Or they could've just given about $120 to every man woman and child in the state of Mississippi.

I don't understand why "patches" are hundreds of megabytes and often multiple gigabytes to download. Isn't the vast majority of a modern game's data the assets? (Textures, images, sound, video,etc.). Actual code should be a tiny fraction... How do mere bug fixes weigh so much?

Your phone is a sample size of one, compared to countless iPhones. It would be more meaningful to compare the average breakage rate of all Galaxy S2s sold vs its contemporary iPhone model's breakage rate.

I not-uncommonly print event tickets, shipping labels and recipes from my phone and tablet (my phone or tablet display recipes fine, but I'll invariably spill something on them if I have them near me while cooking so I prefer something disposable). While I could always fire up the desktop, my smartphone is usually right at my fingertips. While it's not a very frequent use, mobile device printing is convenient enough that I appreciate having the feature.

They can't be deleted (without rooting) so that they still get restored along with the rest of the system when doing a factory reset.

What's the benefit of baking all these apps into the system partition? I've found that even after an OTA update, most have been replaced by newer versions in the data partition within a few weeks. Why not just provide the barest core apps and default to asking to download the rest? I vaguely remember Froyo or Gingerbread doing something similar.

Didn't this same idea already fail in the 90s? I recall Aerosmith's 9 Lives came with some goofy "interactive" exhibit in the remaining space on the disc. This just sounds like a downloadable version of the same thing.

^Per IRS rules, the highest permitted out-of-pocket maximum for eligible plans is $6,350 for 2014 for individual plans and $12,700 for family plans.

We have an incomplete description of this bronze plan. To qualify as an exchange-eligible plan, there will be a yearly out of pocket maximum after which insurance pays 100%. It's probably in the vicinity of $8k or so. It also must cover defined "preventative care" items 100% and those items are not subject to the deductible. The idea here is to get people to go to their doctors regularly in the hopes of catching issues early when they are the least expensive to treat. It's also intended to keep people who do have serious issues from being bankrupted by $100k and up medical bills.

I don't know what the next killer app I'll want connected to my TV will be (Redbox? HBO, Showtime, Cinemax bypassing the cable companies? Some yet-to-be founded Internet channel?) but I'm willing to bet whatever it is will never get added to the Smart-TVs being sold today. Services change too fast. I'd rather replace a less expensive streaming device than a whole damn TV.

There are other good CEOs out there. Apple's board just happened to pick a few terrible ones. Tim Cook's been running the show for a while now, as Steve's health declined. So far, things look good for Apple's continued success.

Because congress forbids it. NASA has little control over its own budget. It probably would've cost less and worked out better if they could have manufactured a few dozen identical Spirit/Opportunity rovers with a few changes to the instrument packages and drop them all in different spots around the Martian globe. But congress authorized only two. Subsequent rovers get carved up in committee. Congressman A will vote for it, but only if a favored software company in their district gets to write the control software, Congresswoman B will vote for it, but only if the solar panels are manufactured in her district, etc. The end result is NASA only winds up being an efficient means for the distribution of pork to various congresscritter's preferred contractors, and can seldom reuse designs.

Launch costs are the killer right now. Com sats and government funded programs are the only things that can afford to get there right now. If SpaceX and others like it really manage to cut launch costs down to $1,000/lb, it opens the doors for a LOT of interesting uses that never would've been funded at today's costs to orbit.

Rather than compressing the hydrogen, you can convert it to liquid hydrocarbons via Fisher-Tropsch and use our existing infrastructure to ship that around (and ultimately burn it where you need it). You lose efficiency in the conversion, but it really all boils down to what's economically viable.

That's quite a lot for a single individual to amass in a (presumably) short period of time between buying and returning a computer. I think they perhaps mean 10 gigs in personal files alltogether. If the previous user imported their music library, photo albums, video*cough*porn*cough*, then that's easy enough. Documents alone would be surprising, tho.