SpaceX may build a local radar site for the launch site itself, but you can bet the Air Force will still be involved, since the launch trajectory for equatorial orbits crosses Florida. It's unlikely that purely FAA-run radars will be considered acceptable for covering rocket launches any time soon, if they ever are. Their mode of operation is such that they don't provide updates quickly enough to be useful during an orbital launch, and it doesn't seem likely that the FAA will want to change that.

Nobody has yet been mad enough to suggest that a private company should have sole responsibility for tracking their own ICBM-ish vehicles.

SpaceX is quite good at giving launch times in UTC in their own press materials. They tend to run their software systems in UTC too, since there's no point in trying to use a "local" timezone for a vehicle that is going to be crossing multiple timezones in a few minutes. It's just the press who are lazy about it. The SpaceX webcast page just gives a countdown in hours and minutes on the day of a launch, so you don't have to do the math yourself.

Considering how far out it is, the entire hemisphere facing the sun should be able to receive its signal. Can the hams among us tell us if it's feasible for an individual to receive and decode the signal directly? Without falling afoul of dish size restrictions?

Well no, nobody in the world burns the animal alive on the barbeque. The animal starts out dead. Burning alive is something humans reserve for other humans.

That's debatable. Millions of Americans saw Terminator 2. Millions of Americans watch endless torture porn movies, and have for decades now. I don't, so I can't name names, but I would bet money that one of the mutilation/murder franchises (Nightmare on Elm Street/Halloween/Friday the 13th) has depicted burning a person to death, in detail.

I thought the goal was to get girls to like software programming. Reality will not be allowed to intrude in any way, shape, or form.

The portrayal of programming will be indistinguishable from magic. Not even Harry Potter-style magic, either, which involved wands and words and gestures and reagents and knowledge. No, I'm talking genie magic here.

'cause that'll work.

Then why the fuck are there all these cameras in public places? And no, I'm not talking about an art project...

That's easy. A board of directors who are already enjoying unusually high revenues per employee are much more willing to make a risky personnel decision, for the Street cred', than a board facing poor revenues per employee.

Number of male kindergarten teachers.

It's grandstanding and nothing will come of it.

But I agree, these parasites should be paying their fucking taxes like the rest of us.

No, you won't.

What bizarre world do you people live in, anyway?

Ali Baba will remain a Chinese company. ICBC will remain a Chinese company. China Construction Bank will remain a Chinese company. Agricultural Bank of China will remain a Chinese company. Bank of China will remain a Chinese company. PetroChina will remain a Chinese company. So will every other Chinese company. Fully half of the top 10 of the Forbes 2000 list will not EVER become American companies.

Royal Dutch Shell will remain a Dutch company. Toyota Motor (Forbes says their name has no 's' on the end. Who knew..) will remain a Japanese company. HSBC Holdings will remain a British company. BP will remain a British company. Volkswagen Group will remain a German company. Gazprom will remain a Russian company. Samsung will remain a Korean company. We're now through a majority of the top 20 with absolutely zero chance of relocating to the US, regardless of US tax policy.

That's just the publicly traded companies. Saudi Aramco will stay in Saudi Arabia. They own that government. They ARE that government. The LEGO Group will stay in Denmark. Etc.

When you get right down to it, it's mostly only US corporations that are sociopathic bastards. Many large foreign companies identify with their own nationality and explicitly support it. Do you really think Royal Bank of Canada (55th ranked in the Forbes 2000) is going to incorporate in the US? Really? Don't be ridiculous.

Your back of the envelope calculation is worth spit. A zero US corporate tax rate would simply rob our budget of billions. Billions that, whether or not they are necessary, are already spent, so we'd damn well better not cripple our ability to pay back the loans.

Really? Then why is upward mobility among US citizens the lowest is has ever been in the history of the country?

I have an even better idea. Tax only the corporations, and none of the natural persons. These artificial entities control the majority of the money, by far. Let them pay the taxes.

A fair one. Because they sure as FUCK "must" tax ME. So yeah. What's good for the goose is good for the gander.

Good god the shills are out in force tonight. No it wouldn't. If anything, it might be better, because people would be paying more attention to HUMINT instead of wasting such a colossal amount of money on failed SIGINT. The Boston Marathon Bombing happened. They failed to prevent it. They have always failed to prevent even the failed attempts. The NSA only succeeds in infringing on the rights of innocent Americans. The NSA only succeeds in blackmailing congresscritters. The NSA only succeeds at passing foreign corporate secrets to the oligarchy for exploitation. The NSA absolutely and totally fails at anything and everything having to do with safety. A very very few people benefit from its existence. The vast majority of us would be far better off if it were to be expunged.

Hard drives would get cheaper, for one.