It doesn't matter how trivial and stupid the DRM is - what matters is that circumventing it is illegal.

Like these AudioCDs that had a data track that would auto-install some malware that breaks your CD writing capability. Circumventing it required holding shift down while inserting the disk, to prevent autoplay from starting. The guy who published that information was arrested for "providing tools for circumvention of DRM".

Their whole DRM could have consisted in a single notch in the edge, and as result placing scissors next to the coffee maker would make you a felon.

You're as much a customer as a product. You are provided service and your *basic* customer data is protected.

But more advanced data - like data usage, profile of usage, tracking information, network of contacts, all that "meta" stuff - is a product you manufacture and they sell or use to optimize their service (read: give you less, get you to pay more). And the police can just request free access to that product.

the distance to the visible horizon - the most distant object we can see - isn't growing, it's *shrinking*.

Not yet.
We have a much more firm limit in the form of the image of the Big Bang and it's still within the Hubble Sphere. We technically *could* see past it, but even if we had the hardware, it's pretty much opaque.

Yes, as the universe ages, the image moves away from us at c + expansion rate, and eventually it will vanish behind the cosmic event horizon forever, and since then its acceleration will begin to swallow objects making less available for observation. But we have a good few billion years until the cosmological limits imposed by space expansion become our worry. Until then, our theoretical limits are caused by the structure of the universe, and practical limits - by $$$.

That's only if our telescopes could reach the Hubble Sphere. That way light speed + space expansion would be our distance limit and only time would allow us to see objects between the Hubble Sphere and the Cosmic Space Horizon.

But so far with our best equipment we are barely reaching a third of this distance and our limits are still of technological nature - or more accurately of economical nature (we *know* how to build better telescopes that would reach farther, but we don't have the budget).

They can always enable an alternate submission method that permits full authentication of the submitter - with full understanding that their safety cannot be assured. Sometimes people are brave - they want given thing to be known, even at cost of own life or freedom.

So - leave the choice to the submitter; anonymous, to be possibly verified by Wikileaks, or open, verifiable by reputation of the known submitter.

What real-world factors would cause only the very best of minorities to apply while still keeping everyone and their dog to apply if they are the majority group?

I don't know about the job markets, but I know the scenario presented in my post already happens in some universities, black students being accepted despite lower entry exam score in place of white applicants.

I'd really love to see the discovery of a Quark Star.

Black Holes have two modes of creation.

One - observed and well-documented, Supernova explosion, with the core collapsing directly into a black hole.

The other is only known in theory. A neutron star obtaining enough mass through accretion to collapse either from interstellar gas or by connecting with another star (possibly also neutron). Before that happens though, there is a phase hypothesized between the neutron star and the black hole, where the matter degenerates enough that the neutron structure collapses and the star is composed of unstructured quarks. A little more and it collapses into a Black Hole.

No such star has been observed, and we don't know what other effects accompany it. The mass window is very narrow, somewhere between 3 and 4 solar masses, but the exact boundaries are not known. Dual systems with neutron stars of very short period are the candidates for this to happen. Hulse-Taylor binary binary will merge within next 300mln years, but I really hope we can observe one within our lifetimes.

Possibly. I believe I learned the expression used by movements of Martin Luther King. It's quaint how expressions used by the revolutionaries that start a great change for better for a minority become slurs for that minority.

Well, I'll keep it in mind.

The same gender research that was thrown out of Swedish university for lack of scientific foundations?

I'm afraid it will only cause a backslash in the 90-percentile whites harmed by this policy.

You can't fight racism with a different form of racism. If racial bias is to vanish, it must *vanish*; you can't replace it with a different racial bias.

4 cables in one neat bundle you never need to disconnect, treating telescope mount, camera, focus and autoguider plus the hub as a single device.
One cable to the laptop which you need to manage.

Sorry, but RS232 is far from obsolete in the embedded world.

Newest SBC with all modern gizmos? Boasts 6 RS-232 and 2 RS-485 ports. Initial connection over serial console, as is the industry standard. RS232 to radio for receiving traffic messages from vehicles. RS232 to a GSM module for synchronizing the clock in network-less situations. RS485 to communicate with a board providing central control connectivity. (and hey, the board doesn't even network to the central facility directly! It connects over RS232 to a Tibbo box which acts as "RS232 over IP" bridge!) RS232 debug console, RS485 bus to communicate with other devices in the area, RS232 for in-system-programming of the supervisor CPU, and optional RS232 modem, although usually we provide a GSM router with Ethernet instead.

In the embedded world RS232 is the king and nowhere near to going away. USB is far too cumbersome for developers, Ethernet still needs to be configured before you start working, WiFi is a whole pile of headaches... RS232 works whether you work with a newest I.MX6 quad core or a PIC with 1KM RAM.

It could have thin rechargeable batteries a'la a phone, plus a charging socket.
That way you can either keep it plugged in (at no loss of current functionality) or unplug it and enjoy wirelessness.

I need my mouse maybe once a month, but when I need it I NEED it (really need to edit some graphics quick, and touchpad is absolutely terrible for that.) And the last thing I need then is finding the batteries died.

Oh, also, no internal Bluetooth. Need a dongle. A USB dongle.

The contacts are not a big problem. The wire wear near the plug is. When working with my netbook, the charger plug with adjacent piece of wire needs to be replaced roughly every 20 months.