So, if everyone hates him why is he still the AG? I've heard nothing from the executive branch that event hints that he's in trouble with The Boss, and with the opportunity to switch horses at the start of the new (and final) term, why did Obama keep him on? That's the question.

A take on a oldie-but-goodie : What do you call 500 lawyers sent on a one-way missions to Mars? A good start.

Since Day 1 of the Obama presidency I've wondered about our Attorney General and the whole attitude and actions of the DOJ. At least once a month they do something that seems counter to what I think Obama and the Democratic Party stand for, and there's no outcry from either. Is Holder like an earlier DOJ Bad Boy (J. Edgar Hoover) in that he has a closetful of incriminating evidence on every politician in DC? The entire bureaucratic structure that is the DOJ needs to be cleaned out and re-staffed, pretty much from the ground up. I don't know if this is carry-forward from people buried deep in the DOJ during the Bush the Lesser years, or if this really is a reflection of what Holder, and perhaps his nominal bosses, want to see happen? I don't want to sound all paranoid about this, but I am.

The one time I wish I had mod points I don't. There are many of us "tired" folks out here, but I don't think we're in for any relief any time soon because it's the ADHD teenage Valley Girl market that seems to be driving where OS development goes these days. As I sit before my Mountain Lion OS X box at home I'm constantly reminded how much better my older/slower (hardware wise) Snow Leopard box at work is. I give Apple one more try at turning things around with their next major OS upgrade, and if it's another big step towards iOS I'm putting Snow Leopard on all my Apple boxes and planning for life as a techno hermit.

They stopped counting methane released by all that fracking flatulance from the industry's employees.

A lot of "professional" users of computers (doctors, lawyers, bankers, etc) seem to think that they gotta have really special software to handle everything they do, because everything they do is so special. Much of this is due to people who think they're smart being duped by people who are smarter into thinking they need special software. Is the solution here that these professionals need to do a better job of buying their IT support in the first place? Admittedly, there is certainly some software that has to be written for very narrow and specialized needs, but a lot of these needs can be met by pretty much off-the-shelf solutions implemented by people who know what they're doing. I think these professionals start off by trying to do it themselves (because they are smart, you know?), find that it's not as easy as they thought, and then buy into the pitch that they need REALLY smart IT people doing specialized stuff for them. I'd laugh at all this, but it's part of why our health care costs so damn much.

Anyone who thinks that DOD and NASA can work together on anything without it costing far more than it should before imploding due to inter-agency bickering and turf wars should check on the history of the NPOESS weather satellite program (although they did have lots of "help" from NOAA on that debacle). This will be particularly true if all involved see this as a cash cow in these days of waning budgets. Just assign it to one agency, make them responsible if they muck it up, and set up a truly independent oversight group to keep an eye on where the money really goes.

Evidently, mRemote is orphanware, although it appears it was forked into mRemoteNG. Sets up an interesting idea - what if mRemote was just a way to set up access to non-Windows systems from malware that first exploits one of the seemingly-endless entry points into Windows.

While you are theoretically correct, you are real-world dead-in-the-water. A big problem with getting science funding these days is what I'll call the Golden Fleece Award Effect (for Sen. William Proxmire's Golden Fleece Award - wikipdeida it). While funding organizations are well aware that a solid negative result in a difficult research area is just as pertinent and useful as a positive one, Congress (the source of all funding) doesn't understand it and doesn't like it. Money out needs to be balanced by succes in. I know many researchers who do 90% of the research needed for a given NSF (or NASA) proposal before they propose it so they can (a) show it will indeed result in success, and (b) it will succeed so they can get more NSF funding. Nothing breeds lack of funding like failure. This is a dumb-ass way to do science, but since all funding comes from the Kingdom of the Dumbasses you get what you'd expect.

This will be useful to patients when there's something that can really be done for them once the early diagnosis is made. Right now all of the actions that can be taken are in the "we hope this will slow down the symptoms" category, and the sad fact is that it's hard to even prove that (unless you ask a Big Pharma marketing agent). The big concern is how organizations like medical insurance companies will use such information to the detriment of the patient, as in resulting in sky-high premiums if they can get insurance at all. My wife has MS, and she can't get long-term care insurance at any price. I have a family history of Alzheimer's, but my brother and I have both decided that we won't take any tests of this nature until there's a gain for us to balance out the risk of the information being used against us.

Interesting not so much about Miguel but for the many "Score 5: Insightful" comments that mirror my own experience. I tried to make Linux my do-it-all system but all the updates and incompatibilities, particularly with the desktop side of things, drove me batshit crazy. When OS X became mature enough to see what it was going to be I switched to Mac for my desktop and Linux for my workhorse/server. Not that either is anywhere near perfect, but it fits my needs and there are times when you need "It. Just. Works." so you can indeed get shit done. Unless Apple takes OS X over an iOS cliff (which is where it appears headed, unfortunately) I think Linux on the desktop isn't going past the hobbiest/technogeek user as far as installed base is concerned (Yeah, I know, your old grandmother rolls her own kernel patches. The rest of us have work to do.)

As others have pointed out, the goal for this legislation is to get everyone using the roads to help pay for them via a "use tax" rather than from general taxes. This is a trend (a bad one, in my view) pushed heavily by the Right and by Libertarians. Basic idea is "I don't use it, so I don't pay for it" where "it" can be schools, bridges in another town, firemen (when my house isn't on fire), etc. This concept is, IMHO, what's pulling this country apart as a community and turning us into little enclaves of selfishness that remind me of the seagulls in the movie "Finding Nemo" (as in "mine mine minemineminemine ..."). I'm not sure this is progress.

OK, this is like saying "everyone who posts on /. are worthless pieces of shiat" just because of the few boneheads like yourself who make wild sweeping assertions based on too little data. This database is clearly a serious problem that needs to be handled much more carefully than it probably is, but I know and have worked with a lot of these "local school administrators" you think so little of and most of them are underpaid, overworked, and care deeply about the children in their care. Often they care more than some of the parents involved. As someone else points out, the laws in this case come from the Bozoids in DC. That's where the real problem lies.

The second article notes that agencies can withhold papers that for protection of economic or national security. While this limitation might be reasonable if the order covers all Government-sponsored research, it only covers that research which has been published. If by "published" the order means "published in a public-domain journal" and the aim is to simply bring Government-sponsored research out from behind journal paywalls, then the research had already been screened by the funding agency to make sure nothing that needed such protection was released. So, any "bad guys" would already have access to the information simply by having a subscription to the journals in question. Thus, this is, or should be, a non-issue. If "published" includes reports submitted to the Government as part of contract requirements (status and final reports), that could be more problematic as these are not all generally releaseable. However, I think what's being addressed here is the issue of bringing research out from behind paywalls, something that should not have any problems meeting "protection of security" issues and has been a long time coming.