there's much to be said for college chicks.

Pay a fee for a license?
This idiot lives in the UK. Obviously totally clueless.
I though US lawmakers were stupid. This toad is a dumb cop from a different country. Gives new meaning to stupid.

I suspect this story won't get much more press, this guy is up there with Sarah Palin for intelligence.

Any rogue faction than uses nuclear arms (they may have 1 or 2) against the US can be assured their cause will not survive.
For the peacenicks, The policy of MAD has been around for 50 years, might be more. No one has died. Perhaps millions have lived. If you don't remember the 60's...
either you where there ... or most likely you weren't.
Second problem.
We've planted our own seeds of need. We can shoot down missiles. The Russians are getting close. The Chinese are working on it.
The plants aren't for more weapons, just new ones.
The sometimes more than slightly crazed world governments have managed not to start a nuclear war in the past 60 years. Though I admit they came close at times. Effective deterrents are important.
The disarm at all costs idiots fail to understand the US can't afford a nuclear war. It would destroy the economy, period. US nuclear weapons are only a second strike weapon. But, for that to work, the second strike has to be decisive, at least in the eyes of an aggressor. But good bet the test needs to be real.

Physicists, and other hard math scientists still prefer fortran. It's more efficient at math than anything else. Sometimes old, simple, and purpose built still wins.
There is some movement in the C++ standards to include these fortran features.

I've been programming for over 30 years. Moving to new technologies and industries is a way to keep things fresh and challenging. I've lost track of the times I've submitted support requests and the first response was "No one has ever asked that before", or something like that.

et tu Brute.

Caesar never got to finish his reforms.
Brutus, and other supporters of the bureaucracy, had him murdered.

Bureaucracy is a killer.

because it will take years to actually build one.
because it's rocket science, blue prints are only 1/3 of the way there.

Well known and understood. But P&W deserves to burn for this failure.
A a manager of mine used to say "failure to plan, is not my problem".
The general contractor is at fault for all failures, except it seems with the US military. That needs to change.
These companies exist in a notion of the world that they can't fail. They need to have a few negative quarters!
Perhaps even fail, though with some of the infrastructure that isn't possible.
Lockheed made their bet. They can eat it. Congress is too stupid to understand. Yet again it will take an executive order to sort this out.

They do. but they're not an authorized contractor. and the paper work takes years.
welcome to stupid government.

for military contractors, the paper works is EXPENSIVE!, last I heard, space-X wasn't interested in paying that freight. Odd that Russian engines are OK.
Perhaps Caesar was correct, though forced into a situation he despised, he offered a choice, accept or die. The current bureaucratic morass is evidence that the rules must change. There isn't time for the bureaucrats to muddle.
A sad state of affairs

Lockheed decided to go with a Russian Engine. There seems so be a problem with that now.
Time to make bad choices matter!
It Lockheed can't deliver a launch vehicle, there should be a penalty. Sadly in these contracts there is no penalty. But they don't get paid, and Space X and Boeing can pick up the slack.
It's time defense contractors payed for failure to deliver
This won't bankrupt Lockheed, but it better hurt, hurt bad
A year on year loss due to stupid management would send a good message. We'll let you live, but not if you fuck up
Make it hurt!

Over 1000 times $125,000 is over $1 Billion.
Fiscal penalties can work ....
They're ruined.
Civil rights violations are a federal crime.

Yeah, because their stock in the the dumps.
I have 100 shares. hoping they'll do something to make it worth selling at a profit. I've had them for a decade. just waiting for a good time to sell. I'll keep my eye on the price.

Not specifically a written law.
The practice started in Rome in the first couple centuries BC. Powerful men were granted license to exclusively produce something. Sometimes it was because they were doing something new. Sometimes because they owned the mine. Patent didn't mean new, just verified.
The meaning of words change over time.
As for the patent system, England did not invent it. Look to Italy.

Sounds like it.
When I'm where I know I'm not likely to have signal I either turn my phone off or put it airplane mode.

When a phone has signal, the back channel includes information about neighboring cells. So, it knows where to look for the next back channel. Only a few frequencies to tune to. The problem starts when contact is lost. Phones use power looking for a signal. Re-tuning the receiver is not free.
They continuously tune over a series of frequencies looking for one. And keep cycling through them.
This bitter cycle of finding nothing uses up a phones battery very quickly. Before smart phones it was the single largest power user.
This is an OLD problem. It was well known in the industry in 1990.

I started writing software for cell phone companies in 1990. I learned more than I ever wanted to know about how cell phones work. Moved on to a different industry in 2000. Some things don't change. At least not quickly.