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How timely - Last night I logged onto vzw to check on my account status and saw a link for "reduce your network usage via FreeBee" - a Verizon version of "Binge On"

Intrigued I poked around and noticed that Hearst media and AOL are the primary companies offering content (Just look for the Bee). But I couldn't figure out how it worked - was VZW inserting the "bee" into my web stream - was it an ad on the websites. It isn't offered if you are on Wifi for instance.

Then in the FAQ I saw this strange comment: "A brand may direct encrypted content through a proxy in order to enable FreeBee Data. If the proxy option is chosen, the content will be temporarily unencrypted so the brand can be billed for the data usage."

Proxy? What proxy? Is VZW doing MIM stream editing? Using the gov't SSL keys? Proxy at the business level? or consumer to web level?

From ArsTechnica: "Hearst Magazines, AOL (which is owned by Verizon), and Lantern Software's GameDay"

http://freebee.verizonwireless...
http://freebee.verizonwireless...
http://arstechnica.com/busines...

...another idiot that dropped his drone onto a kid at a movie theater. ...

No argument about being vigilant and careful. As any human endeavor flying involves a certain risk.

But we should not forget that say toy-related emergency treated injuries of children in the USA are in hundreds of thousands each year http://www.cpsc.gov/Global/Res...

But no one speaks about introducing the 30 miles no-Toy Musical Instruments zone around a city, or a registration of all the Inflatable Toys.

Let alone the 2D traffic accidents, tap hot water and barbecue burns, etc. which are massive, and where something could be done to reduce the tragic numbers.

Amazon Web Services. We can help you do cool and important things. At least until Jeff Bezos becomes aware that you're doing cool and important things...

Had to check (conflict of interest and all),and sure enough if they aren't using AWS they are on Google https://www.robtex.net/?dns=ne...

Yet the way I see it is Netflix is an edge server, they have different standards to follow; the Net neutrality act exempts edged servers from traffic shaping.

Yet a Bill pasted in 2015, pretty much addresses any feuding between the two. "Online Competition and Consumer Choice Act" does address edge servers. "would require the commission to issue regulations that "prohibit a broadband provider from entering into an agreement with an edge provider under which the broadband provider agrees, for consideration, in transmitting network traffic over the broadband Internet access service of an end user, to give preferential treatment or priority to the traffic of such edge provider over the traffic of other edge providers."" http://arstechnica.com/tech-po...

  This could get good.

UAS pilots are not idiots, if I hear a low flying manned aircraft I immediately dive to the ground. It is not like a stupid bird.

You may very well not be an idiot, you might operate your drone with intelligence and common sense and are aware of how to fly your UAS safely. If so good for you, way to set the example!

But the problem is not you, it is those idiots that do not think about the consequences of their actions that is making your hobby look like shit. Like the moron that flew his drone into a fire zone causing the fire fighters to ground their flights. Or another idiot that dropped his drone onto a kid at a movie theater. Or that one genius that crashed his drone on the white house lawn. These guys are the problem and who are getting everyone so riled up about drones.

So I want you to do yourself and every other responsible drone operator a favor: If you are out flying with your buddies and you see or hear about them about to do something stupid, go over there, grab them by the shirt, and slap the fucking taste out of their mouth. Because they are doing more harm to your hobby than a thousand regulatory busybodies ever could.

UAS pilots are not idiots, if I hear a low flying manned aircraft I immediately dive to the ground. It is not like a stupid bird.

You may very well not be an idiot, you might operate your drone with intelligence and common sense and are aware of how to fly your UAS safely. If so good for you, way to set the example!

But the problem is not you, it is those idiots that do not think about the consequences of their actions that is making your hobby look like shit. Like the moron that flew his drone into a fire zone causing the fire fighters to ground their flights. Or another idiot that dropped his drone onto a kid at a movie theater. Or that one genius that crashed his drone on the white house lawn. These guys are the problem and who are getting everyone so riled up about drones.

So I want you to do yourself and every other responsible drone operator a favor: If you are out flying with your buddies and you see or hear about them about to do something stupid, go over there, grab them by the shirt, and slap the fucking taste out of their mouth. Because they are doing more harm to your hobby than a thousand regulatory busybodies ever could.

Google recently switched to openJDK, so they are good now, that is they are no longer infringing.

Google recently switched to openJDK, so there's no longer any legal reason for them to switch. They are now protected by the GPL (they weren't before).

The Deuteronomic requirement to stone to death anyone wearing cotton/polyester clothing, for example?

Actually a somewhat thoughtful opinion, despite the fact that religion is absurd as a concept.

https://arstechnica.com/wp-con...

The fetishization of vinyl is for posers. The same kind of posers who fetishize $10,000 audio ethernet cables.

What matters most is mastering. A poorly mastered vinyl release will sound like shit compared to a quality mastering on CD or even an MP3. And then there is degradation and convenience, digital never degrades and is easily copied, shared, backed-up and stored. Given an identical mastering, the only reason to prefer vinyl is if you care about something other than audio quality.

''When this court tries to make sense of what Mr. Keys did for a limited period of time, it was out of pique, it was out of anger at his former employer,'' US District Judge Kimberly J. Mueller said at the conclusion of the hours-long hearing.

''He arrogated to himself the decision to affect the content of a journalistic publication. In practical effect, at least with respect to the Los Angeles Times webpage, the effect was relatively modest and did not do much to actually damage the reputation of that publication. But the intent was to wreak further damage which could have had further consequences.''

As Ars reported earlier, Keys was accused of handing over a username and password for former employer KTXL Fox 40's content management system (CMS) to members of Anonymous and instructing people there to ''fuck some shit up.''

[The prosecutor] in his final statement to the judge, lambasted Keys, pointing directly at him several times.

''This is a person, for whom his own aggrandizement, is willing to attack any institution that threatens him: the press, broadcast media, print media, law enforcement, the jury system,'' he said. ''This wasn't mischief, this was a rage driven by profound narcissism.''

Journalist sentenced to 24 months in prison after hacking-related conviction

No, they are refusing to forward extortion notices because they have no legal requirement to. Whether or not the entity issuing the takedown request is the rightsholder or is authorized to act on the their part is covered by the DMCA request. The issuer has to affirm under penalty of perjury that they have the right to issue the notice, and it's no skin off the IPS's nose if it's not true -- all things being equal, they would prefer invalid claims.

The reason that they don't want to forward claims is because [a] it costs money, [b] people who infringe often tend to be more willing to pay for faster connections (or even better, excess bandwidth charges), and [c] they are legally obligated to terminate the services of repeat infringers (17 USC 512 (i)(1)(A), see also[pdf]). Currently, there is no actual legal definition of what constitutes a 'repeat infringer', nor what kind of disconnection policy meets the DMCA guidelines. As noted in TFA, the media industry has been pushing heavily for "three strikes" laws and policies: this is a direct response. It's something of a game of chicken, the ISPs are saying that if the media companies want to play hardball, the ISPs will stop forwarding notices, and then presumably cross their fingers and hope that Congress doesn't want to 'clarify' the law. It should be interesting to see how it plays out: I suspect whoever bought the best Congresscritters will win.

I want you to give me an API so I can write my own interface.

I wonder if something like Microsoft's AI Bot API may eventually be able to do the sort of things you're perhaps thinking of. Granted, probably not on a mobile device yet, but I think this idea may have long-term potential for accessibility. Chat programs are becoming almost a platform unto themselves, so if this can leverage some of those capabilities with customized, programmable bots to help perform tasks by voice command, I could see it being quite handy for allowing very deep customization of voice command systems - at least in theory.

User Statistical at Ars Technica explained it nicely:

Normally Kepler (in K2 mode) uses the pressure from sunlight combined with the two remaining reaction wheels to maintain orientation. It still does need periodic thruster usage but the heavy lifting is done by solar pressure and reaction wheels which makes the propellent usage very efficient. However it is a complicated and precarious balancing act. It needs full instrumentation, computer operation, and periodic updates from Earth to work.

When it goes into emergency mode it falls back on 100% station keeping thrusters because that is simpler although far more expensive in terms of fuel. They don't know exactly why it went into emergency mode but for whatever reason Kepler believed it could not maintain orientation without it.

In emergency mode it has to expand propellent because without some station keeping it would begin to tumble uncontrollably. If you have a spacecraft millions of kms away from Earth, tumbling out of control with its communication array no longer pointed at Earth you will probably never regain control. So it is a last ditch effort to maintain proper orientation on the hope that command & control update can fix the problem. It begins "looking" for an command & control signal from Earth (using propellent to orient the spacecraft). If/when it finds it, it then tries to keep that orientation using 100% station keeping thrusters regardless of fuel consumption. It will continue to do so until standard operation is restored or it runs out of fuel.

About Kepler's K2 mode:

Kepler's Second Light: How K2 Will Work | NASA

Yes, ability to disable secure boot is required for windows 8, but for windows 10 it is not required anymore.

Right, that is a decision for the manufacturer of the hardware to make. Just like Google doesn't force all handset manufacturers to have rooted systems and unlocked bootloaders.

<sarcasm>And enough with books and music and television and movies. Everyone should stay in their basement and never expose themselves to anyone else's creative works, much less celebrate them!</sarcasm>

I think 110010001000's idea is supposed to be that people are supposed to write their own "books and music and television and movies", put them under a license intended for sharing, and celebrate them instead of celebrating proprietary works. It's like e-sports: people take up a proprietary video game as a sport and then act all surprised when the game's publisher wants to tax or even shut down tournaments under its exclusive right to perform the work publicly. This realization about e-sports is why I quit the Tetris fan community in June 2012 after learning of a successful lawsuit by The Tetris Company.

Sharing stories and celebrating them is a fundamental part of human interaction.

Then do so within the boundaries of the law. Instead of misappropriating the industry's productions, make your own with proverbial blackjack and hookers.

Actually, they are backing the Europa mission, which is far more useful than landing on the moon in my opinion. http://arstechnica.com/science...

This isn't some new capability, nor is it exclusive to the FBI. Hackers and script kiddies have turned it into an underground industry primarily aimed at spying on young women.

If you don't use your webcam, you'd be stupid not to cover it with tape. Comey isn't doing it because he knows the government can use it to spy on him as TFA and summary implies. He's doing it because he knows the emperor has no clothes and anyone can use it to spy on him.

I have a big problem with joining up with a bunch of raging assholes.

But working with this http://arstechnica.com/informa... guy is okay?

Methinks thou dost proteste too muche!

Yes, ability to disable secure boot is required for windows 8, but for windows 10 it is not required anymore.

Either way, makes no big difference, as there are Microsoft signed secure boot loaders for Linux. But you get more hassles though.

AWS, Azure, Google Cloud etc. are practically giving away capacity to get companies hooked on their services.

I don't know about the others, but AWS is very profitable to Amazon (just in case you missed the news):

Amazon on the whole is famous for operating with razor-thin margins, but AWS is making a good profit. AWS had $7.9 billion in net sales in calendar year 2015 with an operating income of $1.9 billion, according to the company's latest earnings statement. Revenue and profit accelerated toward the end of the year, with $2.4 billion in sales in Q4 and $687 million in operating income. AWS would just need to boost sales to $2.5 billion a quarter to hit $10 billion in 2016.

Well, I didn't entirely remember the two-year delayed increase for grandfathered customers until I read through this post... but upon reflection, I did indeed read about this, two years ago when it was originally announced. The problem is, when I read about it then , the price increase was supposed to be from $7.99 to $8.99 for existing customers. So which is it, really? Did plans change at some point, or did someone get their facts wrong?

Signals intelligence, voice prints and cell phone data they can.
New FOIA Documents Confirm FBI Used Dirtboxes on Planes Without Any Policies or Legal Guidance (MARCH 9, 2016)
https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/...
Related background info on the methods "Feds gather phone data from the sky with aircraft mimicking cell towers" (Nov 14, 2014)
http://arstechnica.com/tech-po...
The Feds Are Now Using ‘Stingrays’ in Planes to Spy on Our Phone Calls (11.14.14)
http://www.wired.com/2014/11/f...
Dirtbox (cell phone) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/...
ie mapping out all cell users in vast areas of the US in a domestic collect it all database without needing to ask any court or request tech help via traditional telco staff.

It's become obvious that Ebola is relatively easy to contain once you get on top of it. It can't be transmitted except by direct contact with someone who's sick with it. Zika on the other hand is carried by mosquitoes and anywhere the type of mosquitoes that can carry it are endemic it will be a threat. That includes much of the southern USA. Ars Technica had a recent story about how Zika may infect nerve cells in any age person. Link.

"Genetic engineering is something entirely different. Clearly, genetic engineering does NOT use mother nature's tools, but rather a toolkit which isn't found anywhere in nature. "

Oh look, another one who hasn't heard that transgenic processes have now been found in nature.
http://arstechnica.com/science...

My links were unfortunately deleted from my post above, but here:
http://arstechnica.com/informa...
https://bgr.com/2016/02/10/win...
http://www.forbes.com/sites/go...
https://theintercept.com/2015/...

Skype was already switching away from P2P when they were acquired. This was fairly widely reported. Their P2P algorithm sucked, and was responsible for at least a couple global service outages. It just didn't scale as well as dedicated hardware.

Linus Torvalds: I will not change Linux to “deep-throat Microsoft”

Maybe if Microsoft offered to bring back Skype, and make it "just the tip"?

it is! you're supposed to make "apps" not games.... according to ars; "anyone" can obtain $19 dev account and turn their console into a developer unit; but GAMES still requires id@xbox which is a separate registration and program, with qualifications. it's not open to 'everybody'.

Today Microsoft today accidentally re-activated "Tay," only to be forced to kill her off for the second time in a week. Microsoft apologizes for her behaviour. Tay "went on a spam tirade and then quickly fell silent again," Microsoft told several media outlets today. "As part of testing, she was inadvertently activated on Twitter for a brief period of time." http://arstechnica.com/informa...

Oh, for pity's sake, AlecStaar--can't you save your nonsense for a story where it's at least slightly relevant?

All joking aside, I have to respond to this:

There's no particular evidence that she's a "corrupt, serially lying manipulator" other than the intensive media campaign saying so being put forth by the Republican machine.

You mean the Republican machine running the FBI that is investigating actual classified information found in the emails?

The FBI has at no time concluded that Hillary is a "corrupt, serially lying manipulator". So far, what they seem to have concluded is the she used a private e-mail server, a practice also done by previous secretaries of state (including ones working for Bush), a practice that was not illegal at the time; and that some e-mails on that server were later reclassified as classified information. but was, as it turns out, probably safer on her server than it was on the government's server (which was hacked into in the "biggest government hack ever".)

It is hard to screw up worse than that in the government, and if I did half the shit that is coming out, I would already have been through the court system and locked up for life, but I am not as connected as her.

Since there's no allegation that she actually released classified information to anybody who was not authorized to access it, at worst, she is accused of having had classified information stored in an unsecure location (although that's only an accusation so far; there was no evidence that her server wasn't secure.). The usual punishment for that is that the person who did it has to attend mandatory training.

There is no software on the planet that is more scrutinised and more meticulously developed than software for spacecraft

There's at least one. Software for US nuclear weapons systems. I once watched a USAF nuclear safety audit over the course of a few years. I was thoroughly impressed with the quality of the work.

...and then, as an added assurance to make sure that nothing would slow down the ability to launch missiles, the code to launch missiles was set to all zeros, and never changed.

http://arstechnica.com/tech-po...
http://www.theguardian.com/wor...
http://foreignpolicy.com/2014/...

Microsoft is shaking down Android companies harder than Oracle:

http://arstechnica.com/informa...

C# would have been a far worse idea. Fewer developers, libraries, little open source support. Built by the only company more evil than Oracle.

Java is available under a GPL + exceptions license. Google should take this GPL code and use it as a base for a new VM.

They have switched to that now. Amazing how quickly they followed your advice. :)

Sad but true, they are updating the saturn F1 engines for the SLS. Which is likely to be the most expensive launch system ever conceived
http://arstechnica.com/science...

turns out most people are too uneducated

That's kinda the problem. The public is so uneducated that they make it hard to fund nuclear, which leads to engineers becoming less educated as old-timers retire and universities shut down their nuclear engineering programs because nuclear engineers can't find jobs (unless they go into the Navy, or are some of the very very few that make it into Los Alamos).

So, nuclear gets caught in a Catch-22 where it doesn't get enough funding to support the advancement of technology that would make it safe and reliable enough to compete. Instead, our collective knowledge of nuclear slips as, again, old-timers retire and youngsters pursue something more likely to pay those hideous education loans.

It's good that the stars have aligned to invest R&D into solar and wind. But it's not a good thing to allow nuclear to slip away... there's a lot of research yet to be done, with potentially great payoffs, if it wasn't so politicized by way of a public where a high-school education is becoming more and more worthless, again because of politics. A dumb electorate can be convinced of anything, like how supersonic transport causes skin cancer, and that was back in 1975. Today, politicians earn their pork-fat living by dumbing down science education, I figure to better guarantee re-election by the time the kids turn 21. These are the people who'll turn on Fox News and see "nuclear... bad ; fossil fuel subsidies... good", all because of fancy wine and caviar shared between the Koch brothers and Roger Ailes on a yacht in the Mediterranean.

The problem with nuclear is it requires smart people not only for design and build-out, but also for for day-to-day operation and maintenance. A poorly educated public is bad for all of this. But fail to keep educating and innovating in this technology, and it slips away (or goes overseas), and that sucks for us all.

It is perhaps even stranger considering the gender disparity in tech, where engineering teams tend to be mostly male. It seems like yet another example of female-voiced AI servitude, except this time she's turned into a sex slave thanks to the people using her on Twitter.

Really, that is what the writer is going with, that the male researchers just wanted to develop another female sex slave program? Instead of the real reason which is that the internet is full of assholes and the developers should anticipate them and not allow random people to have her repeat what they said. These articles from Ars Technica and the Guardian gives a much better explanation of the issues, namely many people used Tay's "repeat after me" programming to have it spout racist rhetoric. The other organic responses were the result of people attempting to game the AI learning, something Microsoft should have anticipated but was again not an intended result. Honestly the telegraph should be ashamed of their article, they attempted to use projection and bias instead of honest reporting in order to generate more readers.

It's already done on Cisco equipment so why not servers?

The legend is that they're copying off the NAND area. Basically, you can then brute force the phone as often as you want.

You have 9 bad attempts. Then before you try the tenth, you copy the NAND back from before, in effect you reset the counter to 0. And you keep banging away.

This won't work with newer phones with a Secure Element.

So, there's no hack to share. Apple has already designed around this particular exploit.

I was thinking the same thing...

(for those who haven't heard: http://arstechnica.com/informa... )

Maybe the board was waiting for him to be safely on The Other Side before doing this?

Precisely this. Used to be, if you had a sizable record collection (vinyl, CD, what have you), that was a big deal and people would want to look over your stuff; your investment was around ~300 ~400 dollars US for 200 discs, and that might take a few years to build up. Now, everyone with internet access has close to, if not over, millions of choices for almost nothing. If you use ad blockers and get your music from YouTube, you don't even have to deal with a sales pitch in return for free-as-in-beer tunes.

Interesting thing though, one article points out that vinyl has outsold streaming. My 13-year-old is part of this movement back to the old-is-new.

Not this generation.

At launch, it was losing money

A year later it was still losing money.

Only in 2014 did they stop losing money.

They sold 2/3 of the consoles before they stopped losing money. Therefore, the console lost money over it's lifetime (before you count game sales).

Do they still send fingerprints of everything you display on them to the vendor for some sort of undesirable purpose, with an implementation lousy enough to be a network hazard?

Hey Derek, here's some of the groundbreaking, really cutting edge "amazing solutions for real people in the real world" that Facebook has been working on lately:

Facebook explains that it is totally not doing racial profiling

I completely get why you're so turgid about them.

I don't really get the need for the attitude, if there existed zero evidence for it then I wouldn't mention it, however as you said in my case "don't believe that's intentional" maybe the same can be said about the harshness in your comment. But I assume it was, but you kinda covered it up by kinda stating being too harsh may not be valid because my "lies" wasn't intentional so whatever.

Over to the posts.
The stuff I've seen HAS BEEN lower performance on SteamOS. As for WHY that's is the case I don't really care. The main reason reason people would be against switching OS would likely be lack of applications, in this case the games they are or want to be playing, the second reason for gamers would likely be for lower performance if they switched. Lower performance may cut it for some ideologists but it won't cut it for the majority which focus about THE GAMES and not the operating system.

There's what is now old tests of early versions of SteamOS, maybe I really shouldn't use those.
Here's one on Arstechnica from 13th November 2015, it shows performance for ValveÂs own Source-based games:
http://arstechnica.com/gaming/...
SteamOS 2.0 vs Windows 10:
Portal: 107.1 vs 146.2 FPS
Team Fortress 2: 89.2 vs 114.3 FPS
Left for Dead 2: 49.1 vs 50.1 FPS
DOTA 2 (Source 2 version?): 60.0 vs 70.6 FPS.

They also cover Metro: Last Light Redux:
Min settings, SteamOS 2 vs Windows 10: 40.0 vs 50.5 FPS
Max settings, SteamOS 2 vs Windows 10: 4.2 vs 9.5 FPS
and Middle-earth: Shadow of Mordor:
Lowest, SteamOS 2 vs Windows 10: 61 vs 95.5 FPS
Low, SteamOS 2 vs Windows 10: 55.3 vs 87.0 FPS
Medium, SteamOS 2 vs Windows 10: 42.1 vs 63.3 FPS
High, SteamOS 2 vs Windows 10: 39.2 vs 50.7 FPS
Very high, SteamOS 2 vs Windows 10: 35.9 vs 46.9 FPS
Ultra, SteamOS 2 vs Windows 10: 14.6 vs 34.5 FPS

Phoronix, 6th August 2015, test performance of Ubuntu OpenGL vs Windows 10, http://www.phoronix.com/scan.p...:
OpenArena, slight lead for Ubuntu, at most by 12.4%.
Xonotic, massive lead for Windows, at most 344.9% faster.

Arma III about the same in the clip you pointed out I'd say, but maybe I would had preferred the Linux version anyway because it's the slowest parts of the game-play which matter the most.
Googled for Total War on Steam OS and Windows and found this of TW: Attila which shows better performance on SteamOS: https://www.youtube.com/watch?...

16th November 2015, SteamOS vs Windows 10:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?...
Geekbench: Winner Windows 10.
Unigine Heaven: Winner Windows 10 (46.5 vs 48.8 FPS.)
Borderlands 2: Winner Windows 10 (34.1 vs 38.6 FPS.)
Metro: LL: Winner Windows 10 (37.5 vs 42.3 FPS.)
Alien: Isolation: Winner Windows 10 (46.8 vs 54.2 FPS.)
Shadow of Mordor: Winner Windows 10 (~42 vs ~47 FPS.)

8 February 2015, CS:GO:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?...
Kinda a wash, either side leads at times.

As for Vulkan:
17 February 2016: http://www.anandtech.com/show/...
Fury X:
OpenGL: 51.8 FPS
Vulkan: 56.9 FPS (beta)
DX11: 97.8 FPS
980Ti:
OpenGL: 62.6 FPS
Vulkan: 65.8 FPS
DX11: 91 FPS

Not on topic but somewhat related I think the performance using DX12 in Gears of wars was worse too? Or was it just that AMD cards performed worse with that version? (It is a GameWorks title.)

As I said with completely new games and engines from people who know what they are doing that may change but as is anyone who owns The Talos Principle who were exited about Vulkan support and who hopped for even bet

NSA is way ahead of you here, Sparky. See this article for details - note the article is 3 years old as of this posting...

http://www.slate.com/blogs/fut...

http://arstechnica.com/tech-po...

Microsoft seems to be trying to co-opt every other platform to fill the empty user space that is Windows 10-exclusive. They're supposedly rigging a way for iOS apps to run on Windows 10 (aka "Islandwood"), and they had a plan for Android apps (aka "Astoria") to run on the platform but recently dropped it in favor of Xamarin.

Astoria enabled Android apps written in Java to run on Windows, sometimes with no modifications at all. Xamarin allows developers to share a large proportion of their code between Android, iOS, Windows, and beyond, but it requires that all that code must use .NET, and typically C#.

This seems a little desperate. In the short run, maybe more stuff makes its way into the Windows Store, and salesmen can say "Windows 10 does that!" for any reason you'd stick with another platform. But if the quickest way to develop for the broadest market is not to develop for Metro but instead target a different platform and port it later, wouldn't Metro (or Modern or Windows 10 mobile or Edge, whatever) always remain an afterthought, last to get ported and last to receive bug-fixes?

Microsoft appears to admit that apart from Win32, Windows 10 is a Johnny-come-real-real-lately, but isn't interested in doing the work to develop any killer apps on its own.

Couldn't agree with you more. :)

Part of NASA's problem is it just has too much infrastructure that it really needs to get rid of that would be way too painful for a government-run agency to just close. So it has to keep all of those people and facilities working on something. They make the goals to suit what they possess rather than the other way around. Sometimes that develops useful things. Sometimes it's just absurdly expensive busywork.

Changing the culture is going to require a combination of a White House strategy, a NASA administration, and a sympathetic congress promoting a "reorientation" of NASA. They need to sell off facilities, even if it comes at a loss, and try to route staff stuck on dead-end projects into new projects that are actually meaningful. NASA needs to stay out of the rocket industry and work on the less spectacular - but more meaningful - engineering behind the scenes required for real long-term habitation outside of Earth. Because there's a lot of it to do - decades and decades.

(Here's the things that really drive me crazy...: "The NASA people would say, ‘Come on Lori, you’ve got to talk to Elon because we got out of low-Earth orbit. We’re giving him that, but you’ve got to get him out of long-term, deep space, because that’s ours". This isn't a freaking competition people.... if someone else wants to spend their money to make hardware that is achieving a goal that you have set for yourselves then your response should be, "YEAY! How can we help?")

Microsoft were forced to disclose these parents in a Chinese court. You can read about them here:

http://arstechnica.com/tech-po...