It's not corruption or cronyism it's just that the science is in, ATK's rockets are the only option.

I don't think you can consider yourself shafted if you got what you clamored for. The free market system delivers consumers what they want. If consumers want cheap computers companies will provide those, if consumers want quality computers companies will provide those. Dell's customers wanted cheap which was delivered. Of course in order to deliver those computers at the desired price point cheaper components were used.

No amount of government regulation or control can fix that fact.

Those "orders of magnitude" are irrelevant in most end-user software. What does a user care if his/her media player is running "orders of magnitude" faster if they can't tell the difference?

Frankly in those cases if it doesn't hamper the user's experience I'll save myself time having to recompile and test multiple binaries by using something more portable. After all what advantage would the user derive if they can't tell the difference?

That depends on what you mean by portable. I can take a Java application of decent complexity and run it on Windows, Linux, and Mac OS with little or no changes. In the case of Mac OS the same Java binary will usually run on both a PowerPC machine and an Intel one with no changes.

With C there will be work involved in porting from platform to platform. Yes it can be done but it is certainly a lot more work in most cases than using Java. It's also true C is almost everywhere while Java is not so if you need to port an application to a more obscure platform Java won't be an option.

Both languages have their ups and downs but as far as ease for porting for most situations I'd much rather use Java than C.

Although I'm not claiming this is the case sometimes a judge will let a lawsuit go through if they believe the grounds of the lawsuit are sufficiently stupid and there is a likelihood of the plaintiff losing. This sets up precedence and allows future lawsuits of the same nature to be thrown out using the original case as reasoning.

Actually the second amendment has two portions. It reads as:

A well regulated militia, being necessary to the security of a free state, the right of the people to keep and bear arms, shall not be infringed.

So we first have a part stating a well regulated militia is necessary for a free state. If you look into United Stats code you'll find the definition of a militia:

(a) The militia of the United States consists of all able-bodied males at least 17 years of age and, except as provided in section 313 of title 32, under 45 years of age who are, or who have made a declaration of intention to become, citizens of the United States and of female citizens of the United States who are members of the National Guard.

(b) The classes of the militia are - (1) the organized militia, which consists of the National Guard and the Naval Militia; and (2) the unorganized militia, which consists of the members of the militia who are not members of the National Guard or the Naval Militia.

So any male between the ages of 17 and 45 are legally part of the unorganized militia. This comes from the fact that in the beginning of this country there was no standing army as it was thought of as a threat to liberty. Our system here was akin to what Switzerland has to this day.

Going by only the first part, the preamble, of the amendment would still allow for every male between the ages of 17 and 45 to possess arms. But the second part of the amendment specifically states the right of the people to keep and bear arms shall not be infringed. It doesn't say the right of a well regulated militia but specifically mentions the people. If you look at writings from our founding fathers you'll note that they believed in the right of every American to bear arms not just those in the militia.