Except that even if you use only music where you have explicit permission from the copyright holder (Creative Commons or otherwise) the rights enforcement goons will still come after you and sue you (and since they are much bigger and more powerful they will probably win or at least make it too expensive to fight rather than settling)

Congress cuts funding for a program that (at least on the SpaceX side) is well advanced in producing a man-rated booster and capsule to replace the Russian rides to the ISS and yet they INCREASE funding for a program that has yet to even produce a full-size prototype, doesn't have a proper mission yet, just some thought bubbles AND is costing far more than it would cost if you just said "this is what we want the rocket to do, who can build it for us"

I think there are 2 things going on here.
First is that there is an election comming up and the votes of a bunch of ATK workers in Utah who have been promised jobs in the SLS program to replace the jobs they had in the shuttle program are somehow important enough to matter (which is a reflection on just how broken the US political system is). Hence the increase in funding for SLS to get it to the "actually building stuff" phase much faster. (and to assure the workers in question that their jobs are safe)

And second is that SpaceX has the lead in producing a crew rated capsule right now (their crew capsule and rocket are a modified version of the capsule and rocket they are launching to the ISS already whereas Boeing has to develop a capsule from scratch) so the cut in funding and the delay is a chance to give Boeing time to catch up (since Boeing is too politically and economically important to allow SpaceX to win this race on its own)

I have a Core 2 Duo E6400 as the CPU in my main box. Its old and I want a Core i7 but I dont NEED one for the things I do. I did recently upgrade with a new Samsung SSD 840 EVO 250GB SSD and a new NVIDIA GeForce GTX750 which (combined with a complete reinstall of Windows) has made my system feel almost like new again, much faster than it was.

I have heard it said that upgrading from any kind of spinning disk to an SSD is the number one way to get more performance out of a computer and I 100% agree on that. Even though its not a top-of-the-line SSD or a top-of-the-line motherboard, its still much faster on things like app startup and windows bootup than it used to be.

What will probably get me to upgrade is when a game I want to play (like the new Fallout game they just announced) requires more CPU than my system can deliver.

Assuming the cameras are sufficient resolution to capture the small defects before they become larger defects (or cause a failure) and assuming there is still a way to a human to get up there and look at something if the photos aren't clear enough and there are still questions, I see no problem with this.

With the costs of low-end Android handsets (even those aimed at the developing world) being so cheap these days, why does it still make sense for manufacturers to make a phone in between a "dumb phone" (that has no internet access, no installable apps, no Java and just does calls, text and maybe music playback and some built-in crappy games) and a full-on smartphone?

As someone who lives in Brisbane, Australia (where it can be 35-40 degrees Celsius and 70-80% humidity in the same day) I can tell you that no, these "passive" standards will never work, you NEED air-conditioning (or at least a fan of some sort)

Fallout 3 and Fallout New Vegas are the best Sci-Fi RPGs I have ever played (and I am still playing through the various pieces of DLC for Fallout New Vegas having recently finished Old World Blues and started on Lonesome Road)

There aren't too many things that will make me not buy this. If Fallout 4 on PC doesn't have the awesome mod support Fallout 3 and Fallout New Vegas have I wont be buying it. If they add any extra crap DRM on top of the Steam DRM I wont be buying it. If they make the system requirements too great that my fairly beefy system can't play it I wont be buying it. And if they do anything to intentionally make it harder to reverse engineer the games data formats and stuff I wont be buying it.

Oh and they should put some effort into making the engine more stable and less prone to crashing (Fallout 3 and New Vegas aren't exactly the most stable games I have ever played)

Not too sure I like the idea of randomly generated dungeons or quests either, I much prefer the hand-built dungeons/quests of Oblivion, Fallout 3 and Fallout New Vegas to the randomly generated areas of games like Diablo 2.

More and more cable companies are either requiring you to buy some sort of "basic cable" TV service or they are pricing things such that "internet + basic cable" is cheaper than just internet service.

They are doing this so that they can artificially inflate the numbers of cable subscribers they have.

If they never published Lollipop binaries for the Canadian G2, they are under no obligation to publish sources.
If someone asked for the Jellybean (or whatever the current version is) sources for the Canadian G2 or asked for the Lollipop sources for a different G2 variant that did get Lollipop, I am sure LG would be happy to comply.

They have released binaries (and presumably kernel source) for previous versions of Android on the Canadian G2. What they haven't done is released any binaries for Lollipop on the Canadian G2 and are therefore not required to release any source for it (which may not even exist if they have decided not to port Lollipop to the Canadian G2)

And if you happen to live in Australia or any of 100+ other countries, you wont even get Cortana.

People mix msvcrt and GCC all the time if they are working on Windows. The Windows port of GCC (MingW) uses msvcrt.dll for a large chunk of its C Runtime.

The SCOTUS is free to ignore the DOJ on this and take the case anyway.

We do need an air force but I don't buy into the argument that Australia is going to be invaded or attacked anytime soon and therefore we need a top-of-the-line air force with the most expensive fighters money can buy. There are plenty of fighter options (both from the yanks and from Europe) that give Australia what it actually needs but don't cost anywhere near as much as the F-35 is costing us.

The whole "China is a threat" thing is overblown. Why would China attack Australia or the US?

Even worse is that they not only suckered the Australian government into buying that flying piece of crap but got them to place a second order for more of them :(
There are far better things our government could be spending money on than shiny new toys for our military.