The Pod race? Is that really the worst way you can think of that they ruined Star Wars? They ruined Star Wars for me with the battle of Endor, Awwww ... cute little teddybears. I would not shed any tears if they reshot that entire part of the original trilogy with Wookies like was originally intended (or so some SW fanboy told me). Then they threw in Jar Jar Binks... and that asinine battle between the Gungans and the Droids. A civilisation that can produce shield generators is tossing stuff at the enemy with catapults and throwing cavalry at tanks? Really? I can't decide which is worse. And then there is the scene where Yoda stumbles onto that landing pad with his cane and alluvasudden is he bouncing off the walls like a rubber ball as he duels Count Dooku. The list goes on, and on, and on... The whole movie theatre burst out in hearty laughter when that Yoda/Dooku duel scene came up. For a moment I felt like I was watching a Monty Python movie. I rather like the animated Clone Wars/Rebels series though, since there is a bit less braindead slapstick in it and once in a while you are treated to a scene where the clone troopers and commando droids are behaving in a way that vaguely (emphasise vaguely) resembles the way real soldiers would behave (the regular of the Droids are so stupid even the kids think it's unrealistic). It's really a pity how Lucas and the studio marketing and management monkeys have managed to screw up Star Wars, it's an awesome fantasy universe in many ways. It's also remarkable how popular Star Wars is despite all the ways they have FUBAR'ed it.

We are the Borg. Your biological and technological distinctiveness will be added to our own. Resistance is futile ...

Wouldn't it be great fun if Star Trek invaded Star Wars?

You mean a free market capitalist democracy where wealth steadily gathers into the hands of an elite clique of super wealthy individuals with the result that the free market capitalist democracy inevitably evolves into a plutocracy where the clique of hereditary plutocrats (aka. the 1%) step on anybody who seeks to rise by his own merit while the underclasses become steadily impoverished. This is usually followed by a revolution of the underclasses and the free market capitalist democracy is replaced by some form of more socialist order with many of the shortcomings you mentioned. Lather, rinse and repeat at nauseam.

More like simplified. The people whose money was lost were bank customers, the ones who lost it were bank employees. All the customer can do is choose a bank as best he can based on the bank's reputation. It is his money that is lost because the bank handed control of it's money to a bunch of morons. So the market punishes the customer not the moron who made the bad decision. It is the law that is supposed to punish the bank employee. However, in view of the fact that not a single bankster seems to have been put on trial as a result of the 2008 mortgage crisis we can rest assured that the worst that is likely to happen to the bank employee is that his bonus will be reduced that quarter and his career prospects may be dampened for a while. Now one may still criticize the customer for picking a lousy bank to do business with but let's face it, when it comes to finding a honest bank to handle your finances, the average capital owner is not exactly spoiled for choice these days. The best he can do is choose the least scummy bank. Ether that or invest his money in guns, ammo, canned goods and a heavily fortified dwelling with a built in water source.

You could say the same about the OS X/iOS and Linux-Desktop/Android combinations. Put a desktop OS in a tablet and it's a bitch to use, put a tablet OS in a tablet and you can't do half the things you could do on a laptop and a significant portion of what you can do on both platforms is more clumsy and time consuming to accomplish on the tablet. Which is also why I've bought a phablet left my iPad at home andy only use it for reading, watching videos and playing games and drag my laptop with me to do real work on the road.

Well, you cared enough to comment...

Just because you guys hate Apple products it doesn't mean that you get to crap all over the some person's memory without being called out for being petty hateful trolls you are. I'll gladly burn karma to do that. He said, and I quote: "Steve Jobs never gave a dime to charity" which is demonstrably wrong no matter how you try to spin it. secondly how lazy do you have to be to not do a simple google search before making a stupid statement like that? ... and then he gets modded +5 insightful to boot... slashdot at it's finest!

Did he? Even if he wasn't as generous as Bill, it seems you are wrong:
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/new...
Now... how many Apple haters will try to use this to take cheap shots at Apple and to crap on the memory of Steve Jobs?

Don't you guys also vote for local officials from mayors and town councillors and county officials down to judges, sheriffs, district attorneys, garbage collection department chiefs, etc.... ?? Or is it just in hollywood movies where district attorneys, sheriffs and judges are constantly worrying about being re-elected? Here in the old world the only ones elected in local elections are mayors and town/city councillors, and provincial/county level people. Lower officials than that are either appointed by whoever wins local elections or they get hired because they are the most qualified applicant for the job (well theoretically, sometimes they get hired because the are loyal party soldiers or because they are related to some local politico). Judges and police chiefs are appointed by the minister of justice but still with professional qualifications in mind (again... in theory).

Plutocrats throughout Europe and the USA would have a spontaneous orgasm if they read headline like that.... "US and EU agree on transatlantic effort to merge all internet service providers and media outlets to solve the problem of competition..."

The short answer is: NO!

End of discussion!

People like you are the personification of what's wrong with America today! While you latte slurping liberal intellectuals are debating history down here, the capability gap is widening, the Russians are winning the maneuverable space junk race. What we should be doing is get some maneuverable junk of our own so send your old VHS players, Pentium PCs, CRT monitors, ... to NASA so they can bolt thrusters to our old junk and and fire it into orbit by the meteric ton. I say, let's teach those commie pinko Russki bastards a lesson!

So what is a respectable British newspaper? The Sun? The Daily Mail? ... Does such an animal even exist?

  -- just curious.

That is true but not necessarily the way you think. In the long term the idea is to create substitute natural gas (SNG) from excess energy that would otherwise go to waste using hydrogen and CO2 for example with the Sabatier reaction. This is the same process Nasa is planning to use to produce rocket propellant on Mars. It's not a super efficient process but if you can harvest the CO2 from the atmosphere, you can still store energy that would otherwise be wasted and unlike drilling and fracking it's a closed cycle as opposed to a release of sequestered carbon. SNG it has the advantage of enabling you to recycle the existing natural gas distribution infrastructure.

“I guess the question I'm asked the most often is: "When you were sitting in that capsule listening to the count-down, how did you feel?" Well, the answer to that one is easy. I felt exactly how you would feel if you were getting ready to launch and knew you were sitting on top of two million parts -- all built by the lowest bidder on a government contract.”
  John Glenn

I suppose buying from the higher bidder does not guarantee better performance. One thing you can be sure of, the bozos who gave Orbital the contract will be first among those to escape unscathed from this FUBAR.