I don't know why this myth persists in a world of open court documents. Apple never sued anybody over rounded corners.

Until you start looking at how many hours of homework kids are assigned.

I have to admit, I was somewhat interested in Oculus, but any interest I had disappeared the moment I heard they were bought by a social networking site. It's not anything to do with Facebook specifically, either. It's just, come on, a social networking site? What possible business do they have with technology as complex and difficult to implement properly like VR?

Then I remembered that TV show, Caprica, and how VR was used there. Then it made sense. Mark Zuckerberg wants to create cylons. That or some kind of virtual nightclub for teenagers to have freaky sex and murder each other.

There are a number of companies working on programmable or remote controlled sex devices. I believe some are already commercially available that go along with visual media. I'm sure once the VR headsets get good enough they'll be made fully compatible.

When I look back at the 90s, there was so much good science fiction on TV, Babylon 5 included. The writing was good, the stories were human and often inspirational, and above all they required a thinking audience. Nowadays, science fiction on television has become mainly action fantasy more than anything. Most of it takes place in the present day rather than the future. The shows that do start get quickly canceled off, and it seems like they're mostly pessimistic and dumbed-down. I seriously doubt a show like Babylon 5 could ever get made today, much less last more than a single season.

How do you view the current state of science fiction on television, and why has it become this way?

I'm self-employed, you insensitive clod! I work whenever it suits me, seven days a week, and haven't paid any attention to weekdays or weekends on any of that nonsense for years.

Well I guess I won't be visiting Hungary. I'd hate to go to jail for taking a picture of a landmark with a whole lot of people in the frame.

I'm sure plenty of Hungarian photographers are outraged they effectively can't take entire genres of photographs, now. These kinds of laws have social and cultural ramifications.

Exactly. The best answer to speech you don't like is MORE speech, not less. Some dude's saying hateful, racist BS? Debate him point-by-point and show everyone listening how stupid and ignorant he is. I can't think of anything that's censored that hasn't made people want to hear it more.

Has nothing to do with the F-35. That's a drop in the bucket compared to the payouts we give to individuals in this country. It's at a record high of 70%, and those programs (unlike military spending) will never be cut, ever, because it'll be political suicide for anyone who tries. Massive expansion of social programs is what kills science spending.

I don't know why you got modded down. The fact is you're right. One-size-fits-all simply doesn't. We all have different strengths, weaknesses, and IQs.

The Hyperion Cantos is absolutely fantastic. I wasn't really prepared to like it when I saw there were flying space trees (I normally prefer my scifi a bit harder than that), but somehow it still sucked me in anyway.

You're absolutely right. It's the ice, not the suits. The ice is terrible, I keep hearing it over and over. Supposedly the Russian guy who's in charge of the ice said that the North Americans make the best ice, and traveled to Canada and the US to figure out how to make good ice, but apparently he didn't learn enough while he was over here because he went back to Russia and made some pretty bad ice.

Is a radio a vehicle now?

Ah yes, the "let's fix our problems here at home first" argument. I hate to break it to you, but we will always have problems. Humans have always had problems and we excel at finding new ones no matter how many old ones we solve. We can either choose to keep working at fixing them, for billions of years as we colonize the universe, or we can wait for the next extinction event in a much shorter time span and have a permanent solution.

I'm imagining a caveman not so long ago saying that we shouldn't cross that river until we figure out how to live off the resources in a one-hour walking radius around our cave.

You know what would really advance our ability to live here on Earth? Figuring out how to live in environments totally hostile to our way of life. Terraforming another planet will teach us how to live in balance with nature here. Learning how to conserve and recycle resources on another world, where we have no choice but to do so, will help us be sustainable on Earth. You clearly look at this as a win-lose proposition. Money spent on space exploration is money not spent here at home. But the fact is, space exploration helps us here at home. It helps our economy, it gives us new technologies that work here just as well on Earth, it does a lot.

What exactly is the scam? It's a non-profit organization, the risks are well known, and if it all blows up nobody's a winner. Well, the only winners will be the ones who learn from what went wrong and do a better attempt next time.

And whose credibility, exactly, will be harmed if this doesn't work? Another group trying the exact same thing you'd also disapprove of for the same reasons you disapprove of Mars One? Surely, this wouldn't harm the credibility of another company with a much larger budget and longer timeline and different method of funding, or a government attempt for that matter.