Which TLA do you work for?

...which means "we thought about it in passing, but really never had any serious intention of changing. We are after all an intelligence agency and there is no way we are going to REDUCE the information we get (voluntarily)."

People said that it was bad to let Comcast (a cable company) buy NBC. THIS story is exactly the reason why. No NBC because "Apple would be competing with Comcast"? FCC, DO SOMETHING about this obvious conflict of interest.

My Tivo Series 2 was retired after 9.5 YEARS of continuous operation and use. It still works - only my cable went digital and the Tivo only has analog tuner, so it is now useless. But still functional with the original HD.

...only surpassed when I read Ender's Game.

It has been obvious for some time that the US is on the decline. As a worker in the late stages of my career, I find that saddening but I don't know what we can do about it. In the 60's it was all about technology and progress and science. Kennedy made a speech where he asked where the US would get all the Engineers that would be needed for the future. Nowadays it is all about financial instruments and inventing ways to manipulate the numbers to look like you have more money than you do. And it is also about rejecting science when it doesn't agree with your religious leanings (sort of sounds like some other religions in other parts of the world, doesn't it?). I don't personally see the will in this country to continue the leadership into the future. It will probably take a generation or two, but then we will be another Spain or UK which was once a dominant world power. Let's just hope that the next big power is benevolent, or it is likely not to be very pretty.

So somebody who has never done anything wrong writes an offensive cartoon. How is this different than a cartoon depicting a murder, also offensive? In fact, what about all those Hollywood movies depicting murder? Should the writers of those movies go to jail as well?

Seems unfair - TWIT.TV existed well before Twitter.. Leo Laporte let them take the name "Twitter" and never sued them. Now years after Twitpic was around, Twitter decides to go after trademark Seems like Twitter can dish it out but they can't take it. Ah, the glory of our broken legal system.

NASA has a lot of problems and bureaucracy. While I like the IDEA of NASA, unfortunately the current REALITY is quite different. NASA is full of bureacracy, it's horribly inefficient and risk-averse. Congress is micromanaging the tasks and budget. So when we criticize NASA for no mission, part of that is because they really can't do anything with any consistency. And Congress is mostly interested in preserving pork jobs in their own districts. So we get the SLS, a huge rocket that is costing billions, without a decent mission, and a low flight rate that will make it horrendously expensive....forever... Meanwile, an efficient upstart called SpaceX is actually DOING THINGS and being BOLD, and certain senators are trying to make sure they don't succeed because SpaceX is disruptive and endangers their districts' jobs. So the US is basically fucked - we aren't leading, we aren't spending our money wisely, and NASA has become an expensive shell of its former self. And our newest hope, SpaceX, is only there because of the vision of Elon Musk... and even he is having to play politics to make sure his company isn't shut out of future NASA business. Thank our corrupt Congress, where local district money is more important than the health and leadership of the entire country.

...I can tell you that there are a myriad of problems here. It's not that easy to build an aircraft that is rugged for road use. Flying is particularly unforgiving of mistakes versus driving (think of all the idiot drivers out there). And the regulatory environment is hideously complex and expensive. Finally, think of all the traffic and fatalities with collisions if there were truly any significant number of "cars" commuting in the air. I just don't see it happening in any easy way.

First Snowden and now another leaker in the government. It's shit like THIS STORY which is why Americans are trying to rally and SAVE THIS COUNTRY. WHAT THE FUCK HAS HAPPENED TO THE USA AND THE CONSTITUTION?

...to know that us Americans are not the only ones who are batshit crazy.

...and it's "limited circumstances" under which it will, eh, errr, deviate from the fourth Amendment.

Yeah, right.

If you believe that, I have some promises from our political parties to guarantee for you, too.

They sat on their laurels too long under Ballmer and watched the market expand while they sat on the sidelines. They laughed at the iPhone when it first came out. Rather than putting Office on the iPad, they held it hostage to "protect" Windows. Five plus years later, they may finally do it. How much revenue did they give up there?

They chased Google with Bing. They've chased Apple with the Zune, their music store, and their Windows Phone. They put the name Windows on everything - their cloud, their phone, their ARM tablet, and their regular PC OS, even though all those products are different. They are a MESS. Good luck to Satya - he will need it.