That's odd, does anyone know why it would run out of hydraulic fluid? Usually a hydraulic system is a closed loop, are they constantly dumping hydraulic fluid from this stage?

In this utopia, how do you get your food? Are the people who own the machines just going to give you that food out of the goodness of their hearts? Are they also going to provide housing and transportation? There is plenty of automation displacing workers now and all the benefits of it go to the people with the capital. Labor has not realized the benefits of the productivity gains that have happened in the past, what makes you think they will reap such benefits in the future?

If something cannot be proven scientifically then it is not affecting the world. If something has no effect then why concern yourself about it? God could certainly be proven scientifically, He just needs to heal a few amputees or part the Atlantic ocean. God's insistence on only healing people who's body might heal itself doesn't lend great credence to the 'omnipotence' claim.

When the miracles degrade from 'flooding the entire earth' to 'make something that looks vaguely like my son appear on a slice of toast' it's not surprising that the level of belief has fallen. It's curious that the miracle degradation happened concurrently with human's ability to measure the natural world, it's almost like ignorance of natural processes fueled belief.

It's easy enough to configure your mail server to not send if the STARTTLS command is ignored. It should treat it the same as a server that doesn't support TLS. If someone is concerned about email getting sniffed they will configure their server in this manner and will effectively be unable to send any mail over these networks. This should certainly fall under the Computer Fraud and Abuse Act, it's basically a denial of service attack.

Am I missing something? Didn't The West Wing air on NBC?

Why would you need spacesuit cooling on Mars? It's not space, where the side facing the sun heats up and it is difficult to radiate heat, there is an atmosphere that is quite chilly. I would think that you would need spacesuit heating on Mars, not cooling. However, I'm not a rocket scientist, is there anyone who has definitive knowledge on this topic?

All the examples you gave are failed predictions, not lies. Lies would be something like falsifying current data. Predicting the future is notoriously hard, to call failed predictions "lies" is assigning malice to the statements that I don't think exists. Perhaps if you toned down the rhetoric and didn't accuse people who don't share your views of lying there could be meaningful dialog on the matter. I doubt that will happen, because it is much easier to demonize your opponent than it is to present data that contradicts the hypothesis. Perhaps the people who believe AGW isn't happening should make some predictions of their own (glaciers will grow? Ice extent will increase or stay the same? Ocean levels will not rise?) and we'll see how their predictions hold up.

It won't bring down insurance rates because the police unions will never allow it to be implemented. It's not like there was a technical hurdle to gathering this data before and Ford just 'solved' the problem, the issue is that the public employees that are supposed to enforce the law increasingly see themselves as above the law.

Wow, with the Orbital Sciences launch failure and now this, it is really turning into a bad week for privately funded spaceflight.

Unfortunately, the very people who would need to take action to enact such laws are the same people who benefit from the system the way it is. Congress will never do anything meaningful in this area because it would take power away from them. The people in power are extremely power-hungry, that is why they ran for the office in the first place - there is no way they will voluntarily give up any of that power.

That isn't what the article you linked says, do you have a problem with reading comprehension? The article says that the forecast was for $184 million through middle of 2015, not for 2014. As for increased crime or reduced productivity, citation needed.

Sure, but dolphins and whales live in family groups as well, it's not just our social abilities that made humans as successful as they are. Fire and agriculture were the two big paradigm shifts that made us what we are today.

I doubt Heinlein put an apostrophe in tractors.

In many places in the USA, it works exactly like that, which is why the price of power is going negative overnight. In fact, the exact same thing is happening in Germany, why doesn't your magic spot market fix that?

Transport excess capacity to where? If there isn't a demand, there is nowhere you can send your supply. In the middle of the night, demand is low everywhere. If the coal and nuclear plants that run at a constant output plus the power supplied by the wind is greater than the demand then spot prices will drop to negative. Shipping your power to another locality with negative prices or even slightly positive prices doesn't help economically. If the European model obviates the need for storage, why does this list have so many European projects on it?

Bender the Offender: Hmm, there's no point in working if they take all my earnings, I think I'll just go on the dole.

Taxes will end up paying for the crime no matter if it is jail or fines.