Heh. I like my toilets more complicated than a short, narrow trough in the ground, but a large portion of those that even have flush toilets have just that...

The only existing fancy technology from a use-perspective that makes sense is the integrated bidet. The new types of technology that can make the toilet experience better have only to do with form factor. Changing the shape of the seat and the size of the opening, and changing the height of the bowl. In short, these changes would make the toilet less uncomfortable to sit on, and will allow one to get off of the toilet if one is infirm.

I don't see how using the toilet is improved by being a multimedia experience, though I suppose it would be funny if every time a solid dropped in, the toilet played the Mario Brothers' coin-collect sound...

Its pretty simple, individuals should be able to contribute to the candidates of their choice with caps. Elections should be running on small money, not big money.

If people are part of a larger organization encouraging them to contribute in a certain way that is no ones business as long as its the individual making the contribution and not the organization.

If an organization is collecting funds via dues, corporate profits or anything else and spending that money in a coordinated fashion to buy political influence it shouldn't be allowed. Nor should organizations be allowed to spend unlimited funds running ads on TV's designed to influence policy, candidates and elections.

Public funding of campaigns could fix the problem in some respects but how you decide gets funded and who doesn't and giving money to crackpots who have no popular support, and will never acquires it, isn't a good idea.

Of course the bigger issue is we need to have people running for office who don't suck and that appears to be increasingly problematic these days.

The thing you are trying to accomplish is for everyone to have a reasonably even chance of influencing the democratic process. When a tiny affluent minority, whatever their agenda, can buy disproportionate influece your democracy is, for all practical purposes, gone. This is pretty much where the U.S. sits today.

Why would the language of choice matter terribly much if the programmer has skills with the language?

Wouldn't a C++ programmer generate an applicable program effectively as quickly as a Java programmer? It's not like compiling is the time-consuming part anymore...

I have to wonder how accurate that really is.

What it comes down to is where the platform ends and the applications begin, and I don't think that Stallman or any other even-remotely-credible free software advocate would deny that there is a value in commercial applications, so long as they reduce vendor lock in.

A good analogy would be that the platform is the road, and the applications are the vehicles that can drive on it. The intent being to avoid toll roads or roads that exclude vehicles because of their brands or manufacturers.

I don't know the man though, and I admit that I well could be incorrect.

Linux the kernel is the core of both Android the operating system and GNU/Linux the operating system. If one gets pedantic, then technically Microsoft Office for Android satisfies the argument that it's supported on an OS running Linux the kernel, but when most people use "Linux", they're not referring to the kernel, but the operating system with all of its GNU and POSIX stuff.

So, this is a win in the same sense that the Spruce Goose flew.

That is an extremely convenient cop out. NASA simply hasn't delivered on anything worth funding for a really long time. Success would breed support.

Ares was a deeply flawed in concept, design and construction and it cost a fortune to accomplish next to nothing. Why would anyone continue that farce when SpaceX and Falcon are developing far better launchers and capsules far faster and for much less money.

NASA simply can't do anything without squandering money. They sent a team to SpaceX to study how they were accomplishing so much with so little. The fact that NASA would send a team out to study this is disturbing in itself. One answer is stop using theirh entrenched contractors, (i.e. Lockheed and Boeing) who are milking every contract for every dollar they can.

NASA, Boeing and Lockheed are probably delighted when when one program is cancelled and replaced with another because they never have to deliver anything that works and the pay is the same.

What a crock. The NASA manned space program has been squandering money to no good end since Apollo was cancelled. If all the money squandered on the shuttle and ISS, to no good end, had been spent wisely and efficiently we would be on Mars now.

Danger isn't the important thing. What matters is if you are accomplishing something worth the risk and the money. NASA simply hasn't accomplished anything in manned space flight for 40 years.

Do you even believe this stuff you are shoveling?

Like bank transfers and just about all financial-services communications?

There are so many people that move around in this world that I expect good old-fashioned sneakernet with one-time pads will just become the norm, especially when time is not necessarily of the essence. When more data is needed then micro-SD will be employed, and encrypted connections will be left for when absolutely necessary.

When I was a kid, if my friends and I wanted to meet up, we had to generally all agree where we were going to meet in-advance, generally at school or when we were previously together, or a few of us had to decide and then had to manually pass the word on to others, who in-turn passed the word on to others until everyone was notified. We could coordinate and plan without "the authorities" in the form of our parents really knowing what was going on if we chose to keep them uninformed.

If the evil "they" still want to do us harm they can do it entirely offline. They proved that with how long it took to identify Osama Bin Laden's location, he avoided all outgoing traffic other than couriers and it took years to find him.

The brothers that bombed the Boston Marathon managed to avoid being caught in advance due to a typographical error. A Buttle/Tuttle type of snafu literally lead to the older brother's slipping through the cracks. Even after all of everything that happened, the younger brother was caught because a homeowner noticed some blood on his boat. Helicopters, infrared, and door-to-door searches failed to find him.

It hasn't been demonstrated satisfactorily to me that heavy encryption means that there's anything relevant to the authorities being transmitted therein.

Rovers and orbiters are built by JPL. JPL is NASA in name only. It was created in1936, long before NASA.

After giving JPL well deserved tribute for their planetary missions, they also deserve tribute for surviving, staying relevent and doing great work in spite of NASA.

Hubble was OK after a disasterous start. NASA does deserve priase for it along with the other great observatories.

Those programs don't really explain away the fact that the centerpeice of the organization and the one that sucks up most of the money, manned space exploration, is a complete disaster. At some point you need to ask, "What have you done lately"?

Its been a long time since NASA explored any frontiers with their manned space program. Shuttles carrying people in to LEO wasn't anything close to exploring a frontier.

Only if it actually works. If it doesn't or it breaks down immediately its only value will be if it compells NASA to develop the manned or robotic capability to go fix it.

It worked really well up until the point corruption went wild, they had a massive real estate bubble, followed by one going on two lost decades where they've propped up their economy with massive public works projects and piles of debt. Of course lately they are printing money at a furious place to try to break the deflationary spiral they've been in for like 20 years.

They also have a demographic time bomb because young people have stopped having jobs, hope or babies so they can't support their rapidly exploding senior population.

Uh, I thought they all have, with the possible exception of Russia and China and a few smaller ones like Cuba, Venezuala and Ecuador?

...I mean, Avenue Q already told us what the Internet is for...

And how does that work across multiple different and different kinds of devices exactly?