he former chief designer of Nokia explains how the company's success and its corporate culture stopped it from taking risks and left it open to being beaten by Apple.

Not aiming high and taking risks is equivalent to staying the course, and is itself a risk that is often misunderstood.

It has been observed that some very basic data can uniquely identify people in the US. IIRC this can be as simple as: Your zipcode, gender, and birthdate. Never mind your browser, IP, list of contacts, common words you use. Just those 3 things are enough to uniquely identify most people.

They're all pointing at Hoags object.

Every day, they are learning how brilliant [Snowden] was,' said a former U.S. official with knowledge of the case. 'This is why you don't hire brilliant people for jobs like this. You hire smart people. Brilliant people get you in trouble.

This official is dumb as a fucking rock if he didn't realize that a system administrator can bypass the very security measures he administers. And then on top of the ignorance, they attribute this breach to brilliance. OMG these people are looking incompetent. OTOH the general public may believe them and think snowden has super powers and this isn't someone elses fault.

It shouldn't be possible to violate a patent on the internet. Transmitting data should not be patent infringement. If so, then hosting patent documents on the net would be infringement. Software source code is the ultimate description of HOW to implement something, so it should be immune (IANAL) even for software patents. I suppose an executable would constitute infringement where software patents are allowed. But WTF does RIAA and MPAA have to say about patents anyway? They're all about copyright. Right?

And what about the notion of nebulous claims? He seems to want an injunction against mining on the moon, but if he actually tried a legal route wouldn't he need specific claims rather than these vague notions?

Sorry - but that is not 100% correct. Being a former MS employee, they were working in their research division on Project Natal in the 90's, which became the backbone of the Kinect.

And I saw people using those cameras in the auto industry circa 2001. They were considering it as a way to determine what type of person or object was in the passenger seat in order to meet new regs about what airbags have to do in various situations. The cameras were designed and produced by an outside company, which I'm sure is the case with Microsoft since they don't do chip design.

Since CMEs occur as a result of an abrupt change in the suns magnetic field (lines snapping to a new location) it does not seem implausible that a foreign object entering the outer reaches of some magnetic field loops should cause such a shift prior to impact. The even on the opposite side seems odd to me though. Ultimately we need to have a history of such impacts with mapping of the magnetic field in order to decide if the CME was triggered by the comet or not. Just more impacts without CMEs don't rule it out depending on the suns magnetic field in the area. Of course it could be random chance too.

Under Obama's proposal, students attending highly rated schools could receive larger grants and more affordable loans.

So students going to lesser schools will be fucked with less affordable loans? WTF?

How about the government just STOP guaranteeing student loans (which can't even be discharged in bankruptcy). Get the fuck out of the system, it's the loan program that has driven up tuition rates for 25 years. When I went there were several students who worked to pay their own way. As hard as that seems to do back then, it must be nearly impossible today, so they get loans and then get fucked for life. Same thing happened with subsidized housing, all that did is drive up home prices to the point of a bubble that crippled the economy for years. Just fucking stop meddling.

Can't you do this almost for free with the David Laser Scanner software?

This is my #1 reason for not using Python. Why use a language that has no commitment to backwards compatibility when there are plenty that do?

Why use a language that is interested in "backwards compatibility" when Python is into "forward compatibility". You can "import from future *" to make your code use features that are not yet in the latest release. Why embrace legacy ways of doing things when you can be focused on the future instead? I find the push to make it more perfect for the future a plus even if it means short term pain.

those of us who were part of passing this legislation certainly would not have expected it to be used in a case of this kind

That's what happens when you write legislation with a specific problem in mind that you want a nice knee-jerk reaction for. Then people point out the issues or possible abuses and you say "but that's not what this is for". Dumbass, it's not what you wanted that matters, it's what you actually wrote down and made into law that counts.

They asked the same children to do several different types of pre-reading tests, such as trying out different sounds in words. Those children with a smaller Arcuate Fasciculus had lower scores.

Sure, but did the kids later get diagnosed with dyslexia? Oh, didn't follow them that long? So we have an interesting observation pretending to be a diagnostic tool.

What ever happened to Google favoring net neutrality? You know, not discriminating on the type, source, or destination of data? Oh right, they were a data source and now they're becoming a data transport. This suggests they're not all about principles unless it happens to suit them.

We had to balance the interests of consumers with the concerns of health plan sponsors and carriers

If they really want health care to be more affordable they need to do one two things:
1) Force providers to charge consistent rates (i.e. no negotiating with insurance companies)
2) Force providers to provide cost information to the public so people can compare.

This can of course be started at the state level, because fuck congress.