Sorry for being cynical, but they may be trying to take the eyes off an even worse number.

The major thing they left out of their diversity statistics is how many people are over the age of 40. It's pretty clear that ageism is pervasive in the tech sector - and the internet. Last time I mentioned this, there was a serious sneer response to my post saying that "old people" (i.e. people over 40) should be discriminated against, "because they have issues."

There you have it slashdot. You had better be looking over your shoulder! You aren't getting any younger!

It's called empty promises. The primary purpose of this merger is not nor will it ever be to take care of the poor. It merely serves to unhook the approval process that would create an internet oligarchy.

Cheap internet for anybody is the last thing that these guys want.

I would like to *easily* print pages from a kindle ebook.

Really bad news for those aliens trying to contact us from there. Oh well.

There is no "belief" for evolutionary principles. It is not a system of religious thought.

It proves that if you can give a corporation tax breaks and throw off the shackles of regulation, they will do better and want to hire more people. Oh...wait.

This is the story of the patents involved. It's not so much that there was any litigation, but rather the ongoing threat that there would be (for arguably stuff that was already being done.)

Ever notice that original Star Trek for some reason never seemed to have enough or any Dilithium crystals on hand? Our space telescopes seem to have the same exact problem.

Solution, why couldn't these telescopes launch with a few more gyroscopes held in reserve so that when one fails, another one is ready to take its place?

The very deep problem with your statement is that this is a binary proposition. Currently private companies are unable to offer an affordable and workable 100 Mbit solution. So deductively, that must mean that the other option of government taking over must be what is needed.

I know that such a thing is possible, because the South Koreans have it already - among others.

The military probably have a warehouse dedicated to this system with a thousands of new drives in the box. When one goes bad (but being mil spec'd they probably won't) they would just swap out the bad one.

Also, the old eight inch drives were built like tanks to begin with.

From an engineering standpoint, it is unacceptable considering that there are too many unknown "vectors." So much as the hole to the mantle is concerned, it doesn't make sense cost wise as the hole would cost more (far) than a traditional reprocessing means (whatever that may be).

This is one reason a huge amount has been spent on fusion energy and that incredibly exotic technology. Smaller reactors like Bill Gates travelling wave reactor are promising, but yet unproven technology.

Probably the way forward over huge monolithic reactors from the past - which can not be built unless government doles out money to them. Because the free market does not accept them on their own merits.

As you aptly said, no low hanging fruit that can be seen.

The large number of people who continually remain long term unemployed or dropping out of the workforce (and its subsequent shrinkage) indicates that this is simply not the case i.e. there are no meaningful government or industry efforts in this area.

There's another word for your analysis: denial.

It's cheaper for the IRS to pay the dime to continue to make patches so that they will be available to countless others who are caught with their pants down, costing far more in the economy and thus ultimately reducing revenue headed to the IRS.

They might actually make a profit off from doing this.

Imagine all the improvements that Windows 2000 will bring!