"I guess the circuits controlling communications got screwed up, so it was assumed to be lost."

I know this is Slashdot and people is not expected to RTFA but you... guess!!!???

From the header:
"Beagle's design incorporated a series of deployable "petals," on which were mounted its solar panels. From the images, it seems that this system did not unfurl fully. "Without full deployment, there is no way we could have communicated with it as the radio frequency antenna was under the solar panels," explained Prof Mark Sims, Beagle's mission manager from Leicester University."

"Except without the public posting of them."

Except the menace of the public posting seems to be the only way for the vendor to move forward.

Is my bet that if Microsoft were doing their best effort to patch the bug and keep informed Google about it and the expected resolution time, they wouldn't have released the information.

"And that fact negates the OPs comment how?"

By stating that since Microsoft business practices equal those of Google and then more, it can't be followed that Google is any more evil than Microsoft.

Signed: Captain "So I thought" Obvious

"The only reasons I've heard for systemd that seem valid are that a system will boot faster and hibernation/sleep modes will work properly"

Add another one: init dependencies working properly.

I.e.: a raid-ed root filesystem out of iSCSI volumes. These kind of scenarios are certainly not very well managed by standard sysv and require manual ad hoc tweaking.

"Granting satellites get past the political boundaries."

Yes, but it is much more Dr. Evil-esque.

Is it "Virgin" or "Virtucon"?

"People pay higher prices for cars and houses (and various forms of imaginary property) in the US because they have to."

No, they don't. They can rent, or move to a cheaper neighborhood, or stay longer in their parents' home. And with regards to cars, USA is the 4th country in the world in vehicles per capita only behind San Marino, Monaco and Liechtenstein. They want to, which is different.

"then to be fair"

You see... it's called free market, not fair market.

"The problem is that so far everything else we've tried has sucked more."

Do you really think that, for instance, Norway, or Denmark, or Finland suck more than USA?

"My personal view is if they can't accept and live with it then they should emigrate to a country with laws more to their liking."

And their personal view is to change the laws to abide to their liking.

"the guy's hardly going to say it's OK to blaspheme, is he? It's just not in his job description. Whatever his personal opinion may be, he's is not at liberty to promote the same viewpoints as Charlie Hebdo."

The job description includes believing at heart these kinds of things. It is not "whatever his personal opinion may be" for if his personal opinion were actually any different he should resign on the spot.

"actually, the free market only works for the powerful"

What else did you expect!?

"Negotiating has long disappeared."

No, it hasn't. It's just showing its true value. Your negotiation position in a free market always depends on your relative strengh (do you remember the "fully knowledge" thingie about free markets, right?).

Both parties trying to reach an agreement are using their full strengh to push it to their side, as they are expected to do and the result you observe is just the one a free market was designed to offer; if you dislike it, well, there are other socioeconomic systems.

"What if he is?"

Now we are reaching to something. Exactly: what if he is.

"Free market forces can suck very much."

Exactly that. The sooner the people understand this, the sooner they'll be ready to accept corretive actions.

"No, I am fine with free market forces as long as they are applied both on the pay side and on the side of stuff I have to pay for."

No, you don't. You don't have houses at $50k or cars at $8,000 because people do pay higher prices for them. You want low prices on what you buy and high prices on what you produce and you want government helping you on that. Sorry, that's not how free markets work.

"I'm fine with free market forces. They can go ahead and pay me $36k for my 25 years of experience. Along with that, they can go ahead and make a 6,000 square foot mansion cost $50k and a car cost $8,000 etc, so that we can afford to compete equally."

I see... you are fine with free market forces as long as they are not free.

"This also fails as a "free market" because the labor that's being undercut isn't able to move where costs are lower."

Are you sure? How is it that the Indian guy can move but you don't?

"A resource is worth whatever provider and consumer agree to be its price.

Unless of course, you're a large corporation who can lobby and buy laws that protect your business, product, and profits."

Which it is not the case here. I mean, of course large corporations are lobbying and buying laws, etc. but here we are talking about foreign people that want to go to USA out of their free will and set in good faith a price for their services. It hardly can be more adamsmith-compliant than that.