It proves that if you can give a corporation tax breaks and throw off the shackles of regulation, they will do better and want to hire more people. Oh...wait.

This is the story of the patents involved. It's not so much that there was any litigation, but rather the ongoing threat that there would be (for arguably stuff that was already being done.)

Ever notice that original Star Trek for some reason never seemed to have enough or any Dilithium crystals on hand? Our space telescopes seem to have the same exact problem.

Solution, why couldn't these telescopes launch with a few more gyroscopes held in reserve so that when one fails, another one is ready to take its place?

The very deep problem with your statement is that this is a binary proposition. Currently private companies are unable to offer an affordable and workable 100 Mbit solution. So deductively, that must mean that the other option of government taking over must be what is needed.

I know that such a thing is possible, because the South Koreans have it already - among others.

The military probably have a warehouse dedicated to this system with a thousands of new drives in the box. When one goes bad (but being mil spec'd they probably won't) they would just swap out the bad one.

Also, the old eight inch drives were built like tanks to begin with.

From an engineering standpoint, it is unacceptable considering that there are too many unknown "vectors." So much as the hole to the mantle is concerned, it doesn't make sense cost wise as the hole would cost more (far) than a traditional reprocessing means (whatever that may be).

This is one reason a huge amount has been spent on fusion energy and that incredibly exotic technology. Smaller reactors like Bill Gates travelling wave reactor are promising, but yet unproven technology.

Probably the way forward over huge monolithic reactors from the past - which can not be built unless government doles out money to them. Because the free market does not accept them on their own merits.

As you aptly said, no low hanging fruit that can be seen.

The large number of people who continually remain long term unemployed or dropping out of the workforce (and its subsequent shrinkage) indicates that this is simply not the case i.e. there are no meaningful government or industry efforts in this area.

There's another word for your analysis: denial.

It's cheaper for the IRS to pay the dime to continue to make patches so that they will be available to countless others who are caught with their pants down, costing far more in the economy and thus ultimately reducing revenue headed to the IRS.

They might actually make a profit off from doing this.

Imagine all the improvements that Windows 2000 will bring!

So they didn't whack ham radio for this? I'm really glad they did not. I have not been able to follow it as much as I would like.

Great minds think alike. Came here to post this.

It should also be noted that much, if not all, signal generation on the satellite is going to be traceable to an atomic clock.

Why do the books need to be piled on in the first place? Does it make students somehow better? Does it help them get a job after highschool - in a world where a college degree doesn't get a job anymore?

Instead of calling B.S. on whether parents should not help with homework, let's call B.S. on the whole notion of homework in the first place.

Finland has no homework.

I wonder if it should have been granted in the first place. Yellow rubber meter holders existed far before 2000 when this color trademark was granted. Which means that Fluke may have not been entitled to it in the first place. Maybe the fine legal minds on Slashdot can help explain it to me.

I understand Fluke's desperation at wanting to stop low cost meters from undercutting their business, but let's face it, China has been undercutting everyone's business. I don't see what makes them so special to avoid it other than making better products, certainly not through a yellow rubber holder that's been used since nearly the beginning of digital meters.