9 Heavy compared to the Ariane 5).

You're complaining that the API for Google Storage for Developers isn't user-friendly?
This is for developers writing web apps requiring guarantees of security, synchronization, reliability, etc. It's not supposed to be a more "legit" version of Dropbox.

In reply to 2: The article actually says "These snippets [802.11 frames] could include parts of an email, text or photograph or even the website someone may be viewing." They're explaining what a frame is for people who don't know, not saying that Google was assembling and tracking e-mail traffic.

Except that Israel is also on the no-direct-apple-sales list - not really the same situation economically as Europe. In fact, until about 2 years ago, they weren't even willing to put in the minimal effort to make iPods capable of displaying Hebrews (or Arabic, or Urdu, etc.) song titles. The fact is, they've decided that they're not even willing to put in the minimal amount of effort necessary to break into any new national market. Go figure.

The problem with using only older, proven packages for an LTS is that then, by the end of the expected service life of the release (which is, by definition, long) the software will be even more ancient than it already was at release time. So there's a trade-off between "it's LTS and hence has to be stable" and "it's LTS and hence needs packages that will still be reasonably current in three years."

When did you last use Linux, 2000?

Yes, exactly; when people say that these devices, and e-ink displays, are "easy on the eyes", flicker-free is what they're talking about. That's because these devices work by moving (by electrical means) little bits of matter in changed pixels for every refresh cycle - black or white beads for e-ink, little bits of colored oil for these displays. So when the picture stays the same, there's no off-and-on cycling, but instead the colored material just stays put. These devices sound perfect for your problem - flicker-free like e-ink, but with a fast enough refresh rate for use as a computer monitor.

My guess would be increased accuracy (all kinds of fancy digital guidance systems). For example: if you're trying to destroy a power plant, and (for the sake of argument) let's say you need to get within half a kilometer to really paste it, and let's also assume that 70% of ICBMs will land within that distance of their target; if you're aiming for several hundred targets and want really high destruction rates, you're going to need to use more than one device per target. Upping that hit probability to 90% changes the numbers by a lot.

You can't be in non-compliance with the NPT if you've never signed it. India, Pakistan, and Israel never signed it; North Korea signed it and then pulled out. The policy seems to be that the US is treating North Korea - and potentially Iran - as out of compliance with the treaty (departure from the NPT is of debatable legality), while treating India, Pakistan, and Israel as not bound by its terms.