The assumption is that money buys votes. It doesn't. It buys advertising on a lot of levels along with all the people who are needed to promote a given candidate. By requiring everybody to vote, candidates would have to spend even more money to be sure that they reach the half of the voting population that doesn't vote.

What we really need is to get rid of the winner-take-all for state electoral votes. Imagine you live in a county that regularly has a majority vote for one party but because a little more than half of the rest of the counties in the state regularly voted for the other party. Your votes no longer count because the electoral votes got flipped. What if this happens over and over? How represented would you feel?

The build envelope looks tiny. Let me know when I can make large custom electronics enclosures. And what about reliability and durability of the results? When these things can consistently survive the all-corners, all-edges, all-sides drop test, then I'll be impressed.

Many document submission sites of the US Federal Government not only require you to use Windows but also require you to use Internet Explorer. If that isn't bad enough, some require you to fill out forms using this godawful IBM/Lotus form editor.

I mean, who wouldn't want to be able to choose one? That opens up all kinds of possibilities.

And the huge volumes of crappy code upon which the entire shaky foundation of internet is built.

People would still want to know how it all works so they aren't stuck going to the dealer for service. So how do you reconcile the two?

One fragment leaves.

Apple has never been a commodity computer company. Herd mentality always seems to head in the direction of the cheapest tech out there even though there are far superior offerings out there. Just look at how VHS won out over Beta. That's video tape for those of you too young to know or care how we got where we are.

Things were so much simpler 25 years ago. If you knew C, C++, and/or Pascal and were willing to relocate, you could find a job fairly easily. Nowadays, there are so many niche tools, APIs, and languages that universities can't teach a broad enough curriculum to allow graduates options.

It's all the hot air coming out of Sacramento. Ironically, they keep yammering on about climate change so they really only have themselves to blame.

At least western sci-fi writers make a little effort to conceal their socialistic beliefs.

Puhleeze.... With all the money they government takes in in legal settlements for violation of the do-not-call list, they can surely afford a few million dollars.

Should be mandatory reading for...well...everyone.

There's an interesting article in today's WSJ (03/06/15) about a current DARPA contest involving humanoid robots. A Tokyo-based company lead the early trial run. That company was just bought by Google who then withdrew that robot from the competition. Google has been quietly acquiring similar companies including Boston Dynamics. It appears that Google is trying to flex some moral muscle to keep robots out of military hands. Sure, there will be other companies that will fill the void but I'd venture to say that Google is going to try to sue them all for patent infringement.