I'd like to temper the last bit of your post with the following addendum:

It's not surprising that Beats Audio is getting sued for this all of a sudden, now that they are about to have some very deep pockets for a potential settlement.

Oh, and Beats has had noise canceling tech shipping for at least a year, so this seems very much like Bose waiting until they could extract a nice cash settlement rather than actually working to protect a competitive technical advantage.

Yeah, because Apple has commented on this somewhere?

You do realize that Apple doesn't even own Beats Audio yet, right? And that this legal action, in no way resembles Bose making an opportunistic money grab now that it looks like Beats will be gaining some very deep pockets in the next few weeks, right?

Why didn't they sue months / years ago when Beats first put noise canceling products on the market?

It depends on the features being added. In particular, the feature being added for Windows 8 is that they are leveraging EFI booting in a way that isn't completely fucked up, and they've jettisoned a heap of code for backwards compatibility with hardware nobody uses any more.

Net effect: much more stable and efficient software.

Yeah, because nobody would ever gripe at Apple about version n+1 not being supported on their precious 3 year old phone.

Oh wait, everyone gripes about that when they have done that in the past.

Oh noes, anonymous coward thinks someone looks like a "stupid dipshit moron" for buying a 2011-model tablet that actually worked, and has been useful for years.

Is this the part where I say that the previous AC looks like an idiot for using three words in a row that basically mean the same thing? Or is he saying that the GP poster should have bought a Motorola Xoom instead, being the chief competitor to the iPad 2? How'd that work out for all those customers? Maybe a BlackBerry PlayBook or an HP TouchPad? Because anyone who bought those products are still using them today?

Sorry, AC, but while the GP might "look" like a "stupid dipshit moron", you actually are one.

Well, reason #1 would probably be a massive class action lawsuit that would destroy the coveted relationship that these companies have with their user base.

Yes, I said that right - they won't give a shit about the monetary damages because they are doing laps in Scrooge McDuck-style money bins; but as soon as you get a reputation for creating shit devices that don't work 6 months after purchase, you become Motorola Mobility - a company that makes halfway decent hardware now, but can't sell it because of all the TERRIBLE PRODUCTS that you made before and never bothered to update.

A bluetooth keyboard?

Just say'in.

Yeah, but nobody is going to confuse a modern software branding with that ass-ugly hardware tower.

Though, it was the first NewWorld ROM Mac, so that's worth something. And that case got infinitely better when they went with grey / graphite for the G4. It's still one of the best cases to work inside that's ever been made, since the logic board was mounted to the hinged door.

If you just want a UNIX shell, why are you running all that graphical crap at all? Real men want a text mode UNIX. Here, let me help you...

From the login window, in the user name field, type:

>console

and hit enter.

Now, loginwindow.app and the window server go away, and you're in a real UNIX shell. And get off my lawn.

Everyone seems to forget that the Rocketdyne F1 motor's fuel pumps alone had 55,000 horsepower, used for nothing but to pump kerosene into the main combustion engine, and use the exhaust from that gas generator to protect the nozzle extension from the much hotter temperatures being created by the rest of the motor.

This is the single most powerful thing ever created that didn't use a nuclear isotope to make the power. Yeah, it was pretty complex.

Because there's absolutely no way for Orion to dock with something else that has yet to be developed, launched separately, meant to support a longer mission.

Right?

Rendezvous with an asteroid is about the same as rendezvous with another small orbital body, like a space station. You match your orbital plane, and then you plot a point of intersection between your orbit and the target. You match velocity and orbit with a maneuver when you get close. You then get nice and close, and do what you're gonna do (take pictures, grab on, etc.).

As with all things, the devil is in the details. But we've gotten really good at rendezvous - we've been doing it in orbit since the 1960s in Gemini, we've done it in lunar orbit. There's no reason to say that rendezvous with a giant lump of rock would be any different - it's just crunching the math on how much delta-V is necessary, and then building hardware to get it done.

When Kennedy gave that speech, we had all of 15 minutes of manned spaceflight experience from putting a single manned capsule on what was essentially a V-2 rocket imported from Germany. Alan Shepard could have held his breath through most of that flight.

So yeah, the later Mercury flights, the Gemini flights, and the Apollo program were essentially from scratch.

We don't need it. However, all our allies need it, and we choose to keep footing the bill and helping them out.

Note: I do not agree with this policy, but that's what's going on.

I get what you're saying, but in the time when the Constitution was written, a standing army wasn't necessary because you had a good month of lead time before someone else's army could get here to do something untoward.

The technology of flight changes that. There should be a smaller standing army specifically for defense of the nation restricted to North America, and then a reserve contingent that can only be activated by Congress (emergency resolution, war declaration, etc.).

All the hundreds of bases on foreign soil should be liquidated, and the foreign countries that get those back should start footing the bill for their own defense. Then we'll see how much they want to cry about American expansionist policies and so on.