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...

Really, that's only half true.

http://www.securecomputing.net.au/News/246707,egyptians-turn-to-tor-to-organise-dissent-online.aspx

I'm not sure why I should potentially lower my conversion rate by hassling people to upgrade their browser. That seems like Microsoft's job, not mine.

Maybe they could use the same features that redirect you to msn.com or bing to redirect you to a browser selection page, no? In the mean time, I will just keep including stylesheets for IE6 that do some graceful degredation. It won't look great, but it won't be illegible.

Besides, it seems like most IE6 users in this age are enterprise clients who can't upgrade until their vendors start supporting new browsers, or until the interprise itself gets rid of legacy programs.