25km? So I can't fly over the Potomac just upstream of DC? That's a bit ridiculous.

A small drone as a significant risk to the White House? Not. A sniper or a rocket attack on Marine One would be more likely. They acknowledge it, but I think they play down the sniper risk to keep from giving more crazy people ideas.

Then the US at least should enact a law saying that US banks can only use any software with source released to Chinese authorities when that source has been released to the public, and that there can be no backdoors whatsoever, and that they can only enter into transactions with banks using software without backdoors. Yeah, right, I can see the NSA going along with that...

I was going to say that scaring the public about eating GMO foods is a way to try to block the other ills related to them, but others beat me to it. Few people who aren't in the industry think further concentration in a few corporate hands of control over food production is a good idea.

Science can guide us very well when analyzing what we've already done (greenhouse gas climate change). It's not so clear where we should go (GMOs). Lumping all these things together is oversimplification.

First, how do you square selling a public good to private parties? Second, it wouldn't be hard to demonstrate that the good to the economy of allocating it without charge intelligently would exceed the auction's proceeds. Third, the proceeds don't come out of thin air. That's money that we'll all be paying the "winners" in the future. So as usual, it's using resources from the future in the present.

Yet another good reason to schedule all primaries on the same day.

You nailed it pretty well. Teach a man to fish...

Also, it's not the efficiency of the land use, it's the economic efficiency. Is it really cheaper to cover an acre with PVs than to grow crops on 50? An acre of PVs is still pretty expensive.

...because we were doing it wrong? Obviously we should have given up on space exploration because chemical rockets are so inefficient.

Corn and ethanol are used because the people who stand to profit from them have significant political sway, not because they make any sense whatsoever to do. It's too soon to give up on biofuels. Energy crops should be part of an integrated agricultural solution. The idea that not growing crops for fuel means energy production won't increase food prices is ridiculous. Energy is a large part of what we pay for when we buy food. Fertilizer, pesticides, farm machinery, and distribution. What we do need are incentives to put idle agricultural land back into production before using forested land. Also, around me a fair amount of land is still used to grow tobacco. Only good can come from repurposing that.

Given the difficulty and/or unwillingness by MS of bringing SSAS and SSRS capabilities up to a meaningful level, this might be their idea of easing the integration of R with those things. I'd still prefer not to use them, but at least if forced to do so, having a little bit of interoperability with R would make it feasible to create some useful stuff.

Let's see, they promised to provide decent service, pay their fees, etc. but never did. So we PROMISE to bless the merger if you provide decent service, pay your fees, etc.

I don't know all the facts. Which makes me... like almost everyone else here.

It certainly smells like "shoot the messenger" to me. Somebody was upset that their data was leaked, they couldn't or didn't want to attack the leaker, so they went for a convenient scapegoat.

...if that means the Chinese government gets to look at Apple's source code while Apple's customers do not.

Closing the barn door after the cows are out? Demonstrates the typical wisdom of these people.

VB, what a horrible idea. And I thought Pascal was bad. It's a conspiracy to increase H-1B, since there won't be any capable programmers who grew up in the US.

So if I put a picture of a phone on some other object, like the cat... ... and then program the indoor drone to attack the illuminated object... Seriously, just agree on a standard dock with conductive contacts that's easy to drop your phone on. How hard is that? The EU effectively made manufacturers agree on compatibility with microUSD.

Many models don't function properly when installed in Mom's basement.