Don't confuse the idea with the application. Should the person who invented automatic door opening not get a patent because people already knew how to open a door?

I ma not defending the patent troll, but you reasoning is seriously flawed, and shows an almost complete ignorance of the patent system.

He is a millionaire that didn't give a shit about anyone else until it affected him personally.

"Fun fact: the amount of emergency room treatment went up in Massachusetts when Romneycare passed. Fewer people were seeing their doctors than prior." Nice "fun fact" but it is wrong. This has been carefully studied by many authors and ER visits went down, admissions through the ER went down, more people visited their primary care doctors, etc. Here is a good summary of a real study (not just Fox news "fun facts") with links to the actual studies: http://blog.academyhealth.org/...

Oracle is by far and away the worst company I've ever had the displeasure of working with. Yesterday their support told me they didn't know what a "POP Email account" was and they didn't think that was supported in their product. When I forwarded them a link to a search of their support site on "POP Email account" showing dozens of articles they said they'd to escalate my ticket to the "next tier" for further investigation.

Yes, Oracle, who we pay MILLIONS of dollars a year to for our support contract has even worse support than DELL.

Carolyn Lawson has apparently never worked a large IT development for government before.

This is a total trolling comment.

First, Oracle **is** a large IT development company and they screwed the site up....they have a (well earned) reputation for screwing up projects

IT experience? You mean has she ever hooked up a router?

She knew enough to ask questions that got her fired...and she was told to help in the cover up!

2nd, Lawson was & still is one of the few who speak out about the **actual** problems of the exchange

In theory, as a contractor you could say "I'm not taking this job unless there is a decent set of requirements". But that will leave you with a very small set of potential employers.

In practice, most people need the money and try to manage somehow.

And then there are the unscrupulous contractors (usually companies, not individuals) who make big promises, knowing that those are not realistic. Or knowing that the requirements are incomplete and fulfilling them will not be sufficient to make a succesful project. I strongly suspect that this is what happened with Toll Collect (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Toll_Collect) in Germany. Just for instance.

so why would they be any more honest here?

The only way to make them more honest is if Congress actually decided to throw the people who lied to them into jail.

We'll just end up with a committee that isn't allowed to know about the things they should be monitoring, wouldn't be told if they were allowed to know, and can't actually do anything about any abuses they do find beyond politely reminding the NSA that their actions are probably illegal.

Wait, isn't that what we have now?

Something with a little more teeth needs to be in charge of this. Of course, then they themselves would just become the next step in the chain of lying bastards anyway.

If we had a functioning justice system, they would have been rounded up, tried for treason, and executed as traitors. They are levying war against the entire populace and are aiding our enemies with spy-back agreements. The banksters, the clowns at BP, the Enron dicks, etc. all knowingly, willingly, and intentionally fucked shit up on such a grand scale that I would consider them to be waging war on Americans as well, thus making them traitors and earning them the death penalty.

But the law doesn't apply to the rich and powerful in this nation.

Bitch is often applied to males as well. For example: Male or female, you are a bitch.

American Journalism sucks because rather than being unbiased, they have an agenda to promote. This is why nation wide targeting of certain groups by the IRS, or NSA spying on Americans is less important than a lane closure on a NJ bridge.

And why is Lois Learner talking to DOJ investigators (not taking the 5th) while taking the 5th in front of congress.

I almost puke this morning when I heard over BBC's news interviewing that female reporter from Newsweek.

She seems to be enjoying basking in her 15-second fame - and during the interview, she actually said that her action on "revealing the true identity of the founder of bitcoin" is not wrong, as it would not harm that Japanese guy in anyway.

We all know that journalism in America sucks, and this is one heck of a prime example how sucks American journalism can be.

Microsoft's list of reasons to upgrade include:

* Designed with the new mobile lifestyle in mind * More background designs and colors * Enhanced Bing search * A beautifully redesigned store. * Deep cloud integration with OneDrive.

With reasons like that I can't imagine why XP users aren't rushing out to drop $500 on a new PC, $100 on a new monitor and another $300 on a new printer/scanner then replacing/reinstalling all their software and trying to get everything working like it already was...

This is a Man-in-the-Middle if the end-user is not notified of it.

Yet... Now is probably a good time to start a Flexcoin exchange which you can then "rob" and shut down in a years time for some easy $500,000.

Don't they need a reason to deny it?