Ahh, so the already cash-strapped schools that can't afford to pay teachers and buy textbooks should go without modern equipment and have students learning token ring and arcnet passive hubs, because some "evil corporations" might actually be taking a gander past the latest quarterly filing and are looking to get some value out of discounting their products and services in an effort to help out a failing education system.

Besides, if the student is any good at doing this stuff, they'll learn the concepts and not just the syntax. Routers, switches, and VPN concentrators are all based on standards - they all do the same things. If they find themselves working with HP / Juniper / etc. after learning on Cisco, they can Google the syntax if they know what they are trying to set up. You know, kind of like if you learn to program in one language, and then find yourself needing to use another. Because nobody has ever switched from C to Java to Python.

And it's not like Cisco IOS holds your hand through setup like some other products do, where you really would be screwed if you started on them and didn't learn how the system works underneath.

So it's cheating for schools to get the equipment that they need in order to teach technology, and the businesses to get something for the steep discounts they are offering the equipment at?

Sounds like a win for all sides to me.

That logic might work with "But Moooommmm! Joey and Robbie are going to to the mall!"

Not so much with "Oh hey, these guys are out to take what we spent hundreds of millions developing and sell it to our potential customers. Oh well, turn the other cheek, right boys?"

You're delusional if you think that any company on the planet, regardless of who you like or dislike, isn't going to fight with every weapon in the bunker if they need to.

Yeah, I was a beta tester for that thing back in the day. There were some very awesome things that they had the potential to do with that game, but just flat out refused to do at the mere suggestion. Basically every beta tester begged them not to launch when they did, and it turned into a whopping disaster because they refused to listen.

I didn't even buy the final game because I already knew it was buggy garbage that had many serious flaws of design, and I recommended my friends to take a pass because it was a vast waste of money.

"And we're also very glad that we're still moving forward at 'Reddit Speed(tm)'

Reddit Speed: noun
A sufficient metaphorical velocity to orbit accountability without ever intersecting with it.

(Adapted from a joke inside my company about moving at [company name] speed)

Yeah, no.

An apology just means that there was a significant enough signal to trigger a publicity action. The real apology is "we're sorry that you don't approve of things we're doing" not "we're sorry that we did things you don't approve of."

Yeah, we don't like that "science" stuff around here! We'd much rather be completely ignorant of the universe around us than have you "space nutters" actually discovering things!

Signed,

The Flat Earth Society

This is the first time that I can think of that a population directly voted in the affirmative to collapse their economy.

I hope that's just me being cynical, but I think that's what's on the way.

I don't exactly understand how decrying Federal budget largesse when it comes to NASA is "on topic" where decrying Federal budget largesse when it comes to defense spending or social spending is not.

The F-35 is wholly unnecessary and spectacularly expensive. That seems very on-topic to me.

Because it's incredibly unlikely to ever have a nice design ready to go for future plans when Congress cuts funding. *cough* (Saturn I-B / Skylab)

I guess I don't see how this is different from the Saturn 1-B launch vehicle that was only used to launch a manned capsule once (Apollo 7) until the rest of the Saturn V launches were cancelled, and they used the surplus 1-Bs for Skylab crew launches.

Sometimes it's perfectly fine to have a purpose-specific launcher for early flights needed to test stuff. Would we have the same people grousing about using too big of a rocket to just fly crew modules in orbit if they skipped the smaller SLS variant? "Ermahgherd, they're launching hardware capable of going to the moon when they're only going to LEO! What a waste! etc."

Well, for one thing, the equal protection clause is part of the 14th Amendment, and has nothing to do with the Founding Fathers, as it was ratified in the 1860s or thereabouts - about a century after the Founding Fathers did their thing.

But why would that matter, just because it invalidates your whole statement?

It wasn't too long ago that the ThinkPad T-series had a magnesium cage inside protecting all the parts, and stainless steel hinges that would not break. Don't know if that's still the case now, but Lenovo kept to that when HP and Dell went with cheap plastic shit that would wear out through normal use, much less any form of accident or abuse.

Yeah, it's a pretty radical decision to state that the equal protection clause should actually provide for equal protection under the law.

Yeah, I forgot that the standard operational context for Windows is to have it do 85 things you don't want it to for every 10 you do.

Guess I've been using OS X and Linux too long where the default is to get what you ask for, and very little else.