One of the strangest things I've often heard repeated concerning the book is it is "glorified fascist fantasy"... which shows a lack of understanding of what Heinlein was trying to communicate. A better understanding of Heinlein's views might be take from his character Prof. Bernardo dela Paz in "The Moon is a Harsh Mistress".-- which is to say Heinlein appears to have been a "rational anarchist"... perfectly happy to obey [or not] any rules you happen to set... The pill that chokes the critics of this book appears to be that Heinlein proposes that having a government made up of people that have proved their willingness to put themselves in harms way to protect humanity by serving it for 20 or 30 years might be better than the usual way Democracy does things.

If you follow the chain of logic of Starship Troopers story the society and government of his earth is exceedingly rational... Heinlein pointed out how our current "military-industrial complex" is hopelessly bogged in bureaucracy... The "Mobile Infantry" is built so everybody works & everybody fights... unlike our current military. For Heinlein's other "send up" of the military and "politics as usual" read Glory Road.

Even being the spine-less Liberal that I am, I can read the book and understand how / why someone might believe things should be arranged this way... On the other hand I am not so trusting of modern jingoist "rugged individualist" folks that call themselves libertarian [when in fact they are more often than not whiney self-centered babies who believe that a souless corporation is better than a gunked up bureaucracy... Which only proves they are the kind of ignorant that Heinlein would have hated.]. Heinlein graduated from Annapolis and he did serve this country. Where did Verhoeven serve?

As for the movie... If it is a satire it is not of Heinlein or the book he wrote, since the only thing that they have in common is the name.

There were no female troopers in the book.
While Heinlein has been called anti-feminist and a patristic SOB, the reason he only had males fighting is he believed [right or wrong] that males and females have certain roles... females make better pilots and males better warriors [we're not talkin' equal rights agit-prop here, just biology]. Females are the future of humankind and deserve to be protected [see the Notebooks of Lazerus Long about the true purpose of laws] Heinlein believed that a man will fight better if the last thing he hears before he drops is a female voice wishing him luck... Is it true? Who knows? -- we've never tried it. It appears that the Heinlein that is held up by liberal critics is actually a "straw man".

There were no jump troopers in the movie.
The purpose of the mobile infantry is being "the most effective fighting organization in history"... What we see in the movie is the equivalent of the old Saturday Matinee B Monster movies... Heroes or monster fodder... either or... which only shows a failure to understand Heinlein's chain of reasoning.

So if the movie is a satire, then it must be a satire of someone trying to satirize a book with which they disagree and do not have the wit or the art to craft a movie to accurately depict both the right and the wrong of the author's thesis and how the author chose to resolve the conflict... if it is a an actual satire of Heinlein then it is a FAIL -- and even a liberal like me can see that...

As for Card's "Ender's Game"... Here is a story written by homophobic writer telling a story about how someone exploits a child into murdering another race by playing the equivalent of a video game... Um... yeah... Better title: "Molested by the Military"...

I think the exploitation of Ender and Card's homophobia are probably related... Yet the difference between Ender and Card is that Ender actually has some kind compassion for people that are not like him... while Card has proven how really small he is as a person and that he is apparently incapable of compassion for people that are not like him [i.e. if you are not straight & Mormon then you should have no right to be happy]

Heinlein never doubted that in the race to survive Humankind should fight tooth and nail to survive and not lose sleep over dead enemies... As an old saying puts it: "The best revenge is to outlive your enemies." Yet even as we look to survive we might some time stop and ask as Rabbi Hillel did: "If I am not for myself, then who will be for me? And if I am only for myself, then what am I? And if not now, when?”

No Heinlein is not perfect and for those who don't want to think through the hard parts it's easy to say he was a jingo-ist and goose step fascist... I have not seen a "liberal SF writer" address the issues or ideas that Heinlein did and offer "alternate solutions." Where are Doctorow, Sterling, Gibson, or Stephenson's equivalent stories and solutions? I may not completely agree with Heinlein's politics but I'm smart enough to respect his ruminations on the subject...

Google may be a CIA project for all I know... but they are not trying to make a profit by recommending you buy a book about how to write a eulogy for a relative who's body has barely cooled-- That my friend *IS* creepy.

Do I like the fact that Eric Schmidt thinks we all live in glass houses and thinks there is no such thing a a right to privacy? That's a crass elitist talking... but believe me he would change his tune if some one started posting his "private life" or the private lives of his loved ones...

But Amazon? Mr. Bezos built his profit platform without a thought to "loving kindness" or ethical standards... which is why they are willing to make creepy recommendations...

Google isn't the only one that reads your mail.

If you have a Kindle Fire or Fire HD they are reading it too. I had the upsetting experience of reading an email on my Kindle Fire HD that announced my father's death and then not more than a few hours later was served a "recommendation" on my Kindle a book on how to write a Eulogy.

I deleted my email account information from the kindle and shut down the recommendation system on the device... and I told Amazon how creepy they were... At least Google hasn't served creepy ads like that... so far...

Maybe Amazon should learn from Google and adopt "Don't Be Creepy" as their motto. Are you listening, Mr. Bezos?

[By the way I tried at the time to put Amazon's actions up as a news story on Slashdot... but it was not picked up as a story...]

It's like asking "what do you mean by sex?" and yet... how is what Snowden did treason? All he has done is reveal the fact that the three branches of our government have basically said "we have the right to spy on you be cause we say so. and if you reveal the fact that we are violating your rights under the constitution they pull the magic "States Secrets" bunny out of the hat that waves its magic wand and gags those that would speak because it is treason... Um... How's that again? Where does it say that "State Secrets" trumps the constitution?

Actually... yes Malware is already available for devices like these... Its a multi-platorm, multi-government malware called NSA-ware(TM)... you can't leave home without it... but please don't tell anyone.... they might think we live in Soviet Russia.

And don't forget the Reptilians who are *REALLY* the ones behind all of this...

Why not just rent the CPUs from a cloud provider with an encrypted private line to the locak NSA data center and hide it in plain sight?

A possible correction to your assertion-- you meant to say: "That's not even remotely what *they say* TPM does..." The truth is we only have the assurances of those whom we no longer trust for most of the alleged "privacy" and "security" of our systems...

Security mechanisms are built on trust in the purveyors of the mechanism... I'd say from the revelations that the US Government [which is NOT denying them] has just blown our trust in most security mechanisms to very small pieces... The whole "TPM hardware is safer" and the fact that the world's biggest OS seller requires it for its current OS speaks volumes.

Maybe TPM means "The Pwned Machine"

Being one of those liberal hippies you seem to be attempting to blame for "Republican Military-Industrial Complex Elitism As Usual" let me speak on our behalf:

No. Mr. O does not speak for me. Mr. O is just another "Republican Moderate" in allegedly liberal clothing [if he had been a *real* liberal he would have gotten us the "Single Provider" [aka Socialist} version of healthcare like all reasonable western countries have rather than the Capitalist "bend over, here's the bill" Romney-care.

I do not support Mr. Obama and his Republican backers in regards to spying and their violation of privacy and free speech. I have to ask tho': Is your memory so short? The NSA making war on the American People has nothing to do with a particular politician... I'm sure that if Romney-bama had won it would be exactly the same [except Snowdon might have gotten a drone strike] Don't you get it? Or are you just one of those who can't think any further that "the wise words" of Limbaugh, Beck, or Hanity? All that has happened is Obama has become Bush III. [or should we say Nixon IV? All this stuff began under Bush II and probably even Bush I [since he was an ex Director CIA]....

Our allegedly two party system is actually two faces of the same 1% Capitalists -- who believe that lying, cheating, stealing, and sticking their nose in to the lives of the proles is acceptable to their comfort... after all they aren't snooping on each other are they? -- Except to get what they want... Which is how Mr O. has become "a Liberal that Joe McCarthy could love"(TM)... How many of our "Freedom loving" Republicans or Or "I am a rugged individualist Tea DoucheBagger" are actually saying "this is "wrong and I'm writing veto proof legislation to kill the spying"? Where is the Republican or conservative Congressional censure? Look! There IS none! Most of your Conservative friends are cheering this on... Welcome to the Barry Goldwarter 1984...

Just wait till the morals proctors get a hold on this stuff then we'll have the Scarlett Alphabet of offenses against the state

Mister O. does not make laws. Congress does. Where is your outrage at the violation of the constitution? Why aren't you throttling your Congress with questions like: Where does it say in the constitution there is a guarantee to the government that "State Secrets" is a free pass to tyranny or violating the constitution? You see? Everything your "Douchebag Conservative Establishment (TM)" [including Limbaugh, Beck, & Hanity} has ever said about us Socialist-leaning Hippies is wrong...

Hippies never started any wars... Hippies never napalmed anyone [United States in South Vietnam], nor released Sarin gas [Syria & Iraq]... Hippies don't chop off people's heads for moral infractions [Saudi Arabia anyone?] nor encourage lying [Most governments]... Hippies don't condone nor control drone assassination teams [The CIA]... Your Duly Elected Washington Representatives don't speak for us at all... All of the lying Corporation Bought Representatives of our Congress as well as the secondary Legislative branch call the Supreme Court are no one we would call friend... Nor the current POTUS nor any of the potential future ones... as they are all bought and paid for by all of the corporations you know and love...

by the way... Hippies don't like corporations... but the corporations love people that they can lead around by the noses... like maybe some of your congress persons or you since you seem to be fixed on the wrong Villain in this skit....

In the future please remember our motto-- Make Love, Not War!

If you don't like what America has become, I advise you, as we hippies were advised by the conservatives and red-necked Southern Good Ol' Boys way back when: "America, Love it or Leave it!"

From your comment I'd say you have no clue how the ad networks are being used as a malware delivery system and since any number of the readers here have already attested "mouse over" attacks do exist....What I am hearing you say the ad networks have done absolutely nothing to prevent their networks being used as an attack vector... say something like vetting the URLs provided for the "banners"... I can tell you that at least 6 years ago I had a "mouse over" attack from a banner served on TheRegister.co.uk... talk about biting the hand that feeds IT!

On the other hand since installing ad block plus and NoScript on the systems on my network I have not had one single pop-up malware attack or other browser related malware / trapdoor / ransomware infection... Script blocking add-ons seem to be the only protection against the ad networks failure to keep virus free advertizing.

Actually for those that administer these systems this is old news...

I worked for a financial institution that had two four node clusters of storage products [one was SATA based and the other SAS based] which were developed by LeftHand Networks which ran on HP storage servers [DL320s] and Dell hardware as well. Shortly after we installed the clusters, HP bought LeftHand... and the LeftHand OS [then called SAN i/Q] became an HP only product [they dropped support for other hardware]. at that time (2008) this support back door already existed... I had occasion to allow a LeftHand support engineer access to a node which had taken itself off line... and the only way to bring it back was the command line backdoor -- It was part of the LeftHand OS / Cluster Administration software... LeftHand OS is a actually Linux with some custom cluster control / management software.

The real issue of this account is that it allows a third party access to an interface that the owner of the hardware cannot access-- yep, that is right LeftHand did not trust its clients with access to the command line on their storage server products... you were buying a very complex "Storage Appliance" which *required* a support contract... they were designed as a RAID 5 Cluster. Each Node was set up as a RAID 50 array and then the nodes were then clustered as Raid 5... you could lose a lot of drives and still have a cluster which at the time was something unique on the market

On the other had (the left one?) the Support Engineers at LeftHand were extremely knowledgeable of their products [It was then a start up and at least in part employee owned] and they were actually concerned and responsive to the needs of their customers... I was sad that the senior Support folks cashed out and moved on when HP bought them...

When HP took over that all went out the window... by 2009 the front end of the support operation went to Mexico and if you really did need a support engineer they would have the engineer call you [previously the Support number was a direct line to the support engineers]

Now my recollection was the reason that HP bought them was that LeftHand had a product that was better than HP's offerings at the time... so it should not be surprising that the LeftHand code base evolved / moved into other products...

The bottom line is that the only way to get access to the command line of a LeftHand node required either SSH access or a modem connection. As an administrator, giving network access to black hats by failing to block access SSH access to sensitive systems from unknown IP space just shows you are an idiot. While I understood the reason for the back door my only real fear of it was that some HP trainee engineer would wipe a cluster and take down the vSphere cluster that the storage cluster supported. The fact that my boss did not know the password made the system safe... since my boss knew nothing about server systems or networks...

You forgot to mention that because of all of these capabilities in SigInt that the government knows who all of you anonymous cowards are and where your mother's basement is...

Meet the new Bush same as the Old Bush.

When a user cannot compensate for bad design of a tool 'out of the box' it is time to get a different tool.

IE in all of its generations has been designed to hook into the OS first rather than protect the OS and the user first.

  IE has never been designed to actually block scripted behavior because MS has always believed that scripting behavior in all its forms is a "feature not a bug" and the plug-in architecture of IE [so far as I am aware] does not allow for the use of plug-ins like "no script" and "Ad Block Plus" therefore IE is always going to be a less secure tool than others which do.

Yes both Chrome and Firefox both are doing things that are frustrating [the number of crashes per day in FF is up!] ... BUT the important thing is every time I've had to clean up a problem on a client machine it is because the user was using IE exclusively. I have not used IE on my own machines [7 at last count] in atleast 6 years and have not had a malware infection via the browser on any of them during that period.

While I appreciate Microsoft's willingness to give me work to do in a lean economy, I'd rather it be in a less time and energy wasting manner... I hate telling people they are idiots because they trusted something they should not have. IE is an untrustworthy browser by design. Think if it this way: Would you hook your plumbing or electrical directly to the Internet without proper safeguards and disregarding standards? Would you let your car's manufacturer design the car in such a way that it will only allow you to use one brand of gasoline or oil or other after-market device or service? Would you use a browser tool that is always collecting data on you and your usage behavior and reporting it to the software vendor?

This all boils down to trusting Microsoft. Are you feeling lucky?

Do you *really* want to trust a chair throwing monkey boy who wants to sell you some poorly designed crapware so an old bastid like me can come in and fix it?

The day MS releases IE with a plug-in architecture that allows script blocking plug-ins and other security plug-ins designed to kill XSS, bad script behavior, and mouse over attacks will be the day I tell my clients it is safe to use...

Microsoft failed to mention the amount of power wasted cleaning up malware infections brought about because IE is not able to block malware 'mouse over' attacks. "Ad Block Plus" and "No Script" kill crapware attacks before they happen... unfortunately IE is part of the problem rather than the solution.

How about that fuzzy part about being tried by a jury of your peers? And what about that part about facing your accusers? or a Speedy trial? Any thing else is not constitutional.

Instead we have a process that is designed to abuse the accused and give the prosecutors political points. If the prosecutor cannot convict the accused for what they were charged then maybe the prosecutor should not be wasting the taxpayer's money in the first place especially when the "victims" did not want to press charges. This is a case of prosecution for political gain which seems to be a favorite pass time of prosecutors [of both parties] who want to get political traction.

If Judges are forced to used guidelines prosecutors should as well.

Holder should be fired for this bit of stupidity...