FTFA:
...and the reporters have filed their stories in Googled Docs instead of Microsoft Word.

I guess they meant they used free-as-in-beer software for that edition -- or whatever Googled Docs are. (Perhaps you get them when you type TheGoogle into a Word document?)

Ray, these lawyers are mimicking the mode of operation of the RIAA gang. Thanks in part to your reporting, we know of some possible attack vectors against it. We know they are using illegal joinder. We know they can't profit unless most of defendants settle. And we know they depend on each defendant's isolation, so they won't know what the weaknesses are and they won't fight. Knowing what we do now, how can the community come together to help? How can we inform the defendants of their options, and how can we fight the plaintiffs directly?

Nonsense. Hollywood paid good money to lobbyists and lawmakers for those copyright extensions!

I followed you here from the recent RIAA story. I found your signature entertaining. An elegant reformulation of the adage, and answer to your question, could be, "Brevity is a necessary but insufficient condition for wit."

Science fiction may inspire inventors. The technology it depicts, whether or not the author intended it as prediction, may ultimately be invented in the reader's lifetime. One gets a profound feeling when it happens that way!

But good science fiction imagines the effects of advanced technology on the human condition. The inventions it depicts should be theoretically feasible, and the year in which it is set should be appropriate to the level of scientific advancement that would be needed. But verisimilitude is only a tool for telling a good story about people, which is the true metric of any fiction, science- or otherwise.

If the advancements depicted in a sci-fi work never take place, should that disqualify it from greatness? Is Star Trek TNG only any good if the advancements it portrays occur in real life, along the same timeline?

And if a work inspires no one to invent, then so what? What of dystopic sci-fi? Heaven forbid a great science-fiction novel like 1984 inspired anyone to develop the technology it portrays! (Although, in that case, the author was definitely making technological predictions, which happened to come true.)

Citation? The major study I'm familiar with, performed by a consortium of major media outlets -- http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A12623-2001Nov11.html -- found that a statewide recount of the votes would have Gore the winner.

Now that Chavez has got his way in Venezuela he will be a pain for generations just as Castro was.

Unlike Castro, Chavez has been elected and re-elected in fair elections. Chavez did propose the elimination of term limits, but the public rejected it in a referendum he has agreed to honor.

So by "got his way" you mean "got elected and democratically pursued reforms"? The tyrant!

Muni probably owns the raw data, and NextBus probably owns the predictions.

NextBus is the developer, but the litigious company in this case is called NextBus Information Systems (NBIS). NBIS claims to own rights to the data NextBus's apps produce. It's unclear whether the two companies have any other financial relationship -- if they have any at all. As far as we know, NBIS may be a rogue, an SCO of the transit info business.

...which withstood three years of design and testing by Australian and American security agencies

Anything that withstands three years of attempted government design must be robust indeed.