It has been suggested that you can not be a member of Congress or other high office unless you have a criminal background.

The theory is that there are certain powers who decide who may enter exalted positions. These 'powers' need to know that you will perform according to their wishes if elected. The way they do that is to have information about you. Information that could destroy you and any public support you may have accumulated. Once this is ascertained, you and they will come to an agreement about how you will behave in office. If you are a good boy or girl, you will be allowed a long political career.

If, OTOH, you are squeaky clean in all your doings ... you have no hope of being elected.

"and nothing can be done to him"

The first thing that a freshman congressperson learns is that if you aren't on an important committee, you are nobody. How do you get on an important committee? You make your party happy. You vote according to their agenda, you show up at the proper events, you bring in donors who contribute to party priorities. Dare to make waves, to contradict any party platform and you will be relegated to obscurity.

Yes, lots can be done to him. He treads a fine line between attracting our favor and losing his party's favor.

Eliminate biased studies and the rest can see the light of day.

'Scientific Studies' today are a creation of a Marketing department in many cases. There is a product to be sold and it needs support and affirmative publicity. A company may do several studies in hope that one or two will be useful in their advertising. The others tend to disappear.

The US government (and other governments and non-profits) conducted studies for many years with the intention of proving that smoking and second hand smoke were dangerous. When the statistical validity of their second hand smoke studies was not sufficient, they simply redefined the term 'statistical significance'. They are the government, after all.

Any study that begins with the premise of proving some theory is flawed. They should clearly state the theory and try every possible means to disprove it. If they can't disprove it, they present their findings to their peers so that they may attempt to disprove it. Failure to disprove the theory over time can lead to general acceptance of it. The scientific method at work. Most studies do it backward.

Big bold letters at the top of every study should reveal who paid for it and the financial interest of every contributor. It's a start, but still subject to corruption.

Yes it's a frightening fact, our language is alive and if we blink we will be left behind. But it's a wonderful thing to see when our eyes are open. English is by far the biggest language and, lamentably, the most difficult for others to learn but that is exactly the reason to learn it. Many concepts in science, technology, engineering, obscenities, medicine etc cannot be adequately expressed in other languages.

English has always stolen from other languages (and the other way too) and it has always been a hodge podge of them all. Even mighty Shakespere took liberties, among them spelling his own name in a variety of ways.

The British Empire and later Hollywood and the internet age have reinforced English as the language of business and entertainment. While language diversity is an interesting thing, and many are struggling to preserve it, English is what you need for most activities.

And how do you pin English down? It's like nailing jelly to the wall- we have many languages loosely referred to as English: Liverpool, Edinburgh, Dallas, Boston, Sydney, N'arleans, Johannesburg, Mumbai, Hong Kong, (sorry, there is no Canadian city with an interesting variation) ... We are a family of languages that are sometimes intelligible to each other.

No doubt there are some topics best explored in other languages- music, art, religion, anthropology perhaps. But for modern living we got it goin' on!

Now take that to the next step...

When you use the format YYMMDDHHMMSS.nn as I have done for decades, sorting remains easy and you require fewer characters/bytes/keystrokes. Why slash or hyphenate? Use as many digits as necessary but always include at least the year and month so that your meaning is clear. At a glance you can see that you are looking at a date, You won't have any ambiguity in most cases. I have hundreds of files (already in March) labelled with 15 followed by 01, 02 or 03. I don't expect to live until year 2115, so I don't need the 20 to designate this century, but business, government and young people should include that too.

Suppose you could do the impossible; create a generic computer system that is not burdened with patents. It would cost money to come up with the prototype, and then you would have to consider manufacturing it. A system of hardware devoid of protection from competition.

Your investment in manufacturing equipment, location, employees etc will have to result in profits or all is lost. But, having laid some of the groundwork, done some of the initial research, you now face competitors who have the benefit of that expensive research.

The wonderful generic computer is, of course, generic. They are all the same. Any attempt to distinguish your product from another would risk patent wars or compatibility problems. The buyers demand that they be the same. And they will only buy from the lowest bidders.

So the only way for your business to succeed is to find a way to make them at a lower cost. Foreign labor? Inferior parts? Robotic assembly? It will be a cutthroat price competition. You have wasted vast resources of time, labor and money to enter an unwinnable competition.

There are plenty who can afford $10K and that investment may be considered a contribution to Apple research. It will be invested as wisely as Apple is able, to help understand the next step in the evolution of intelligent assistance to a wide variety of user needs: the disabled, the economically disadvantaged, and others who count on Apple to provide the services they need for day-to-day living.

Wouldn't it be wonderful if others were investing in such research?

Wasn't there a Republican Presidential hopeful in the Florida governor's mansion at the time? Is this what we can expect if he gets elected to the White House? None of us will be allowed to say 'climate change'.

Paul-

I appreciate your interest in saving humanity, and your interest in promoting your web site, and your interest in promoting your ideas. In general, I appreciate your promotional zeal.

But you will die, as I will, as we all will. We will be forgotten. Despite your promotional zeal, you will be forgotten. If 100,000 people accept your ideas it won't make any difference. I understand there is an ego issue for you and similar crackpots, but the bottom line is that you won't make much difference.

So consider relaxing a bit. Smoke a joint, have a beer, find a girlfriend. Now, doesn't that make it all better?

"The guardian team has spoken before, they raise all of their publications to the Department of Defense and NSA for comment before releasing to the public. This is why some of the information coming from the Guardian is still redacted. They're trying to make sure they're not putting anyone's lives at risk in the process of disclosure."

Thanks. The Guardian and other publishers are still slowly releasing documents after careful scrutiny. Partly, as you say, to avoid putting lives at risk. I had not been aware of them actually inviting the enemy to scrutinize their findings. It's worrisome.

The press is pretty much our only check on government and at least since the Vietnam war the mainstream press has been a tool of government and others with power. Hearst and Murdoch are obvious examples of press manipulation. Novels & movies offer more. Even the old rock song "Dirty Laundry" reminds us how we are distracted by trivia from what's relevant in current events.

My local daily paper is just a mouthpiece for a powerful developer who has a right wing agenda of corporate welfare. OTOH we have a left wing radio station that's all about environment, women's rights, workers rights, immigration issues... Slashdot has its own perspective on news. One treads lightly through modern media trying to sort the wheat from the chaff. One hopes the Guardian/Schneier is not overly influenced by their new advisers. Thanks again for your informative comment.

This summary ends in a conclusion which seems appropriate for slashdot. But it grew from a questionable source.

We are expected to believe that Mr. Schneier at the Guardian, one of the anointed who had access to Snowden documents ... the NSA contacted him with concerns about exposing QUANTUM? Was this done by telephone, via intermediaries or a personal visit? How did the NSA know the Guardian/Schneier knew about QUANTUM? The logistics, the timeline, the specifics of this meeting have escaped me in this short summary and in TFA. Schneier has a good reputation at slashdot but that doesn't excuse him from documenting his public statements. I think the facts of his NSA communication are important if this allegation has substance. This is not Fox news and readers expect more than accusations and opinions.

"Bear in mind that the functional generating equipment has a design lifespan of around 30 years therefore in the lagoon's predicted lifespan this kit would need to be changed out in it's entirety multiple times, accruing further major operating costs."

Without a dramatic improvement in materials science maintenance will be a huge cost. Ship propellers suffer from the hostile chemical environment of the sea--do planners think that these turbines will be made of some magical material that can do better?

It might also be wise to scrutinize the close cooperation of industry and government officials in cases like this. Bribes? Invest in a trustworthy independent study, perhaps from a different country, before proceeding.

"clearly you have never been in one"

Actually I was one of the first from the US in Vietnam. Not an enthusiast tho. Military enthusiasts seem oddly lacking in humor, particularly struggling with irony and sarcasm. Yes, that includes the uniformed groundpounders and the suits who think up 'weather' satellites. That lack of humor, which includes most military, government, religious and dictator types, is one of the great tragedies of civilization.

Sorry, didn't read TFA or TFS. I got stuck at the beginning where it said "U.S. military weather satellite", and all I could think of was 'what the heck is military weather?'. I got more confused over time wondering if the purpose was to observe military weather or to create it. Then I noted that the ominous Global Warming must have begun at the same time (20 years ago) the satellite was launched. Eyow! How many military weather satellites are up there? Does China, Russia, N. Korea have them too? Could we defend ourselves by sending up cool Loving Rainbow Daffodil satellites?

"I just click and type, no need to spend a millisecond deciding which box I should click into. "

Assuming you are going to type something in that box, see if you can find the TAB key. The exercise of moving your hand from the keyboard to mouse to keyboard may be healthy, but if you are worried about milliseconds, just use keyboard commands. You can pretty much browse the world without ever touching your mouse.