It is important to get in your comments before the former telecommunication lobbyists at the FCC go ahead and do what they have announced they intend to do, give the telecommunication companies the right to charge the Internet companies that you already pay a monthly fee to gain access to . That way they can pretend that they considered all sides of the issue before they let the telecommunication monopolies gouge the suppliers (and indirectly, you)

I sure don't suspect that. Putting up a GPS constellation is no small task. And here on earth there is a significant Earth bound support network that the GPS network interacts with to keep everything working.

Yes, it seems crazy that a space agency could overlook this. But less crazy than putting an entire GPS system in place. I actually think that this is more likely to be a manifestation of extremely poor journalism. But there is not going to be a GPS system in place over Mars before this gizmo ever attempts to make a landing, and if it really uses GPS in making a landing it isn't going to work.

a customized quadcopter drone that uses a GPS, camera and inertial systems to fly into position .....

Yup, hate to break it to you rocket scientists at NASA, but there is a slight flaw in this design for use on Mars.

If the person fighting for this has no connection to the child, then he has no connection to the child and should shut the f*** up. I don't get to take advantage of every child's death to promote my beliefs and desires at the expense of others intellectual property, I see no reason why he should. If he has any connection to the child then where was he while the kid was being starved.

The child was starved to death. Clearly this entitles him to use anyone else's Intellectual Property.

The child is never going to know that he didn't get to be considered a Superman for starving to death, and I really don't feel too bad for those who let him starve and now want a monument.

While I feel no compassion for those who want to hijack Superman in this case, I do agree completely with the idea that our copyright laws have been hijacked by big business (lead by Disney). The Constitution makes it clear that copyright protections are given for a limited time in exchange for the Intellectual Property passing into public domain. To let corporations like Disney buy politicians who openly admit that they never intend for some IP to pass into public domain is another case of American's right being completely disregarded by Washington.

The FAA has some very clear and very strict laws about that. A private pilot can not charge for transporting passengers. The on;y exception to this is that a passenger can pay for, at most, their share of the cost of expenses such as gas. That means if a private pilot transports two other people, each can pay for up to 1/3 of the costs for gas and such but the pilot must pay for his own share. And those costs absolutely can not include things like annual or hourly maintenance costs. If you luck out and find a pilot already making the same trip (I did once) you can get a great deal and help defer some of his costs. But you're not going to see private pilots legally offering their services on any wide spread basis.

Lets promote this as a way to avoid the problems of broken windshields from bird strikes. And lets completely ignore that a bird could still strike the camera and completely block the view rather than just partially compromising it.

Great claims. Nothing to back them up.

So, any chance that Madden-like (video) generated play-by-play technology ......

No chance at all. The software is already too intelligent for that, and not nearly bloated enough.

It's almost microwave!

As far as I'm concerned "microwave" is 2.4 gig. (And maybe lower, but your microwave oven operates around 2.4 gig.) 5 Gig is over twice that. How do you justify the word almost? Where do you think microwave starts???

They are economists. Their "profession" is somewhat less respectable than astrologers. Anyone who puts any faith in anything that they say deserves to be a victim of their fraud. Sure, our whole economy might suffer, but since there is no real science to anything to do, it would suffer no matter if they used unaccepted research practices or not.

This country is an Obamanation.

Well, it is still considered Beta, but it has a big failure. I get the message "X This app is incompatible with all of your devices" when i go to download it, even though I have several Android devices it should be compatible with. I expect this is the same problem as I have seen with a few other apps, they are using a specific list of compatible devices and my Lenvo tablet just isn't in there. When are developers going to learn to be more inclusive in their supported devices, or at least let users download the apk file and trying installing it at their own risk?

I thought Pluto was destroyed by Neil deGrasse Glactus.

Generally, Birthday gifts are not taxable. But winning this "prize" could financially ruin you, at least if you live in the U.S.A., since you would have to pay taxes on it. Federal tax and, in most states, state and maybe even a local tax. We have already had someone who "won" a trip to space who had to decline it since there was no way that he could afford the taxes on it's supposed value. Even the cost of a sub-orbital trip is a lot more than I could afford to pay the taxes on, and I expect that many others feel the same way. So if you are going to offer a prize like this then you should either offer a cash equivalent (which you can pretty much expect most people would choose out of necessity, even though they might only get to keep about half of it) or sweeten it with the trip plus enough cash to cover all taxes (including the taxes on the extra cash).