NASA has turned into a disorganized formation of risk-adverse contract managers loosely connected to a rusting theme park playing endless reruns of their glory days. Their big accomplishment these days is dismantling some of the old launch platforms.

They are not the agency that's going to make the next leaps in space technology. Hell, the fricking electric car guy is making faster advances than NASA. Put him in charge. They had their day, it's time to start over.

The judge also recommended that Samsung post a bond for 88 percent of the value of its infringing mobile phones, as well as 32.5 percent of the value of infringing media players, and 37.6 percent of the value of infringing tablets.

Software patents are completely out hand. This is not what the patent system was intended to do, this is madness.

But you want those millions of people to buy you a pony!

You want people to fund your kid's school.

You want millions of people to subsidize the roads you drive on.

How is this really that much different? Before motorcars took over, millions of people got by just fine with their horses. You ignore that internet service isn't as much an entertainment option as a utility today. A utility that's rapidly changing the way information and notices are delivered to homes and it's in the hands of private companies colluding to keep prices high and speeds slow.

The market is not going to fix this problem. I'm sorry you have to help pay for the new railroad coming through town, but it will make getting goods from the big city out to the frontier easier, there grandpa.

Critics suggest this system is flawed because many authors are impartial and are experts on novels

I had problems with other authors of similar books writing bad reviews of my book on Amazon. It was pretty obvious who was doing it because every time I'd get a good review, a bad one would pop up a couple days later from someone who obviously hadn't read the book.

I'm not vain enough to think everyone who reads my book should like it but the neg reviews were sometimes disagreements about topics not even covered in the book.

It was very frustrating and I complained to Amazon. They didn't respond directly but a short time later the behavior stopped.

I pay attention to what readers like and don't like and make refinements based on their feedback, so I appreciate thoughtful feedback even if it's not positive.

>hunts for vulnerabilities in 'large-scale' utilities

It's not like they're spying wholesale on American citizens...wait, they're already doing that, too.

I think the whole foreign/domestic spy division is pretty much gone at this point. Not saying it's right, just the reality.

Obviously the author has never tried to untangle outsource code. If he thinks home grown code is bad, wait until he wades through a bowl of Bangalore spaghetti code. Yummy.

Although I did make a lot of money sorting through that crap. Many companies would just assume outsource code would work when they needed it and couldn't figure out how come their wonder app, that they got done for half of what U.S. programmers would have cost, kept crashing.

When we used to do experiments like that at the lab we would get death threats from the religious crazies.

The only death threat I got was in college doing research on skewing the sex ratio in horses toward females. I was surprised a few people got so wrapped around the axle by that, doesn't seem like any big deal, even in hindsight.

Not like making fish grow hands or anything.

I don't think this is just a R problem...I think both R's and D's up there are so bought and paid for that no reform will likely happen that will benefit you...

I don't see that. Saying both sides are equally bad is an intellectual cop out that let's one side keep moving the corruption goal post.

Once we deal with the side openly on the side of the wealthy and big money interests, we can start picking through the exceptions in the other side.

Back home IBM is one of the top 10 companies utilizing H1-B visas.

And companies keep complaining they can't find enough locally grown peasants with the skills they need.

I can totally see Microsoft threatening Dell's volume license if they sell the Ubuntu version for less than Windows. Maybe not in any way that would be outwardly anti-competitive, just the old mafia strategy of telling Dell you would hate it if something bad happened to their volume license.

Yes, sir, that would be a real shame.

Now we know where the trouble in the patent system is coming from. A fish rots from the head.

Nice followup to the Obamacare PR fiasco, dipshits. Alienate half your customers by being a dick about providing health care coverage for your employees and then top that by spamming everyone's cell phones with unwanted texts.

One more is a hat trick. You're this close to the stupid trifecta, might as well go for the gold.

Maybe announce you don't want to pay for birth control and alienate your female customers. Or rape comments are all the rage these days, though it would be hard to come up with any new material on that topic.

Every time I see this kind of thing it just confirms that the biggest threat to peace and the ones creating racial intolerance and hatred are the US Government.

How exactly is that flamebait? Whether you agree with the sentiment or not, that's what a lot of people outside the U.S. think.

When Customs starts interrogating foreign lawmakers over their political positions, it's only going to make that perception worse.

I'd settle for a car that starts.