Let's assume full deceleration at the target star has been achieved ... By that time, near-Earth telescopes would be sufficiently advanced to verify and inform the Icarus computers ...

... that the pre-warp technology museum on Starbase 235 is prepared to receive it in docking bay 19.

This might be a brief golden age of Netflix, like the brief golden age of Napster, but I hope not. I couldn't care less that the TV shows and movies I'm watching are a couple years old. There's more than enough material to fill up the time I have for television, and it's blissfully commercial-free. A couple months ago I cut off my cable service because I wasn't watching it anymore. I dread the day when Hastings decides he needs to insert commercials into programs to pay for new ventures that don't make as much profit. The idea of original Netflix programming makes me think scarily back to MTV's first game shows. But I like Hastings' philosophy of staying niche instead of trying to conquer the world. Please, Reed, you're rich enough already and your service totally RULES! Keep thinking niche and don't ruin a good thing.

Sadly, you've summed up my view of American politics perfectly. The past half century has been an amazing example of what happens when common sense is drowned out by advertising. The Right is skipping gleefully to the slaughter, sucking Rush Limbaugh's dick and chanting "USA! USA!" while the Left sits on its ass waiting for some imaginary savior to swoop in and make everything better. The top 1% who own the country's debt are probably planning how they'll stay on top in a China-dominated world.

Pro tip: Don't cross the streams!!

An animation with voltages racing around the chip as it executes?

Where's my light-cycle?? I must save my User from the MCP!!

It's unclear if this is just a case of the minister not knowing what is actually in the legislation he is trying to pass.

Silly rabbit! If France is anything like the USA, having to actually read what his corporate sponsors email him before he cuts and pastes it into law would waste valuable schmoozing time.

Thanks for wording that so well. It seems like there are always people who think something like a seatbelt law is the foreshadowing of a totalitarian regime.

That's quite a lens you're looking at the world through. Somehow, in spite of not being free, people manage to change schools, change jobs, change friends, change homes, change weight, change genders, change musical tastes... my fingers are getting tired listing all of our non-freedoms.

"The freedoms that many great men have fought and died for..." Wow, more hyperbole.

If "driving around without a drunk test" belongs on the list of those freedoms, then so does "making it home alive without getting killed by some drunken idiot," and I'd personally put the latter freedom a lot higher up on the list. We just disagree on which freedom is more important. I don't object to taking a DUI test any more than I object to taking a driving test to get a license. I think they're both reasonable measures to promote a level of safety on the roads.

History does not, in fact back you up on your view of DUI tests as a gateway to a police state. There were people who once thought traffic signals at intersections and painting lines down the middle of the street were the first steps toward a rigid, robotic society, in which everyone moved in lockstep and weren't allowed to think. Obviously that didn't happen or we wouldn't be having this conversation.

If a mandatory DUI test is an unreasonable search, is a mandatory driving test at the DMV an unreasonable search? I believe both are reasonable.

Sarcasm and hyperbole aren't rational arguments.

"What's next?" is not an argument. If we require drivers licenses, what's next -- permits to walk on the sidewalk? No.
You're obviously against these DUI checks. Go ahead and make a coherent case for point of view.

Drunk drivers have been killing about a 9/11 worth of Americans every couple months since the 1960s. Given the extent to which we've allowed the government to invade our privacy in ineffective ways in the name of protecting us from terrorism, I'm happy to see them do something genuinely effective against a problem that's about a hundred times worse than terrorism.

I know Italy isn't exactly a renegade terrorist dictatorship or anything, but such actions by a government with such a blatant conflict of interest is just wrong in principle. I think the U.S. government should put on its white hat and publicly take a stand against this. I mean, suppose Rupert Murdoch became prime minister of Australia and decided to fine any website that contradicted Fox News. Why should the U.S. cooperate with that?

Looking at it from a completely different angle, if putting videos where Italians can see them makes YouTube an Italian television station, then every website in the world that streams audio is an Italian radio station, and every news site is an Italian newspaper. The whole concept is patently ridiculous.

Most 3D projector cell phones will run on ethanol.