As the guy that used to correct, grade, and return school flyers sent home while my BIL was living with us I think that testing is NEEDED...

Grammer, spelling, and word choice errors were in each and every product sent home... SUPPOSEDLY prepared by the teachers, administration, and even some signed by the School Principal...

I think we just wrote off that year of his "education" when we sent him back to his mom....

A teacher OUGHT to be able to get a passing score on ANY class material they've taught for two years or more... period!

I get enough referrals to people who paid for a repair they didn't get that this doesn't surprise me at all... despite being mostly retired I can't seem to turn them down...

The last time a customer wondered why my rates were a couple of times higher than the "Squad" troopers all I could tell them was "I guess they know what they are worth..." (I guess I should have pointed out that I only charge once for repairs, when they're done right)

Kinda puts the term "putting on my thinking cap" a reality!

If that gesture, and the vocalization that goes with it had been the result of years of development... theory, observation, experiment, peer review of the results and publication in journals for those interested in the subject.... would that change anything?

Using the "Scientific Method" to harness an unknown (to us) type of energy would satisfy me as science/technology....

After all, if you take certain rocks, process them a certain way, and then arrainge the resulting material just right you can power an aircraft carrier for it's entire projected lifespan on one fueling....

Or they would if raw RADAR returns were actually displayed to Air Traffic Controllers.... they don't see anything but a computer generated screen populated with traffic based on IFF transponder returns...

True enough, which is why nothing flying in "commercial" air traffic lanes will be allowed there without an IFF device... OTOH, Drones of the sort that have been getting popular with law enforcement tend to be smaller units that loiter over alleys or even sit on a roof monitoring activitiy...

Having ONE drone capable of flying at 30,000 feet with an amazing telescope just might not be as useful as a few dozen little rotor bugs that can peep into windows and send back a grainy 640x480 video that shows where the Bad Guys are lurking...

I'll just address this...

Have you ever seen the government administer ANYTHING more efficently than a "for profit" private corporation? If I want DMV type service from my cellular provider (or any wireless/data/comm stuff) I can find always look at the coverage charts and buy from a company that doesn't actually have a working presence in my part of the map...

I most certainly don't need that becoming the standard...

OTOH I DO MOST CERTAINLY WANT the FCC, who is supposedly administering spectrum belonging to We The People, to get the best profit out of LEASING it to companies competing for it's use!!!!!!

Five year leases, one automatic renewal and then it goes back on the block for a new bid!!!!!

Then you would enjoy the Droid X, Razr, and other late model Motorola Android phones as well... three microphones for active noice cancelation

I can be in a Fire Truck, or sitting on my diesel farm tractor, and all people can hear is my voice...

Finding a suitable Bluetooth earpiece that has noise reduction nearly as good took a bit of hunting... My current Plantronics does a pretty decent job, but the phone has an advantage in the distance between mics...

Which is why so many visitors to Yellowstone and the Flathead Bison Reservation take a few weeks to recover from their vation time before going home... (if they make it back...)

They are "furry" so they MUST be nice to touch!!! Idiots!

Except those of us who used to watch as NDI labs routinely X-rayed welds, castings, and even whole aircraft to discover hidden flaws in the metal...

There are some nice water cooled X-Ray tubes that woudn't fit in your dentist's office

If that isn't sufficent even more powerful gamma ray sources are avialable too...

My Droid Razr is SUPPOSED to be protected by a similar coating... My "testing" so far has been unintended splashes once in a while.

There's no reason the same treatment that makes some Docker pants stain and waterproof wouldn't work on other materials...

Sounds like a good idea to me!

They'd better watch out... Paramount is VERY jealous of that "Tricorder" word... The Android application that actually enabled some of those functions got smashed...

Hasbro seems to be "taking it a bit too far"

It seems unlikely that anyone buying a Asus tablet will instead of an "action figure" or other "Transformer(tm) toys would be shopping the toy aisle or visa versa...

Aggressively fighting trademark infringement is about the only way the lawyers can make a living though,,, unless they're representing DRM folks prosecuting kids, or patent trolls tying to "protect" their patented method of tying a square knot...

Congress was given the power to assign patents and enforce copyrights in order to stimulate creativity and ensure that writers and inventors gained from their contributions to society...

I still don't see the 1978 revision of US copyright laws falling into that definition....

It did mean that porn made with "Steamboat Willie" could be vigorously hunted down and sequestered by the Disney Corp...

Follow the money!

Let's see... IT problems, in my experience, tend to come in three basic categories... Things that people broke, things they're not supposed to do, and things that wouldn't have happened if they'd Read The Fine Manual...

They're NOT aloof, they're something that's a mixture of bored, disgusted, and amused...

Once in a while you get a real technical challenge... but that always seems to happen when they wanted it yesterday