Anyone can register a case for pretty much anything in India. If the police actually arrested the guy, or if he was convicted of blasphemy, it would be worth talking about. Right now, it's just a bunch of nutcases filing a case, not the government. Let's not fall for hyperbole.

What has worked out really well for me is a simple Python script that uses QT to generate movies from individual frames. I've used it for time-lapses, but it could probably be used for stop-motion movies too. Of course, you don't get all the composing features of these tools, but it's free and works exceedingly well.

http://www.ecogito.net/anil/2010/09/howto-create-a-time-lapse-movie-from-a-sequence-of-images/

Android encourages hackers? I'm not sure what phone you are talking about. If it's the Nexus One, then yes. If it's an Android phone from any of the other makers, what you get is a phone that's just as locked down as an iPhone. Parts of it may be open source, but don't fool yourself. If you are going to hack it anyway, what's the difference between that and jailbreaking an iPhone?

Microsoft loves to do demos. Apple and Google love to release products that can be used now.

Cool demos are great, but Google has a product that is used by many millions of people at the same time. They need something that is scalable and usable over realistic internet connections. I'm sure that a company like Google could create a mind blowing demo like that quite easily, (and they might have something like that internally), but I doubt if they will make a released product out of it until it's a practical idea.

It's easy to overlook costs - the main cost will not be for actually making the website, but for maintaining it. By maintaining it, I mean, actually having useful data in the website. The whole trillion dollar stimulus will generate humongous amounts of data which will have to be processed so that we can make sense of it. Collecting it from all the various agencies around the country, processing it and then putting it up on the website will require a lot of employees and that's where the $18 million tag for 5 years comes from. Don't underestimate the cost of data collection.

I could code up a website that looks like Google Maps pretty easily, but it would take a lot of money and time to get all the data that actually makes it useful.

Are they simply licensing the brand and making completely different vehicles to Military Specs?

Why is the parent modded informative? Maybe he intended it as a joke. (or maybe he had a typo)* Anyway, if you google '16 in hex', you get 0x10, not 0x01. *he = he/she/it.

How are sheep more annoying?