It likely isn't just DISH. I registered years ago with the national do-not-call list years ago and things have always been rather quiet. However, since last year, the number of nuisance calls to my home has increased dramatically. I'd first chalked it up the the elections. But even after the elections were over, the calls kept coming. Sometimes the numbers are spoofed, sometimes its "dead air", sometimes its a recorded message, but they all qualify as the type of unwanted calls the DNC list was supposed to protect us from. A few have confirmed their own similar experience when I complained about my problem on reddit. Does anyone know what the hell is going on with this thing? I'm sure where there is smoke there is fire.

Thank You for an interesting point. I am not as informed about the particular situation in Cuba, but it seems people are ignoring some important realities about the nature of access. In any location lacking infrastructure to support the wide spread deployment of the Internet, the lack of legacy hardware is an advantage. Forget DSL and other ancient technology based on our grandfather's telephone-based communication needs. The technical problems here are best addressed using modern hardware. Freedom and human rights may ultimately be a problem vis-à-vis the continuing issues faced by Chinese citizens. But if Cuba plays its cards right, the power of a central authority to make decisions and act swiftly to build from scratch what is needed from the ground up to solve the "last mile" solution may ultimately see the island country becoming the envy of all network geeks and bandwidth junkies around these parts.

My fellow slashdoters sometimes amazingly lack a sense of humor.

I'm inclined to say Scary Punk. How far off am I??

I guess these folks are the Russian version of FOX news?

You're not wrong. But Please! Get over it people! Your teachers lied. Santa Claus isn't real. Your parents had sex. Your children will have sex. Let's just get our heads out of our asses and be grown ups about this. Space exploration and science literacy has nothing to do with dubious fashion sense. Why don't I see outrage over the fact that Kim Kardashian doesn't know her amino acids from her Armani hand bags or whatever.

How accurate is it for the media to say a "complete" genome was sequenced? I know a little molecular biology and have been lead to believe that certain types of DNA, (centromeres, telomeres, other such regions with lots of repetitive sequences or "fragile sites") are very hard to sequence reliably. Are these "swept under the rug" in a "complete" sequence? Perhaps a related question, how are non-coding regulatory portions of chromosomes handled in whole genome analysis?

I won't speculate on the intentions of OC. But bringing up oil does raise a very legitimate item of concern. For much of the 20th century, petroleum has been the critical resource that drove or enabled much of our civilization and technical infrastructure. If we are going to look skyward, we have *GOT* to start thinking differently about the resource(s) that we are going to use. Unless big oil is willing to shell out the cash for researching the exploration and mining of hydrocarbons in the Jovian system, our government has got to step up and look at what we need to power space travel on an industrial scale.