NASA isn't the only agency to be forced to spend their money on horrible projects. The military has many instances of getting things they don't want because Senator X wants pork for his district or trying to close down an unneeded facility only to be informed that Representative Y is forcing it to stay open because that facility means jobs which means votes for Representative Y.

Part of it might have been that. Part of it might have been that it could have been more expensive to tear down and scrap what was built than to complete it and hope you could put it to some use. A big part, however, was the Republican senators from Mississippi who insisted that it be completed because it's such an important rocket testing center. (Read: This pork flows to our area and so it is important. The pork that flows elsewhere is the evil stuff that needs to be cut.)

In other words, Congress/the President make NASA cancel a rocket program for going over-budget. NASA says "Ok, then we'll stop building this testing facility that was related to this program." Congress says "No, you need to complete and maintain that" so NASA does so. Then NASA is lambasted for doing this because it reeks of wasteful spending. NASA isn't the one wasting money here. (Not saying they are perfect, of course, but this instance the blame doesn't rest on their shoulders.)

Copyright is an exchange. The government protects content, for a limited time, in exchange for the "owner" releasing it into the public domain.

This leads to the biggest problem with Copyright today: The length. When copyright was a 14 year term followed by an optional, one-time 14 year renewal, it was a sane trade-off. You get a monopoly on this book you wrote and in exchange, the public gets full access to do whatever they want with it in 14 or 28 years. If you grew up loving a story, you could write a new story using that character when you got older.

Nowadays, though, copyright length is too long. If my younger son (age 7) reads something published today that he likes, he'd need to wait around 95 years (depending on the situation and assuming no more extensions of copyright - which is a big assumption) before it landed in the public domain. Since it is unlikely that my 7 year old will live to 102, his children or grandchildren might benefit from that work going into the public domain.

This whole system was supposed to encourage authors to produce more works, but if I (at age 39) publish something today, how does it encourage me to make more works when my work is still under copyright and I'm 125 (or would have been had I still been alive)? Is an Isaac Asimov story published in 1950 really encouraging Isaac to write more because it remains copyrighted until 2045? (I can see it now. Zombie Asimov rises from the grave and, after a light brains snack, locates some typewriters and begins work on five new novels.)

There's a very real possibility that Sony is doing this for legal reasons. When their employees eventually sue over their data being leaked Sony can make the defense that they did their best to minimize the damage.

It's fun to make fun of Sony and all but let's not act like they aren't being advised by a legal team.

Your honor, we did our best. Once the horses had left the barn, we politely asked the people taking pictures of the horses to instead put said horses back in the barn and close the doors. What else could we do? It's not like we could install locks on the doors before the horses got out in the first place.

Sadly, I think most "news companies" (using that term loosely) would be more likely to report "Leaked Documents Show Sony Executive Called RISING_STAR_NUMBER_17 Some Bad Names" rather than "Leaked Documents Show One In Every Hundred Sony Batteries Might Explode In A Month Or So."

Sadly, parents considering this "choice" hear scary news stories about Autism (whose incidence is rising only because of better detection techniques). As far as polio, measles, whooping cough, etc, they hear very few factual news stories and a lot of hogwash from "natural medicine experts" who insist that all you need to do to be immune to these diseases is wash your hands and take these supplements that the "experts" conveniently sell (while screaming DOWN WITH BIG PHARMA). The "experts" also downplay how dangerous the diseases are. Measles? You just get spots for a week and then you're all better. Whooping cough? Just a bad cough for a few days and you'll be on the mend. Without actual first hand knowledge of the horrors of these diseases, misinformation about the diseases/how to prevent them, and scary stories about Autism, it's no wonder that some parents avoid vaccines.

I wonder if this means that posting a link to a Spanish news organization in Slashdot's comments means that Slashdot has to pay or if it means I have to pay. If the former, I could see a revenue generation opportunity:

1) Pay someone (preferably someone in a third world country who will work cheap) to post links to your news website on various comment boards.
2) Threaten these people unless they pay*.
3) Profit!

* Sure, they might remove the link, but this just means you need to get your lawmakers to pass a law making removing links illegal.

You have anti-vaccination folks like Meryl Dorey who actively spout such nonsense as "nobody dies from Whooping Cough." Then, when someone dies of Whooping Cough, they brand the family of that person liars unless they give Meryl the person's complete medical history so she can verify that it the death was actually due to Whooping Cough. Apparently, she's more of an expert than all of the health care workers that treated the person. This happened with Dana McCaffery who died of Whooping Cough at 4 weeks old. Meryl called her parents liars and demanded they give her all of Dana's medical records. They refused, but of course had they I have no doubt that Meryl would have found the "real reason" that Dana died - especially if Meryl could somehow tie the death to a vaccination no matter how tenuous the link.

It doesn't. However you would need to be convicted of the crime and then appeal with the hope that maybe a higher court would look at your case. So basically you might sit in jail for 4 years before they ever even decided to look at it.

And even once you are out of jail, you would be a convicted felon unless you managed to get your case to a court that overturned it.

This will create a chilling effect on people recording the police at a time when allegations over police wrongdoings are on the rise. (No matter which side you are on the Ferguson/etc debate, saying "You can't record the police or we'll arrest you" sends the completely WRONG message.)

My son has Autism/Asperger's as do I. Please stop spreading the "vaccines cause Autism" myth as it has been proven false more times than I care to count. The only study linking them was withdrawn, the author (Wakefield) found to have essentially made the whole thing up to sell his own MMR replacement vaccines, and then the author was stripped of his medical license.

To quote Penn and Teller, though, even if vaccines did cause Autism - WHICH THEY DON'T - not vaccinating to avoid autism would still be BS. You're possibly condemning kids to contract fatal diseases to avoid a condition that they can live with.

I think the biggest weakness of vaccines is that they were/are so effective. Do you think the anti-vaccine movement would have the strength it has now if polio, whooping cough, measles, etc were as prevalent today as they were pre-vaccines? Of course not. If there was a big threat that your kid could get these diseases at any moment and wind up dead or seriously injured, there would be lines to get vaccinated.

Right now, we're dealing with small outbreaks of disease thanks to the anti-vaccine movement. Sadly, I think it will take a major epidemic before some people accept that vaccines not only prevent disease but that the disease is worse than any imagined "toxins" in the vaccines. I fear that many kids will need to die before the anti-vaccine movement goes away.

In the case of Israel, there is an actual, ongoing threat. If you have security theatre there, it *will* be compromised and the politicians *will* be taken to task for not implementing real security.

In the US, there isn't a big actual threat of terrorism. Yes, we have an attempt every now and then but the actual threat level is very low. However politicians want to 1) cover their rears and 2) award juicy contracts to companies that lobby them. So we get fancy new machines that aren't really effective but help the politicians say "I fought terrorism" during their re-election campaigns. Win-Win for the politicians and companies. Lose-lose for us and actual security.

TSA? No, but basic airport screenings (pre-911 levels) are useful. You don't want someone bringing a loaded gun on board. The only post-911 security improvement I'd keep would be the locked, reinforced cockpit doors (and the passenger mentality of "take down anyone who causes trouble" versus the pre-911 "cooperate and nobody gets hurt").

Exactly. His view is that you trade in every 3-4 years to always have the newest model car and likely least mechanical issues. My view is you drive your car 10+ years and get a new car when you start getting major mechanical issues. I don't drive many miles and take good care of my car, but problems do happen. I had a muffler/exhaust issue a couple of months ago that cost me about $600 to fix. This is only about 2 car payments, though. The car has been paid off for about 11 months, so even paying for a "2 month car payment" fix leaves me ahead financially.

Don't worry, the encryption problem will be handled by the Terrorist Encryption Prevention Act. Since we all* know that only terrorists use encryption, obviously banning it or allowing law enforcement backdoors is the sensible thing to do.

* Where "we all know" should be read as "Congress members know".