So no blaming Apple for applying for the patent to protect themselves in case it gets granted to someone else. But as usual, definitely blaming PTO for granting a patent for something so obvious. Don't they even read their own basic rule?

If only we had the Betamax Sony instead of the Sony we've had since the 90s. You must've wanted us to come out from under our 1/2" rocks.

This is neither the time nor the place for pragmatism and logic. If you can't bring an inflexible ideology based on fear and ignorance to the table, nobody's going to listen to you.

Just put a bunch of menus in the computer, have it randomly choose one each day to serve up on the internet, and make whatever it chooses.

Gee whiz. Just put the menu on the inside of the door.

Yep. The proper response is "the OSs that have run up to now on the RPi ARE the industry standard, as well as the applications that work on them. Windows and Windows applications on lightweight devices have never been "the industry standard". It is unlikely that the majority of future lightweight and/or IoT devices will be running Windows or Windows applications, so it makes no sense to educate students using those, even if they function as claimed.

...NSA? FBI? Do you think TLAs have NOT been doing this?

Sure a lot of other things are important, but saying there's a shortage is just admitting you're not paying what the job's worth. If a good CEO is worth $1M, then a superb and highly productive engineer is certainly worth that. But you won't be finding many engineers paid better than "well".

If you're looking for individuals with superhero skills, then maybe you're looking for a single person when you should give up and hire several, each with superb skills in a certain area. After all, if a leader is worth the pay, they should be able to get the individuals to function as a team.

Another option is to try to identify those with potential and train them, then do whatever it takes to keep them. Again, pay well and offer those less tangible benefits. Not being willing to train people is just admitting that you don't expect to need them for the long term or don't plan to pay them enough later to stay.

25km? So I can't fly over the Potomac just upstream of DC? That's a bit ridiculous.

A small drone as a significant risk to the White House? Not. A sniper or a rocket attack on Marine One would be more likely. They acknowledge it, but I think they play down the sniper risk to keep from giving more crazy people ideas.

Then the US at least should enact a law saying that US banks can only use any software with source released to Chinese authorities when that source has been released to the public, and that there can be no backdoors whatsoever, and that they can only enter into transactions with banks using software without backdoors. Yeah, right, I can see the NSA going along with that...

I was going to say that scaring the public about eating GMO foods is a way to try to block the other ills related to them, but others beat me to it. Few people who aren't in the industry think further concentration in a few corporate hands of control over food production is a good idea.

Science can guide us very well when analyzing what we've already done (greenhouse gas climate change). It's not so clear where we should go (GMOs). Lumping all these things together is oversimplification.

First, how do you square selling a public good to private parties? Second, it wouldn't be hard to demonstrate that the good to the economy of allocating it without charge intelligently would exceed the auction's proceeds. Third, the proceeds don't come out of thin air. That's money that we'll all be paying the "winners" in the future. So as usual, it's using resources from the future in the present.

Yet another good reason to schedule all primaries on the same day.

You nailed it pretty well. Teach a man to fish...

Also, it's not the efficiency of the land use, it's the economic efficiency. Is it really cheaper to cover an acre with PVs than to grow crops on 50? An acre of PVs is still pretty expensive.

...because we were doing it wrong? Obviously we should have given up on space exploration because chemical rockets are so inefficient.

Corn and ethanol are used because the people who stand to profit from them have significant political sway, not because they make any sense whatsoever to do. It's too soon to give up on biofuels. Energy crops should be part of an integrated agricultural solution. The idea that not growing crops for fuel means energy production won't increase food prices is ridiculous. Energy is a large part of what we pay for when we buy food. Fertilizer, pesticides, farm machinery, and distribution. What we do need are incentives to put idle agricultural land back into production before using forested land. Also, around me a fair amount of land is still used to grow tobacco. Only good can come from repurposing that.