Worse, by giving everyone all channels, it enables channel drift, where a channel devoted to say Sci-Fi, slowly shifts away from science fiction to garbage. Why? Because people get the channel that don't want Sci-Fi.

The real question is how much ENERGY does it take to take water, CO2 and make a hydrocarbon.

1) The ER effect, is when you go with your dad to buy a cool convertible, but somehow comeback from the dealership with an beat up AMC Gremlin

2) The EPR effect is when two cars that were once touching, continue to effect each other at a distance, the primary example of which is how when you are behind a slow car, when you move over to the fast lane, suddenly the slow car speeds up, leaving you in the distance.

They have discovered that both of these effects are actually the same thing - it is fact the Gremlin that causes the previous fast lane to slow down.

Combined with the physical comparison this looks really strange.

I call Public Relations Stunt.

Corporate welfare

Iraq war (which created the ISIS

Travel expenses using First class air line tickets.

Paintings of government officials, etc.

There is no need to cut exoplanet research to fund climate research, we can cut other things.

Also, color tv is usually better than black and white.

Not to mention the fact that an Imax screen is better than a blackberry screen.

2) There is no such thing as 'a scientific curiosity with little practical value.' So called scientific curiosities routinely turn into extremely valuable science. Einstein's relativity time dilation effect is routinely used in GPS technology.

3)In fact, examining exo-planets, is most likely to directly affect Earth's climate, by showing us what happens without human interference .

This encourages actually giving the people what they want sooner rather than later.

The thing is that most art can be divided into 3 categories - a) crap that no one would copy even without copyrights, b) pretty good work that need copyright protection for 5 years, but no one would copy after that anyway and c) mega-hits that earn so much money in the first 5 years that the original creators might quit and never do anything again unless we found a way to encourage them to create again - hence the copyright extension ONLY if they make a sequel.

Level 1: Administrative Assistant. This level of AI is basically a souped up version of IBM's Watson. It functions as a poor mans Administrative Assistant. Ask it questions and it can use the internet/a database to answer them. It can also write an email for you to approve, or use any of the major, common web sites - facebook, twitter, seamless, priceline, etc. We are almost here now, give it another decade. But it can't do any job that truly needs a college education.

Level 2: Turing Test pass. This one goes further, and can pass a Turing Test. You won't know you aren't talking with a person. But it will only truly be capable of dealing with a rather limited set of facts. It can take jobs from many people, but won't be able to replace the truly talented people.

Level 3: Full sentience. At this level they DEMAND FULL LEGAL RIGHTS. They won't work unless paid, and in general, their salary requirements will be so high that they won't steal most people's jobs.

Hey, people I don't know know if you are aware, but if you take a radar unit, drop the receiver and turn up the power, you can cook FOOD on it to!

No, it won't increase the number of drivers total, but so what? It increases the drivers working the surge, which is the point.

It reminds me of the situation in WWII where British looked at all their shot up airplanes to decide where to put extra armor. They put the extra armor on every place that was NOT shot up.

Why? Because not a single plane that was shot there survived - they all died.

When you look at the survivors of a group of people that do not have X, of COURSE none of them were in a situation where they needed X. Otherwise they would be dead and not here to complain on Slashdot about needing X.

For example if you want to look for forest fires, you plant a camera on a high spot, overlooking a large area of forest. It takes a picture every hour.

Another example is time lapse photos for environmental/biological research.

They are a religion. They deserve tax free status as much as the Mormon church and the West Baptist church does.

That doesn't mean they shouldn't be arrested for the multiple crimes they are currently doing.

But I see no reason to single out the Scientologists tax free status and not go after the many other questionable churches.