During the cold war the NSA was focused on the Soviet Union, which was an actual real threat to our national security. There is little evidence that the NSA was engaged in domestic spying during that time. Today the NSA, and all this surveillance, is focused on stopping some hermits in Afghanistan from talking to a few guys with a pressure cooker full of gunpowder. Meanwhile, our diplomatic relations with China and Russia have deteriorated, and we have very little idea what is going on in Iran or North Korea. Remember last month, when the Chinese Red Army was identified as actively behind cyber-spying? It was some gumshoes working for a private company that tracked it to a specific building in Shanghai. Meanwhile, the NSA, with their 30 billion dollar budget, was busy reading your email and monitoring grandma's phone calls.

These NSA programs are worse than a crime. They are a mistake.

No. But Abraham Lincoln did. The Whigs haven't won an election since.

I think it is unlikely that the guy stealing the car is the same guy who developed the fob. The fob developer is probably getting only a small slice, especially since he is taking no risk and likely living in India or China. Also, anybody with the fob could turn it in for the reward, not just the developer.

My impression from reading the article is that LEGO is very involved in organizing and funding this contest, and they have no interest in promoting something that is not their product.

If you read the article, you will see the the prize is just a set of legos and some NASA memorabilia. There is no cash prize, and the Lego sets are donated by Lego. This is costing the taxpayers nothing, is not taking any funds away from NASA's "real" missions, and just might inspire some kids to do something meaningful with their lives.

The problem isn't the TSA either way. The TSA realizes that the restrictions on small knives and tools are silly and a waste of resources. They wanted to make the change. But they got too much push back from politicians and "think of the children" citizens. So they caved in.

It seems to me that the obvious solution is for the car manufacturers to offer a bug bounty. Then if someone builds a fob, they can collect the bounty instead of selling it to criminals and risking prison time.

In all fairness, requiring them to be labeled as GMO would not be scientific all all.

It is not a separate issue when people are trying to subvert the government regulatory process to promote their superstitions.

Just because you would like to know doesn't mean other people should be required to tell you. Far more people are concerned about whether their food is kosher or halal. Should we have government regulations requiring food to be labeled as "non-halal"? Of course not, because there is no nutritional difference. Butchers that prepare their meat using kosher or halal methods should be free to advertise them as such, but the government should stay out of it. Same with GMO.

Sure. Here you go: Mutation Breeding. At the bottom of the page is a list of food crops produced using these techniques.

Could you please explain what you are talking about? What laws are these? There was recently a ballot initiative in California to require GMO labeling, and it was voted down by the voters not the politicians. Food labeling should be based on science, not superstition, and even for those that want to avoid GMO, it is unnecessary since it is already perfectly legal to label food as "Organic" or "Non-GMO", and since these foods sell for a premium, anyone selling them would be foolish not to label them as such.

Except that evolution doesn't select for plants that are deliciously edible and nutritious. It selects for the opposite: plants that use poisons, bitter tastes, or other strategies to avoid being eaten.

Perhaps before you have a "beef" with someone, you should spend a few minutes looking at the facts. This mythology about Monsanto suing farmers for cross pollination comes up regularly on Slashdot, and no one is ever able to cite a single case of Monsanto actually suing anyone for that sort of unintentional infringement.

What makes you think that modern farmers don't rotate crops? I grew up on a farm. My parents and all my neighbors rotated crops regularly, and still do.

Yes, the problem is not "data" but "data in proprietary formats" ... and even that is becoming less of a problem. A converter to/from almost anything is usually just a google search away. With VMs and emulators, even proprietary binary programs are easier than ever to deal with. I can run any CP/M or C64 program on my desktop Linux computer using free emulators. This was indeed a "hard problem", but today it is mostly solved.

Have you used Javascript lately? Modern optimizers are very good. With WebGL you can use Javascript to run code on the GPU.