A chunk of the extra cost comes from small volume production.

That's a flawed circular argument. The small volume production is a result of the greedy excessive pricing (and perhaps also a result of lower quality that consumers don't want to buy). There is no reason that a good affordable high quality repairable phone should suffer from small volume production.

All phones are "repairable" if costs are not a consideration. By making an overpriced phone that will likely have very expensive "replacement modules" to facilitate repair, you create a system where no one can afford to repair their phones and, hopefully, where no one will buy the phone in the first place.

This makes plenty of sense if the next generation of satellite were to standardize some things to plan for this, but is extremely unlikely to work for current satellites that were not designed with service in mind. The current satellites don't even have simple things like standardized and accessible fuel fittings (since it was never expected that this would happen and they were considered disposable) or even physical hold points where a service device could latch on. A good modular design for module replacement that allows for access and plug-ability would obviously help too, even if specific modules had to be lifted into space before a service mission.

Before N.A.S.A. wastes too much of its ever dwindling budget (insert here comment about how we have so much money that we can give the poor free Internet and Obamaphones), they should create a set of standards and see if they can get the industry to willingly adopt them with the expectation that it would facilitate service in the future. Once a fair number of devices that were deigned planning on being able to be serviced if a service station were ever deployed are in orbit, then putting that station in space could make sense.

At least it is just a second. That sudden extra hour of daylight in the spring is really bad for my rose bushes.

Lets not stop there. After we give the low income their free porn and Xbox connections, lets keep taking money from those that have it and give it to those who want it for other things too, No downside there, after all, the supply of money to give away is infinite. We can never run out. And we don't have to worry about America's crumbling infrastructure. Once we realize that that is really a problem we can take more money from those who have it. We can just keep taking and giving.

Of course, a slight negative, but not really a downside is that the truly rich can afford lawyers and accountants and even politicians to help them keep their money, and maybe even get some more for not growing something or some other cute tax dodge. But no problem, we can just squeeze more taxes and "fees" from those not making as much and trying to feed and raise their family. And great news for them, by the time we are done they will be eligible for free Internet too, although they may be more focused on just staying alive than on using that government benefit.

See my response to the same question above. Are you by chance a time traveler from the 1800's or earlier? Because I don't see how anyone born since the end of WWII could even ask that question.

I don't want the software/firmware to hide this blatant error in self driving cars, aircraft control systems, air traffic control systems, medical devices (including but not limited to medicine delivery and radiation based treatment and diagnosis), automated or remote controlled military weapons, or even the ABS or power train systems of my current car while I'm driving it in heavy traffic at 70 mph or so. And that is just for starters and a few fairly obvious examples. But pretty much any process control system that affect the real world (meaning all of them) could be capable of inflicting dangers if completely out of control. Other examples could range from anything from automated amusement park rides to computerized legal records (unless you think it is a fun and safe thing to have a dozen over eager SWAT yahoos bust down your door and start getting agressive with their automatic weapons because your finger prints came up a match for who they were looking for, a match that was caused by a complete lack of any similarity in the fingerprints and a divide by zero error).

Absolute idiot. Reminds me of a time years ago when I was working at a University computer center. Despite my cultivated angry looks, a student came up to me with a printout and asked "Uh, what does this mean?" I said, "Oh, you want me to read it to you? It says: Error -divide by zero on line 50." I got a blank stare. So after a minute I further said" It means you are trying to divide by zero on line 50 of your code, which of course you can't do." That was responded to with another blank stare. So I said "look, here is line 50. See those two variables that you are multiplying together and then dividing into those other numbers? One of them must be reaching zero. Since you can't divide by zero the computer is trying to tell you that something has gone wrong. Go back, print out the variables inside the loop right before line 50 and see which one reaches zero. Then figure out why it is zero." The student said nothing and wandered away, apparently unhappy that I just didn't write the code for her.

A few days later one of the student operators who worked for me there said to me "Remember that girl that you tried to help with the divide by zero problem? She's getting a B+ in her computer science class." Such is the state of the education system. This was a while ago, but as far as I can tell, and this post indicates, things have no gotten any better.

No, you don't just ignore this problem and you absolutely don't put a system wide rule in effect to ignore the problem. If you get such an error it indicates a very fundamental problem wit the logic of the program. It is not trivial, and in real world situations could be deadly.

And you don't just return the largest system number rather than zero, as some other idiots have suggested. That would be just as wrong and just as dangerous.

And if you are really seeing this error often, I strongly suggest a change in profession to a short order chef.

Of course, I couldn't want to be labeled a racist, so I would never prohibit an organization from buying a security tool built by the Chinese. Lets all run our secure data through E-Defective!

Amsat can get the stuff. Elon can get the stuff. It might have to be special ordered, but I can't find any law or regulation keeping it out of the hands of Americans. So yes, I expect it can be bought in this country and then it will wander across our notoriously open boarders.

There is no way that Russia could ever figure out how to have someone in the U.S.A. (maybe even someone who works that the Russian embassy) just order this stuff from Digi-Key and then send it back to Russia, maybe even in a diplomatic pouch.

I was thinking exactly the opposite. You don't want to say who did it when it was the N.S.A.

I clearly remember Al Gore claiming to have invented Origami.

Origami is the Japanese art of paper folding created by Akira Yoshizawa

I find it extremely hard to believe that Akira Yoshizawa, born in 1911, invented Origami. Oh sure, he apparently did a lot of Origami, as did others. But to claim he created the concept is a pretty bold claim.

I don't know where he is driving or who his insurance company is, but I've checked this out in my state and my quote for just liability insurance was more than twice this, even with the "second vehicle discount" (a huge 10% slap in the face). And I'm told that I live in a relatively low cost insurance state.