They don't have to release the info when he wants it, assuming they have it in the first place. Remember, he's not asking for the release of photos they already have, he's demanding they take a 100 new high res closeup images following his instructions, and 24 microscopic images, also as per his instructions.

The Freedom of Information Act has nothing to do with his demands, it only covers information the government has, not stuff that hasn't even been done.

He's not a NASA administrator, supervisor, project lead, project member, or any other kind of NASA employee of any kind. He has the same authority to demand these things as any other American citizen, zero.

That rock is interesting and unique, but then again, so is every other rock they check out. Since it has wildly different mineral levels than most of the others, it would be very interesting, at least for geologists & mineralogists, to have a more detailed examination of that rock, but whether or not it will happen depends on the limited resources they have available, and if it shoots to the top of the priority list. There are a lot of things there that the scientists on the team are jonesing to check out.

Is it life? Um, no. That's not an absolute, but the probability of that rock being a life form is less than you winning the lottery and getting hit by lightning.
Does Mars have life? Maybe. Of course there's also the chance that Mars had life, but it's all extinct now. Sure, a probe might find it, but they are not well equipped to find or analyse that kind of thing. At this current time, it would be a task optimally performed by a human on Mars with appropriate tools. Skilled humans are very effective, capable of dealing with unknown situations, and not crippled by a 30 minutes time delay with every instruction. Actual time varies depending on orbital positions of both Mars and Earth. This is also assuming 2 way communication, sending instruction, receiving reply that instruction was received and possibly resultant data.

Learning to program is in many ways like learning to design and build a car. It's not for everyone, nor should it be, though having an understanding of how it works is probably a good idea to dispel the notions of magic pixie dust.

Of course, back when Wargames was made, the computers were so slow a fast touch typist could easily overload the keybuffer. Yes, you could type faster than the computer could handle. On my computers I would change the size of the keybuffer to give me more leeway. I'd type till I filled the buffer, then take a drink while waiting for the buffer to catch up. I hated that slow speed. And now it's popular in games to display text in a super slow teletype one character at a time thing that is even slower than computers in the 80s.

In most movies, they never even hit the enter/return key.
Often the same with the spacebar.

Here's one for you. The party had decided that the Merchant was actually a thief (now known as rogue) and tried to force him to open a chest in an empty room. He figured it was a big obvious trap, and refused, also taking offense to being called a thief. They responded by putting a crossbow to his head (and other weapons pointed at other body parts) and forced him to open the chest.
So he wouldn't try something, and so they'd be there to grab the loot, they went in the room as well. To avoid getting caught in the trap that must be on the chest, they were all 15' back.
The merchant wasn't very happy about that. Seeing no other options that included possible survival, he unlocked and opened the chest.
At this point, the entire floor of the room, except for the chest, and the tiny area in front of it collapsed into a very deep pit trap. All of the party except for the merchant were seriously injured by this.
Taking advantage of the situation, the merchant spotted a handful of large gems in the chest on top of the coinage, which he promptly pocketed before yelling down to see if the party survived.

Now you might think the GM was pulling a fast one to punish a party that turned on one of their own for loot and broke their vow to not harm one another. Well, we all pretty much thought that, including the player of the merchant. So we called the GM on it. He laughed and pulled out his map of that small area, and pointed out the room, and the trap notations. He didn't fudge a single thing. That's exactly how that trap was supposed to work.
The GM thought this was hilarious. After seeing that the GM didn't pull a fast one of his own, the merchant player did to.
On top of that, his character ended up with more valuables than the rest of the party did combined on that little delve, and he couldn't have done it if they'd have just trusted him. (Actually he wouldn't have even tried to steal those gems, except for the threats to his life. They convinced him that he needed some just compensation for their blackmail and attempts to kill him.)

No, you just had a stingy GM.

The Forgotten Realms was just one setting. By the time 3rd edition came out, my groups had mostly moved to other settings. I like the 3.x (3.5 more than 3.0) but they had there problems. (what doesn't?) I was excited about 4th, until I got the actual rules. That was a major let down, unless you were a fighter. Then Pathfinder saved the day. D&D Next (don't know if they will call it 5th or not) looks good. Of course, the still have plenty of time to screw it up.

Currently I'm playing Numenera, which is a completely different rules system.

The various computer rpgs (mmo or otherwise) are cool, but they just don't do a good enough job. They are all to limited and linear, except for the ones that are empty of content and story where you just run around killing people, those bore me in nothing flat. The main advantage of the pen & paper variety (even if you play it online in a chat room or virtual tabletop) is that you aren't bound to a script, and a human is moderating the story. It can respond and change to suit the needs of the game. (And trust me, you try to railroad the players, and they'll go so far off the tracks you won't even freaking know where the tracks even were.)

Gaming isn't for everyone. No big deal. If you don't like a form of entertainment, nobody really cares.
It's like football, or opera, or country music, or chocolate, so many other things. You like it, or you don't. It's just the way it goes.

Unless of course you happen to be one of those ignorant douche-bags that rag on hobbies you don't understand or don't like.
If that's the case, then I'll just point out that I've made a number of those types miserable and horribly embarrassed in front of their peers and have no regrets for the divine retribution they were slammed with. It's rather easy to do with that type, and their 'friends' tend to be the ones to thoroughly enjoy watching it happen.

Gotta link it :D

http://youtu.be/jFhgupR565Q

You do know that lots of gold is mined in the USA.

In 2012 the United States produced 230 tonnes of gold, making it the third-largest gold-producing nation, behind China and Australia. South Africa (that's actually a country) is 5th, while the Democratic Republic of the Congo isn't even in the top 10.

Most gold is used for jewelry, not electronics, so go protest a freaking jeweler.

There is a distinct possibility that dolphins are not just smart animals, but actually sentient beings.
Why can't we communicate with them? We can, just not very effectively. That's understandable, they are more alien to us than the average hollywood extraterrestrial. Just look at the environment they are evolved for, living in water their entire life, relying on sonar, having to return to the air layer on a regular basis. Decidedly not the same as a terrestrial life.

And here's a biggie for you. They've been trying to decipher the dolphin language for a long time. They don't know much about it, but they have found out some very interesting things. Dolphins share knowledge and instructions. They also gossip. Of course, to gossip you need individual names to reference the individual you are talking about. They do. They've clearly tracked unique sound identifiers that are apparently being used with regards to specific individuals, in other words, personal names.
When was the last time you heard about pigs sharing instructions verbally or using personal names?

Is it right to eat another sentient being? Most people would say no.
It's part of the reason why they wanted to study E.T. and not BBQ him.

Assuming they publicly acknowledge the issue. For several years now they've denied issues with many of their products until they had no other choice. Hopefully they'll do better with this incident.

Has anybody even read the article where it points out the parts failing are apparently AMD RADEON gpus?

Sure, every company has had screwups, and this time it's AMD and Apple. So why are you so intent on talking about Nvidia?

Actually I haven't seen ANY evidence of negative results from genetically modified organisms that has withstood scientific scrutiny.
On the other hand, Global warming has had significant scrutiny, and it still stands with around 100% support with the experts in that field, the climatologists.

After all, if you are asking questions about rocks you consult a geologist, not a dentist. So why are so many people listening to the dentist that disagrees with the worlds climatologists.

I've heard some people say there's a conspiracy. Maybe, but it's not among the scientists. Don't forget that the scientists get nothing from it whether it exists or not, they are dedicated to the scientific principle where the theories must be supported by the evidence, and they often quibble about details and would dearly love to find something to prove everyone else wrong and themselves the founder of a new discovery.

Don't forget that Scientific Journals have to meet certain criteria to be accepted. That criteria is not based on whether or not it makes other scientists happy or sad, but rather that it is properly attributed and backed by evidence. In this case, it also looks like one of the reasons that one got canned was because it was consistently off topic, and with troll articles not backed by evidence. Then there's that whole self-plagiarizing thing. I'm not sure to consider that repeating the same dross while trying to flog it off as new, or doing a bit of circular logic by using yourself as reference for your self is the worst part of this mess, but no matter how you look at it, both are bad and definitely violations of Scientific Journals.
So hey, if you can't follow the rules and meet the requirements, you're going to get bounced. Don't like it? Well maybe you shouldn't have tried to scam the system.

Thank you. I was wondering how the heck you could steal your own writings and pass them off as your own.