I'm beginning to feel disgusted by these cry-baby CEOs and investors.

Look, it's very simple: There are laws of physics. If your product cannot work with the set of laws of physics we have on this planet, then your product doesn't work, end of discussion. You can't cry over not being able to make the flying car of your dreams because gravity is so mean to you.

There are also man-made laws. If your company cannot work with the set of laws valid in your country, then your company doesn't work, period. You can't cry over not being able to make a profit because they are so mean to you.

It's really selfish, stupid and ignorant to enjoy the nice things that laws and regulations give you, like having a civilized country, safety, clean streets, heck streets at all, the ability to make contracts and enforce them (absolutely essential for every business!) and a thousand other things, and then cry that the evil laws make your business impossible. Quite the opposite, you imbecile! The laws make your business possible in the first place. Without them, you wouldn't have a business, and if you tried the first guy with a bigger club would take it away from you.

No sir, I did not ridicule anyone. I pointed out that the parent seemed to put business people in a class apart and above, deserving of extra help and protections to compensate them for the risks they take and the work they do.

To say such a thing in our current climate is turning a blind eye to recent history. Who got bailed out in 2008? Not the homeowners. Who was so arrogant they said they didn't need policing? Wall Street. At the same time, who is denying there is a Climate Change problem and constantly accusing scientists of needing more policing? Big Oil for one. Businesses already get a lot of help. There is a problem with big businesses obtaining unfair advantage over small businesses. But I have not heard any complaining about that. Perhaps Big Media isn't reporting that, just like they don't report all kinds of other things. But it could also be that businesses close ranks and lobby as one on many issues, particularly when it comes to beating down pay and shrinking the middle class. If anything, we engage in too much corporate welfare. We have a lot of corruption, nepotism, greed, and crony capitalism. The Great Recession exposed only some of it.

I have an application for this where I'm using 365 to 395 nm older style to attract bugs efficiently.

Come on, give us a few details. Are you collecting the bugs for research or are you using the lights as bait for your backyard zapper? Or are you collecting bugs to feed to your pet iguanas?

That's too tantalizing a statement for you not to tell us a little more.

Have you seen Win10 preview, or at least read some reviews and look at the screenshots? Because it is exactly what it is about... I mean, the most obvious change that you see once you install Win10 over Win8 is that the Start menu is back. Other changes include things like Metro apps actually running in resizable windows, and the "charm bar" is gone, and all the actions are integrated into the window title bar. Etc... basically, all things Metro are desktopified.

Considering the joke that the legal system of the US has evolved into, I have a hard time making an informed decision whether this is the right or the wrong thing to do.

Or you're "too big to fail". Too bad his drug cartel didn't fund weapons deals with terror groups that "we" like, then he'd probably be celebrated as a true American hero instead.

If you follow that logic to its end, I guess a couple of gun manufacturers should now be sweating into their boots.

I think it's because of the freedoms that still exist.

He didn't use the money he made selling drugs to fund weapons deals to destabilize a few countries, and I think if you don't do that dealing drugs is illegal. Or something like that.

Next time if you want to rip off people, swindle them out of their money, flaunt your condescendence towards the law and be a scourge of society, run a bank. Not only is it far more efficient than some petty drug dealing, it's also safer. The worst that can happen if things go wrong is that you get bailed out.

I did. I told him about it and he asked me to stop talking, he has a sensitive stomach.

I stopped caring a while ago. Why should I? Most idiots don't care that they're being lied to. Those that do already noticed the same I did: It doesn't matter that you notice it. It's not like you can do anything about it.

Right now, I'm just sitting here, waiting for our economy to collapse in the vain hope that something better might emerge. I just don't really think there will be anything better. Different maybe, but better, hardly. Human won't change. And whether this or that asshole rules us, and this or that asshole lies to us, where's the difference? In the end it's like voting, you may only choose the person, group or entity that is given the right to fill their pockets at your expense. The option that you'd get someone who doesn't do it simply does not exist.

So apologies if I just sit here, relax and watch the world burn. Fighting windmills is more a pastime of the younger generations.

All he did was facilitate transactions among consenting adults.

Illegal transactions. And he got a cut from every deal made.

So arrest and prosecute the federal agent for attempted murder. He's the one who should be in jail. Not Ulbricht.

You don't think facilitating the transaction for a hitman for a percentage of the price should be a crime?

Remember, Ulbricht got a cut of the money for every single drug transaction on Silk Road. It's as if he bought a downtown building and rented it out to drug dealers (and hit men) and got a cut for every single transaction.

I know there's a belief that the Internet is a magical place where laws should not apply, because it's digital!, but that's just not how it works.

I'm not outright against some manned missions, I just don't think they should be our top priority and shouldn't crowd out robotic exploration of new places. A manned "space race" is unlikely to get us much relative to other options.

In addition to the robotic missions I mentioned, powerful telescopes that can detect and do spectrographic analysis of planets of other star systems would be far better science than more manned missions to local rocks. We could detect another Earth with clear-cut life signs, for example. That would be a bigger discovery than simple microbes on Mars (which robotic sample return missions can perform).

There would be no Saturn V, no Falcon HR etc.

They are cool in the "wow, big!" sense, but maybe we don't really need them right now.