They sure did a horrible job against the Boston Bombers. Especially considering the Russian's TOLD US to watch out for them.

Do people really think like that? Just about everyone I know hates the fact that they have little to no job security.

I don't really agree with the poster above you, but to state maternity/paternity leave is a 50/50 thing is just nonsense. Paternity leave (at least in the USA) is virtually nonexistent.

They were going to end Saturday deliver or letters, but not packages. Letters and such are a net loss while delivering packages is profitable.

That sounds utterly horrible. I'm sorry. How can companies operate if they can't even afford enough desks??

On the positive side, some of the state-run Obamacare websites are really nice. Granted they have dramatically lower loads on them, but regardless it feels as easy as shopping on Amazon. I'm not sure why the news journalists aren't talking about them, or interviewing people who used those site successfully.

There's a phone number you can call too. Don't know if that's operating any better than the website, but it exists...

Bbbbbbut taxes take away freeeeeeeeeedom!

If memory serves, they passed a law giving Bill Clinton a "line-item veto". This meant he could veto portions of laws and let the rest be passed. However the Supreme Court ruled it unconstitutional because it essentially gave the president too much power (with some validity in my opinion).

I don't know - I like that there are people inspecting meat for consumption, guarding our borders, designing missions for space travel, researching cures for diseases, enforcing federal laws, coordinating satellite communication and orbits, collect and distribute taxes/refunds, coordinating infrastructure development, social security and medicare, etc. etc. etc.

There's a million things the federal government does that are useful. Yeah, there's some waste in there - but to randomly attack with "two-thirds of the federal govenrment serves no good purpose" is just hyperbole. It only feels that way because the majority of the government is actually still up and running today. I almost wish a real shutdown would happen so people like you would realize how many functions the government really does serve.

The common man may indeed have a scientifically useful thought to contribute to scientists. However the venue for expressing that thought to scientists is not the forum of a magazine's website. Scientific colloquiums are open to the public and always have QA sessions. Journal articles always have email addresses of the authors. There are many ways to contribute and communicate to/with science, but a comment section is not one of them - no matter how well moderated.

Thank you for pointing this out. People astound me with how ignorant they are of NASA contracts. Private industry has been involved in every NASA project, including the bloated ones that break the budget (LEM, JWST, etc.).

Slashdotters love to drool over SpaceX successes, but just ignore all of Lockheed Martin's bloated contracts. The big step isn't private versus public, it's smart versus dumb.

It's not really efficiency that determines the profitability of solar cells. It's the ratio of Efficiency / $. These might be the most efficient ever produced, but they're likely substantially more expensive than the 15% variety (i.e. 3x more efficiency at 10x the cost).

If they lowered their rates just slightly they'd steal customers from higher-charging companies. If climate change didn't occur then they'd win out.

To be fair, the tablet / minimalist laptop is the future of computing for a large segment of society. For microsoft to simply abandon it would be foolish. Yeah, the Surface 1 tanked, but MS has the resources to keep at it until they (hopefully) get it right. I think the Surface needs more than a spec bump, so I'm not sure version 2.0 will do all that well - but I'm always in favor of more competition and more devices - it's good for consumers long term.

Also Apple isn't the sort of company that buys other large companies - would never happen.