If that is the case, then perhaps we should catalog those sort of actions and determine if they counter-mind the intent of the system of checks and balances. If the population feels that they do, we should push for an amendment to prevent such behavior in the future. Until then, don't hate the player, hate the game.

I understand what you are saying here, but this is effectively a semantic argument. A government action is not officially unconstitutional until a court engages judicial review and declares it to be the case. And yes, it may be a court in the far future, but that doesn't change the fact that the operation is tacitly condoned until that ruling is made. If a future court did declare the things that took place to be unconstitutional, my personal opinion on the matter of the appropriateness of his pardon might change.

If so (and I'm not saying it is or isn't), it sounds like that's a much much bigger problem. We should srsly fix that.

Yeah, the DC metro is currently getting worried about that last bit because of shutdowns related to massive repairs it's undertaking. Although that's just one of a long list of problems with that system.

Germany is pretty decent with using renewable energy sources. The sources I can find say it's over 25% and rising. Electrified rail may be a better way to go efficiency-wise, but that requires running a bunch of copper along existing railways; and mining copper and then purifying it via electrolysis takes quite a lot of energy. So at least for medium-term, hydrogen makes sense.

You seem to indicate in the comments that you can't exactly point out what these problems are that we should be solving, or what sort of solutions we might come up with to solve these problems. Innovation constantly has the same problem. Two things drive innovation: identifying the root cause of something out there needing improvement, and other innovations. The way you come up with new stuff is by being aware of new technology and innovations, and being aware of problems that these innovations could apply towards. This is extremely difficult, and often massively speculative.

If you start to innovate by first trying to identify a problem, then with enough investigation, you'll find out that the problem hasn't been solved yet for darned good reasons. There's often a topic that gets discussed along the lines of Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur's Court: What could you "invent" to change the world if you suddenly found yourself trapped a few centuries in the past?

Lots of knowitall people will show up and claim things like they'd be able to build a working steam-engine in the early iron-age. But no, even among talented engineers, most of them couldn't. And it's not just because they don't remember how to build one; it's because the state of metal fabrication was such that you wouldn't be able to afford the sheet metal needed to make the boiler; and even if you could; there's a good chance you'd have a boiler explosion. Also, you'd need to build a decently high precision metal lathe; which again, would require massive resources.

To solve something, you need a problem, you need a solution that will actually work (which is an uncertainty until you've implemented the solution), and you need the resources, either acquired by yourself, or someone who you've convinced to invest in your idea to both pay for the resources needed to make the solution, and that includes enough money to cover your basic survival needs while implementation takes place.

So, finding a solvable problem is hard, knowing the solution to the problem is hard, the implementation is usually hard, because it tends to involve unknowns, and finding backing is hard. Compare that to a company willing to pay you enough money to buy a house and raise a family for doing something useless like re-implementing Candy-crush so that it works on your smart-fridge. So some people choose comfort, some choose to fight the good fight. Among those people, some of them have selected a problem that will be solved better by someone else, or a problem that isn't nearly as big of a problem in the world as they though. Some people will have a solution that turns out to fail. Some will have a working solution that depends on an innovation that won't exist for decades to come. Some people will have a great problem and a working solution, but they can never communicate their ideas to someone to the extent that they are willing to back the endeavor.

So yeah, we aren't solving important stuff because pretty much by its very nature, important stuff is Hard to fix, or it would've already been fixed.

Which things were declared unconstitutional by the judicial branch? Because I think the answer is none.

Can we just stop linking to anything from Daily Mail on Slashdot. It's a rag. If Daily Mail is the best source that can be found discussing a study, it pretty much means that the study isn't worth discussing here.

"Study debunks theory that self-driving cars will make people more productive" in big bold letters at the top. No. This study doesn't do that at all.

You are trying to sensationalize to get views, Daily Mail. This should not be encouraged; not here at least. Slashdot's reader base is smarter than this shit.

"I'm pretty sure if I ever took a trip on an airplane, I'd be far too busy looking out the window making sure we don't fall out of the sky to get any work done!"

Why would anyone sue someone who didn't have any money? That's just silly.

Rules tend to be different when it's non sexualized photos of an infant. That's likely the case here.

My god that headline was tough to parse.

This is the next thing to verify. If auditors can't find or don't bother to record a log of her completing required training, then if you ask me, she's off the hook, and some other people should be in really big trouble. But if they do find such a log, "I don't recall" doesn't particularly cut it for me; even if she was in a massively busy position that had her dealing with tons of important documents a day. That training is paramount importance.

This article is saying that older versions of windows won't work with new chips. It doesn't mean that Linux or OSX can't use them.

Why are you naming the small portion? This should be titled "51% of FB users don't give a shit about the amount of news in their feed." And then it should not be posted, because this is a completely uninteresting statistic.