For starters, taxes paid aren't allocated to whatever wishing well you think they should go into. Federal taxes go into the general fund, so it's not like NASA's going to be getting a check from SpaceX. Secondly, it's not like SpaceX isn't doing a ton of R&D and taking a lot of risks. Thirdly, I hope that SpaceX has a talented accounting team that allows them to maximize their return on investment, including taking all applicable tax deductions. If you don't like companies taking tax deductions, blame the politicians that create them, not the companies that take them.

It's a classic case of bipartisan stupidity. The Democrats pass a law giving the government essentially unlimited power a) to bankrupt you and b) to push an agenda. So when the Republicans next take power, everyone will be required to buy a firearm for home defense. The requirement that everyone should buy and read a bible will fail, however.
When the Democrats take power after that, RU-486 will be required.
When the Republicans take power after that, everyone will be required to take a class in Constitutional Law taught only by Tea Party certified instructors.
Democrats will then seize on the service (as opposed to a good) expansion the Republicans created and require everyone to purchase (or fund) an abortion.
At that point, everyone grabs their Republican-mandated firearms and we descend into direct civil war.

sold at the counter? They know how much I love them now?
I promised I'd never let Barnes and Noble know how much I love those chocolate balls. That was between me and Borders!

  I feel so violated.

I want to up date my G-Tablet with ice cream sandwich. I'll also need some display drivers. I'm looking at you, NVidia.

(disclaimer: I'm a lazy parasite who has great toys because I benefit from the fruits of the labor of others. I don't actually need the source code and drivers, the awesome devs who breath new life into the G-Tablet on a monthly basis are the ones who will need them. Thank you all so much for your amazing efforts).

Lead by example.

There are no coincidences...

I really enjoy Slashdot, and have for years. Thanks for creating a wonderful site, and all the best in your future endeavors.

Every year Sony comes up with some lame bullshit plan to make "Home" your social hub. How does that meeting go? Some new guy says "Wait,

Dead simple solution. End of story. Their DRM will no longer affect you. And if enough people boycott them, the problem will go away entirely. Either Ubisoft will back down, or they'll go out of business. Even if that doesn't happen, you'll still be free of their crap.

I throw my bike on the back of my SUV to drive to the park. To which vehicle do I assign the Carbon Demerits?

That would be pretty awesome to see. Hopefully they'll use one of those Compaq computers from the late 80's. They had a steel chassis and were heavy as hell. Throw one in with an Osborne Luggable. If you accelerate those bad boys to the speed of light & smash 'em together, any spare Higgs Bosons stuck inside will be sure to come flying out.

Apple will release a video of Steve Jobs showing you how to hold the computer properly.

Wow, that is a pretty harsh response. I don't really have a dog in that race, since I'm mostly a web app developer anyway. I use whatever my client has picked as their preferred stack in the background. Classic ASP, ASP.net, java, php, or pure C# talking to Extjs. Whatever. In any case, the only real posts I've seen about MS walking away from .net have all been on boards with a bias towards MS. To say that the Linux/Java people are behind it is kind of silly. They may be repeating it and amplifying it on places like Slashdot, but they didn't originate the posts. Personally I hope that MS sticks with C# and .net, it is a nice, robust ecosystem. If MS is 100% behind .net, then somehow a mis-perception is starting to erupt and they need to get on top of it.

There are two distinct points in the history of .net
1) Take Over Everything
2) Ouch, that hurt, stick to making decent tools

2)When .net was first proposed, it scared the hell out of me. It was an MS powerplay for _everything_. .net + Passport was meant to be the single authentication service to rule them all. It was obvious that if MS had put that in place, then one day the authentication service for any non-sanctioned MS platform was simply stop working. Basically, Microsoft tried to embrace & extend the authentication infrastructure of the internet (such as it was in '01) and, by extension, anything that wanted to connect via TCP/IP. It never really caught on, though, so MS licked their wounds and continued with...
2) VisualStudio.net, Windows Server.net, SQL Server.net got renamed to their original monikers overnight. Passport was dead and MS faced a huge task: Write or cobble together support libraries for the clr to match the maturity of the Java ecosystem. After a lot of hard work, they managed to do it. I saw C# go from "how do I connect to LDAP? Apparently I write my own code..." to a mature, stable system that is pleasant to work with. This is the part that Microsoft is apparently killing with a pocket veto. The development tools have gone from "Blah Blah Blah for .net" to "Um, yeah, .net, um, we support that, too..."

I'm not sure that letting .net die that way is a good idea. All of a sudden, MS opens themselves up to competing tools and toolchains, a problem they haven't had since they put a stake through Delphi's heart. Maybe it's inevitable if they want to avoid being a bubble of non-conformity in a sea of standards. That would mean that they learned the lesson of the UNIX wars, which ironically they won with the Windows desktop. Still, I think that the death of the local .exe is greatly exaggerated.

It will be really interesting to see how this plays out.

My CIS major was almost 50% women.