They were afraid of getting sued by Microware

Also, motor/generator sets with flywheels can be good for smoothing out poor quality electricity.
It can for short periods fill in sags and prevent over voltage, and also prevents the nasty problems that harmonics and phase shifts can cause.
That may be a way relatively cheap way for people who need clean electricity to add in solar and wind for their power.
I wonder if in the future, neighborhood based solar arrays or wind towers could use M-G sets to provide decent power to the immediate area.

They do have their downsides: regular maintenance is required, and they can be quite noisy.

You just described every single business on the planet.

Put it this way: If you owned a factory that made phones that cost you $50 to make and you sold them for $100, and a competitor opened up making the same phones and offered to sell them to you, would you pay $50, or would you pay $100 to them?

How a law that said you Must pay your competitor $100 per phone and Must buy as many as he wants whenever he feels like selling them to you regardless of whether your own inventory is over stocked at the moment? That is what you are asking for.

You seem to have asked a question about removing the Start Menu.
Upgrade to Windows 8, but do not do the Win8.1 upgrade.
Thank you for using our products in the future.

Thanks for the link, it has some numbers that show how relatively little NASA costs.

From the article:
  The government has spent some $22 trillion on means-tested welfare programs since the War on Poverty began (in constant 2012 dollars).
This does not include Social Security, Medicare, nor unemployment insurance.

All of NASA's spending since 1958 totals 790 billion (inflation adjusted).
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/B...

This provides some data on the direct benefits of the space program:
http://er.jsc.nasa.gov/seh/eco...

Keep in mind that without the space program, there would be no DirectTV and we would be dependent upon Comcast.

The link is to the word "steal", but because theft is the act or result of stealing, we should go with "steal"
steal:

See the part about "without permission or right". It's "without permission" and "the right" part (among other things) that makes taxation and theft two different things.

That's a good point, and that's why we spent several trillions of dollars on welfare and foreign aid since the space program began.

The question you didn't ask, but should, is "What are our priorities in spending?"
You say welfare is more important than space exploration. It appears this is correct because we spend vastly more money on welfare.
Nasa takes about a half percent of the federal budget. What percent would you have it be?

Here's where all the money is really going. This kind of shows how relatively trivial is the amount we're spending on NASA.
http://mentalfloss.com/article...

Once in a while it is time to go pedantic.
Words have meanings. We can string words together without regard to their meanings, and create an aphorism that sounds good, but it leads to logical incorrectness and a misunderstanding of how things work. It would be better if you were just gibbering.

Taxation is not theft. The two words describe different circumstances and processes. The outcome may be the same (your stuff is gone), but they are two different words with different meanings.

The soldiers care.
The US is a signatory, and the US military has given long prison sentences to its own soldiers who have violated the Army's Rules of Engagement which are an extension of the Geneva Conventions.
BTW, 1995 Protocol on Blinding Laser Weapons is part of the Geneva Convention on the conduct of warfare. It's not simply a UN resolution.

No, that is not correct.
The Hague and Geneva conventions forbid "To employ arms, projectiles, or material calculated to cause unnecessary suffering"
There are endless misconceptions regarding the Hague and Geneva conventions. Please read the actual text of the Conventions and updates. There are many surprises such as the circumstances that allow the execution of random civilians as punishment for the behavior of others.

Here is a link to the Hague Convention.
"Annex to the Convention: Regulations respecting the laws and customs of war on land - Section II : Hostilities - Chapter I : Means of injuring the enemy, sieges, and bombardments - Regulations: Art. 23."
https://www.icrc.org/applic/ih...

The same web site includes the Geneva 1949 convention and subsequent updates (including the blinding laser weapons article)

Regarding other posts, nowhere are any type of bayonets mentioned. Almost no type of specific weapon is mentioned.
Many people confuse the US Army's rules of Engagement with the Geneva convention.
The ROE is much more specific and is the source of many of the things that people mistakenly believe are forbidden by the Geneva Convention.
FYI, the use of .50 cal machine gun against individuals is not forbidden in either place. No one knows where that story began.

If I am incorrect, please show exactly where it can be found in the Conventions.

The things I care about a lot I copy to a hard drive once a year or so and place them in my safety deposit box at the bank. Some things I also re-copy to DVD's.
It's affordable and easy to access long-term storage. It's also about as fire-proof as you can get, and I suspect that it would be about as EMP proof as you can reasonably expect outside of a mountain. There is near zero chance of flooding where my bank is, but that may be a concern in other locations.

You are interested in long-term reliable storage of this data, no?
After digitizing your videos, use uuencode and print the resulting files on acid-free paper.

Summary says: "It logs the non-clinical information on 80 million people in Britain"

Well, yes it does hold clinical information. That is a big deal.

From the UK's HSCIC web site there's more (and authoritative) information on SPINE
http://systems.hscic.gov.uk/sp...
"The Summary Care Record:
SCRs provide emergency and out-of-hours healthcare professionals with faster access to key clinical information, including details of allergies, current prescriptions and bad reactions to medicines. The Summary Care Record helps to ensure continuity of care across a variety of care settings, and is provided by the Spine."

Having or losing corrupt information in a clinical record is a good way to kill some random person. However, it is a summary, so if a physician suspects a problem in the summary, they can go to the patient's main record. Getting prescriptions crossed can also be problematic for the patient.

Ignoring the NOSQL issue, I wish we had something like SPINE here in the USA.

If it weren't for scientists coming to a consensus, that frozen shitball, Pluto, would still be a planet.

Umm, I don't let my dog do that to me.