What stuns me is that someone that ignorant of the process and so critical of science in the first place, can get themselves put on the Science Space and Technology committee in the first place. You couldn't have picked a worse group of persons to make budgetary decisions about our countries science future. They might as well just go ahead and deny all science spending, kill NASA, DOE, NSF and NIH, and call it a day.

I frankly think everyone will be best served by SpaceX, Orbital and Boeing stepping up and providing commercial access to space. My point with respect to the current administration is that they failed to push an alternative that was viable. SLS is not viable; or, it might be better to state that the hypothetical Falcon X Heavy with the next generation 1.5 M lb thrust engines would be more viable than SLS. The Obama administration isn't pushing anything... Not really. Not SLS. Not Commercial. Nothing. Congress hasn't helped by cutting funding; but, the current fiscal climate forces them to cut something and NASA (and all science) looks like low hanging fruit since the Obama administration won't fight cuts there vigorously.

That's comparable to the dealer price (parts and labor) to replace a color matched side view mirror with remote.

It might happen, if they can implement it in a way the duplicates the functionality and ease of use of a mirror. The reason it might happen: reduction in drag to improve the manufacturer's chances of meeting the EPA Corporate Average Fuel Economy requirements.

They probably didn't factor in the cost of Google Apps; however, one has to ask, how does that compare to Enterprise licensing for Microsoft Office and the server licenses to support Exchange, Active Directory and file server(s)?

If you RTFA you would have seen that a sizeable fraction of their staff had both a desktop and a laptop, and will only be receiving a chromebook as a replacement. Some workers will be updated to Windows 7 machines where they have applications that are not available in web based or Citrix based environments.

I hope you're referring to Bush Jr. because he's the one who signed the order to kill and dismantle the Shuttle program. The current administration has failed by not producing a viable alternative and pushing the agenda forward. I personally think they're sitting on their hands, on purpose, waiting for commercial manned spaceflight to fill the role.

Proof that sunlight is Evil! Return to your basements and bunkers fellow geeks. Avoid any light not produced by our shining monitors, as it is a lie. Hazard the light from the Sun and you will be burned! What other proof do you need? Only in our computer generated worlds do we find Truth.

Sir, do you not remember what happened last time? Please reference historical files entitled Attack of the Killer Tomatoes

But they can do this... Whereas with the iPad they have to take Apple's word for it. This may be the limitation that drove them to Android and Samsung

You missed the most geeky and relevant of jobs. Calculator (yes, it was a job title). Calculators crunched numbers to create all the tables used to estimate everything from taxes to rocket trajectories. Computers and digital calculators made the human job title "Calculator" obsolete.

The work around, in many instances, is to have a wholy owned but independent subsidiary that handles sales and marketing.

Fun fact, Ford initially intended the model T to run on readily available alcohol. It could also run on kerosene apparently.

I do have devices that can read tape written 20 years ago. 8-track was from the 60's and 70's by the way, making it a bit more than 20 years.

First CDs came out in early 1980's. That's 30 years and the drives are still backwards compatible -- I can still put in my old Pink Floyd CD into my Blue-ray drive and the computer will play it. There is no reason to believe that won't continue for another 10 years or so as music is still being released on CD in commercial quantities. Despite the hype optical disks are far from dead.

Archival quality optical disks have a good chance of continued support because there is a substantial effort being put into them in the background by people like the National Archive, Library of Congress, and others looking for means to maintain long term records storage. It's not guaranteed that they will be around in 100 years. Maintaining any system that long is difficult, even simple paper. It's got as good a shot as any though.

archival quality optical media in a robotic silo. 100 year guarantee on your data. Storage space only limited by the size of your silo.