It's also proof of concept. If you can launch a nuclear missile from Earth and detonate it on or near the surface of the moon, particularly if you can get reasonably close to a specific position on the surface of the moon, then you can likely do the same in reverse. If you can't nuke the moon from Earth, then you can't nuke Earth from the moon.

I really enjoyed reading all the comments so far. The submission itself was nice and hyperbolic. You can tell it's good journalism because of all the exclamation points and strong bias. There's just nothing quite as insightful, though, as a discussion by people with strong feelings and almost no understanding about what is right or wrong with this news.

Frankly, I hope nobody bothers to educate himself about any of this. Indeed, the shareholders of BP should all be in prison for life. And BP should also write a check for 120% of its total equity ... to ... um ... I don't know, maybe the dolphins? Anyhow, it should be illegal to enter into a plea agreement on criminal charges. If you are charged with a crime, you should be found guilty and sentenced to ... well, maybe the death penalty. You're a corporation? Then .. well ... oh, I know, let's kill the shareholders. But if there is any dispute over your guilt, you should not have an opportunity to reach a plea agreement. It should be all or nothing. And your guilt should be decided by the jury! Wait, no, not the jury, because the jury system is broken. How about a judge? No, he could be bribed and was probably put on the bench by corrupt politics in the first place. So, your guilt should be decided by ... a duck!

Because, if anyone bothered to read the article, understand the situation, understand the system at play, educate himself on the reason things work the way they do, and so forth, how else would I get any entertainment without having to pay for cable TV?

Get a haircut and get a real job.

What they're forgetting to take into account is who subscribes to Newsweek: Doctors who often have patients waiting for an appointment. Who is going to subscribe to a Newsweek that can't be left out for patients to read while they wait for the doctor to see them?

There are a few people claiming "you assume this" or "you assume that." You're all wrong. I, a conspiracy nutter, assume that the aliens are law-abiding and did not want to violate FAA regulations.

How would such disputes be resolved?

They will be dismissed.

Yours, Oft-Offtopic Flamebaiting Troll.

Exactly.

How would such disputes be resolved? You have to assume that a fair, negotiated agreement is not possible because, when it is, jury trials already do not happen. You are talking about replacing what happens when a fair settlement cannot be reached. And who decides which disputes can and cannot be understood by "street people"?

Right now, if a party believes that the assumed layperson jury needs expert help to understand an issue, the party can present expert testimony to explain it and other parties can present their own expert testimony as well. Almost every civil case that is actually filed makes use of expert testimony because there is some issue that the average person off the street will not be able to understand without some explanation. That can take the form of anything from how a user interface is designed (something that I, a lifelong computer programmer, would want explained to me) to how a person's spine gets broken in a head-on collision.

Are there first world countries where judges who are subject matter experts specific to the issues in each case decide the facts of civil disputes?

What happens when I, a garage inventory, am faced with a multinational corporation that has violated my patent? I can't afford the nonzero risk, no matter how small, that I will lose the case and have to pay for the cost of a dozen experts paid $500+ per hour, each, to listen to the case. We already have expert witnesses whose purpose is to explain in layman's terms the complicated issues in the case, and the people most capable of doing so tend to cost more per hour so the multinational corporation is hiring them while I am stuck getting on the stand and trying to explain it myself. Do you really want a system where the parties' spending power not only selects the evidence presented to the jury but also the composition of the jury itself?

That's not the problem. A comma here would actually be wrong. The problem is the use of the wrong form of 'cause' causing a break of parallel structure.

I am very impressed with a person "who forced ATMs to ... cause medical pumps to release lethal doses of insulin." But why are ATMs and medical pumps connected to each other in the first place?

From their terms of service at the time of the offer, remedies are limited to refund of the amount paid and disputes over $250 must be arbitrated. "Lifetime" is not defined but their offer clearly says "as long as we exist" and they do still exist. If it were me, I would go for the refund and be thankful for 6 years of free use.

E = m*v^2. Leave out the m. 3050^2 - 3000^2 = 550^2 - 0^2. For comparison, the above-quoted excerpt from the article is off by a factor of 40.

What's the ratio of negative infinity to negative infinity?

Those 97 million pages didn't review, organize, and where necessary redact themselves. It doesn't matter what technology you use, if you care at all about the content it is expensive to deal with that many pages of written material. It's like proof-reading an early but complete draft of Atlas Shrugged 89,000 times over except with a subtle plot and only slightly better prose. It comes out to only $32.53 per reading of Atlas Shrugged, which is a better price than I would offer.