The real way to have stopped Snowden would be for the government to not be a privacy-destroying, dossier-collecting, network-infiltrating, security-inhibiting organization that spies on its own people.

Then Snowden wouldn't have had a reason to leak.

Not totally true. Shareholders can elect a new board.

According to Businessweek (http://www.businessweek.com/articles/2013-04-04/apples-campus-2-shapes-up-as-an-investor-relations-nightmare) the cost is $1500 per square foot, or about 3 times the cost of luxury downtown skyscraper space.

You ordered just one Protect?

Most fire codes require a smoke detector in each bedroom, each hallway outside a bedroom, and on every level, and sometimes near kitchens and bathrooms. If you have an efficiency apartment, I guess you only need one alarm, but most homes are going to need at least 3, maybe a lot more depending on number of bedrooms and layout. At $129 per device, that starts to add up cost quickly.

You keep saying "it's a capacitive scanner" like that's some magical technology. Skin is partially conductive and has capacitance. The same for the derma layers under the epidermis. If you can take a picture of someone's fingerprint pattern (epidermis), that will most likely reflect the dermis pattern underneath (which is where the "blood vessels" are).

AuthentTec's own PR slides show how this works. (http://www.zvetcobiometrics.com/Documents/Trueprinttechnology.ppt)

I'm convinced the advantage of AuthenTec's technology is not that it senses the pattern of blood vessels in your finger (other than the blood vessels indicate where the dermis is), but rather that the signals can penetrate the sapphire protection layer more easily, as well as the outer layers of scarred or abraded epidermis.

Yep. A briefing by the designing company, AuthenTec, found here,
    http://www.zvetcobiometrics.com/Documents/Trueprinttechnology.ppt
shows that even though the sensing technology is different than static capacitance, it still basically reads your fingerprint pattern (see slide 12).

It probably does measure the blood vessels - the blood vessels within the derma portion of the skin that makes up your fingerprints.

This.

Kickstarter is about putting your own money where your interests are. You wouldn't do otherwise because it's your money.

This IBM project is about putting fake money where your fake interests are, so the results will be fake.

In the scientific field I work in, the primary journals are owned and run by our (non-profit) professional societies. The journal expenses are transparently reported the society management and membership. There is no incentive for profit, but rather to have an excellent quality journal that will be preserved for posterity. Refereeing is done pro-bono by professional members. After a few years from publication, the journal issues become open access.

Even though it is a non-profit enterprise, it's still expensive: ~ US$ 100-200 per page for submitters and $500-$2000 for annual subscriptions. The quality pays for editorial services, copyediting and publishing.

You should be a little more careful. You're right that, in the “Samsung-Apple Licensing Discussion” document, Apple proposed $30 for handsets (and $40 for tablets).

The difference is that Apple offered a 20% "discount" if Samsung licensed back all of its patents. And another unspecified discount if Samsung stopped using certain foundational technology. So those additional Apple requests had some incentive for Samsung.

That being said, I think the royalty rate of $30-$40 is pretty outrageous. When the typical cost of *all* techonology licensing royalties for a mobile device is 5-10% of the device cost, (source "IP Finance"), Apple would propose to add on another 5-8% just for itself. People used to joke about the "Microsoft tax," and this is just the same: an "Apple tax." It's pretty clear that Apple had Samsung over a barrel. Either Samsung pays an exorbitant royalty, or it stops using the patented technology, or it loses a lawsuit. Any way they sliced it, Apple was set up to win.

If the shell companies are acting in concert with Samsung, then no.

Hopefully Caltech has a nice endowment that can help them operate GALEX, because it will not be cheap. Maybe they can help train students to be future satellite operators, and save costs that way.

I was involved in a recent decommissioning of a NASA satellite. We tried to look for a privitization route, but the private funds and the timing just didn't come together in time. Kudos to Caltech for putting this together for GALEX.

You make it sound like NASA's investment was for naught, but that's not true. GALEX operated for many years and provided great benefit to the scientific community, and to the advancement of our nation's scientific endeavors.

Caltech is already operating GALEX, and they operate the GALEX data archive. I'm not privy to the details of the agreement, but I imagine one of the stipulations is that Caltech will archive the new data just like the old data. Even if they don't, the existing data will remain in the archive forever as a legacy. It's not gone.

Probably because nobody else stepped up to the plate to operate the thing.

There is no "waiting." NASA is going to de-fund this satellite, and the choices are either to decomission it or transfer it to someone else.

Um try again....

"We’re going to the standards bodies, starting tomorrow, and we’re going to make FaceTime an open industry standard.” (Steve Jobs, July 2010)

Guess what hasn't happened since July 2010?

I would also like to add that over the past ten years, "security" has gotten much much tighter at NASA. NASA has many roles that involve interfacing with the industrial community, the scientific community, and the public community at large. It is often difficult to reconcile those roles with the additional goal of "more security!" In fact, in the interests of blanket security, I would say that NASA's ability to interact with communities, and lead through good example, have been partially stifled in the name of security.

Another thing to mention is that often-times, large institutions like NASA are dealing with legacy systems that do not have the latest security. The common knee-jerk reaction is to say, "just upgrade it!" But the reality is that there can be knock-on effects that prevent upgrading or make it cost-prohibitive. Critical systems that have been running for years often do not have the funds or staff expertise to execute a major upgrade. But as I said, this is a problem with most large institutions, it's just that "NASA" in the title of an article makes it higher profile.

This post has my personal opinions only.