I posted this elsewhere, but in case you missed it:

The Standard Data Reference Act provides an exception in the case of reference data to the general rule that the U.S. government cannot obtain a copyright.

If the NIST program is the product of the work of US Government employees it is in the public domain.

Not true. The Standard Reference Data Act provides an exception in the case of reference data to the general rule that the government cannot obtain a copyrights.

Conceptually, two substances that are mixed has more entropy than when they are separated, so you can see that energy is available to be extracted in the mixing of the fresh water with the salt water (thereby distributing the salts throughout the mixture).

My experience with Firefox and SharePoint is different. Most features work with Firefox, including just browsing and navigating. But there are a lot of features of SharePoint that just not work with anything but IE. Especially things like page editing.. I hare are so many problems using Firefox with SharePoint, I have the IE tab extension and have it set to use the IE rendering engine whenever I access our corporate SharePoint.

Mod parent up. These pricing plans need to be looked at very closely to make sure that media companies aren't illegally tying their content to their monopolistic delivery channels, in an effort to squeeze out other content providers like Netflix.

I think its equally unfair for the price to jump when the customer exceeds an invisible threshold, requiring customers to constantly check -- using more bandwidth -- what their current usage is to make sure they don't go over. This is the problem with cell phones. The companies should be required to inform you when your paid-for minutes or text messages are used up and you will be forced to pay extra -- WHEN you make the phone call or BEFORE you send that next text message. The practice of waiting until the end of the billing cycle to inform the consumer is not consumer-friendly, and should be banned.

That's a good reason not to give kids eyeglasses or braces or, hell, lets not give any medical care to kids at all. And, maybe if you get beat up in the schoolyard, you should be left to die because, well, "survival of the fittest" and all that... You need to explain why Muscular Dystrophy should be singled out for non-treatment, or if not singled out, where you draw the line. Is it because its a genetic treatment? How is that worse than injecting yourself with insulin the rest of your life to keep you well? Or laser eye surgery for the blind or cochlear implants for the deaf?

..not just for NASA but for the "hydrogen-based economy," which could be nothing but a pipe-dream but for which a great deal of research is nevertheless ongoing.

Hydrogen is not an easy gas to contain -- the atoms are so small they can penetrate most materials. Hydrogen is odorless and colorless, so leaks can go undetected. This can cause unknown problems. For exmaple, once released into the atmosphere hydrogen could increase greenhouse gasses due to uptake of hydroxyl radicals, which would otherwise react with and remove the greenhouse gasses.

Solving problems in containing hydrogen is an important step and we have NASA to thank once again for being among the first to meet new technological challenges.

Sprint has Android phones on the way. http://phandroid.com/2009/02/20/sprint-android-coming-ceo-reassures/

The day Foxit (or some other company) provides a browser plugin that allows me to view PDFs within my browser is the day I stop using Adobe Viewer. I'm just glad I am still using version 8.

Having resources to defend oneself against charges of monopoly abuse -- spurious or otherwise -- is typically the case when dealing with monopolies. It does take and always has taken a concerted effort to bring down monopoly powers, whether it was is oil or railroad monopolies in the 1800s, or software or communications monopolies now.

I wouldn't guess that the biggest abusers of monopoly power ist Google, but rather Comcast and their ilk. I would love for the government to do an in-depth review of their business practices.

DOOM had no better graphics than its predecessor Wolfenstien.

I have to disagree with you here. Original Doom had very expressive texture maps that were used sparingly, but to great effect. Do you remember the "lost souls" texture map showing ghostly bodies writhing in agony? Or the exterior panoramas that you got a glimpse of from time to time through a window or off a platform? What about the loping movement of the camera, verses the robotic-like movement in Wolfenstein?