>> Whatever their faults, the prequels make it plain that a decadent Republic and Jedi Order were ready to be shoved over a cliff

They also make it plain that a decadent Republic and Jedi Order were better than the alternative. :)

>> Run by women in STEM careers, running pure FreeBSD.

On Beowulf clusters.

>> laws frequently leave citizens facing a monopoly or duopoly with no recourse, so the FCC abolished them

Um...how many cable network providers do YOU have where you live? Does ANYONE have three (3) or more?

Ah...the "respectively." However, I think that's just part of the last answer, so I'll update this to:

But what, exactly, does this mean? no
Does it mean that we're seeing the "edge" of the Universe? no
Does it mean that there's nothing to see, farther back beyond it? yes, respectively
Does it mean that, as time goes on, we're going to be able to see farther back in time and space? (no response)

Personally, I like his "what, exactly, does this mean" answer: it would have avoided a lot of religious wars. :)

I thought the political message of Star Wars was clear: a powerful executive gradually demonizes, marginalizes, ignores and then disbands a representative body, while using force to intimidate and even kill anyone who resists or speaks against the central government.

Now where could we find a parallel....hmmm...

>> I love driving.

Yeah...could you pick me up and drop me off at work everyday? That would be gre..at.

>> IBM wasn't undone by the platform, they were undone by the CLONES running the platform.

IBM wasn't "undone" - period. Instead, the termination of its consumer-facing foray allowed it to tighten its grip on the short and curlies of the far more profitable corporate world, and even gave it a "PC 2.0" phase where it sold premium laptops (ThinkPads) to corporate buyers before selling that business too.

>> The answers are no, no, and yes, respectively.

If I'm reading this right, you just said:
But what, exactly, does this mean? no
Does it mean that we're seeing the "edge" of the Universe? no
Does it mean that there's nothing to see, farther back beyond it? yes
Does it mean that, as time goes on, we're going to be able to see farther back in time and space? (no response)

>> Just channel surf some night when you have insomnia. The infomercials...

Wow - thanks for the flashback. I almost forgot how crappy cable was...

>> does having a single- or limited-purpose device make really make sense for consumables that aren't coffee?

If you can find enough suckers to buy them and yield big profits, then yes. (See the original Keurig, for example.)

1) Forget the Universal Format approach - your users will kill you for messing up their formatting, and you'll never get complete feature parity
2) Store the docs in their original format
3) Get Apache Solr to search your content
4) You'll be spending a lot of time on #3, so leave time to tinker

>> Arrests have been made in Bangladesh for the murders of the previous two bloggers this year, but no convictions have yet been made.

You know, in America it would also be rare for a murder conviction to happen the same year an arrest was made. For example:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/B...
   

Wisconsin's upgrading rail. One of the main drivers is demand for fracking sand. Since Amtrak runs on mostly freight rails, you need to improve the case for freight to get better passenger service.
http://www.jsonline.com/busine...

It's not just the developers. A lot of legal teams are just taking their web-based privacy rules and applying them to systems who know exactly who you are. For example, Lowes' IRIS system: http://iotsecuritylab.com/iot-...

>> democracy and a basically stupid and anti-science population

I agree, but if you ever try to advocate for democracy participation qualifiers to weed out the stupid (e.g., high school graduate, X years of work experience, at least XX years old, living independently, having your own ID, passing some kind of literacy test) and all you'll hear is "racist", "elitist" and stories about poll taxes.