Unless the robot tries to murder me, it's the one with the least consequences of failure. Vehicles could kill all occupants, chefs could poison anyone who eats its produce, and all without a hint of malice or purpose to the act. A robotic spouse wouldn't be likely to poison you since you control access to ingredients, or can at least easily check, rampaging around the house localizes damage, etc.

Of course, I'm differentiating between "spouse" and "Sex-bot," because I wouldn't trust a fully-AI sex-bot any time soon.

I feel it's unreasonable to expect me to check my computer multiple times a day to see if there's an unexpected plan come up for that night. I have less than 100 people friended on Facebook, and maybe a half-dozen fan pages liked, and my feed still moves too quickly for me to note everything that happens over the course of a day unless someone direct messages me. Since my friends all have cell phones, and texting plans, sending out a mass text is easier and more reliable. If you friends are all on facebook, I'm assuming they also all possess phones, so you may want to consider this as something you could suggest?

Two parts: 1. The manager would probably get in fairly deep shit if he gave you a $35 cable for $10, because even they have to answer to a district manager, and discounts like that are looked at pretty heavily.

2. If Best Buy is anything like Staples (where I currently work), then the workers fall in to one of three categories: a)kid trying to work through school. b) guy who just wants a job, and will do absolutely nothing to improve at the job beyond what is demanded by management. c) those who enjoy the job, want to stick with it, and would like to move up the company. Now, training falls in to two sections. The online product knowledge modules that talk very generally about things, and are often a couple years out of date, and practical training on the job by co-workers. Types a and b are unlikely to remember much about the online training, and tend to get things wrong, and c isnt' a terribly common type, so most co-worker training is done by a and b types as well. Hell, I had a customer in looking for digital projectors, which I knew shit-all about, and he was kind of pissed when he figured that out, but then we ended up spending about 10-15 minutes chatting so I could learn more and not be such a dumbass.

The problem is that places like Best Buy and Staples have a fairly high product turnover rate for things like TVs, computers, etc. so learning the specifics of every product would be a huge resource investment, most manufacturers don't care enough to provide companies with training modules or materials, and don't pay enough to motivate most employees to do independent investigation.

Dunno where you're at, but the Future Shop down the street from me still has their Rocketfish cables. Still a ripoff compared to monoprice, though.

Anecdote time! I wanted to buy a blu-ray player, FS had a really good deal going on, so I figured "Eh, why not?" Go in, guy goes through the whole thing, and we get to the point where it's basically check-out time. He mentions it doesn't come with an HDMI cable, so I'll need to get one. Didn't know about monoprice at the time, but I did know about Monster. And you know what? First cable he showed me was Monster. I damn near walked out on the sale right then, but instead I just said no. He showed me three other brands before finally showing me the cheap Rocketfish cables. It's been nearly two years now, and that cable's still working. So, Rocketfish cables are okay if you need one now, but you'll probably have trouble getting one if you're not insistent. Man, the guy just looked crushed as he showed me cheaper and cheaper cables.

$80 for a eight foot HDMI cable from Monster here in Canada. For comparison, the same place that sells Monster for $80 has a house brand that's $30 for the same length.

Thank you for that. I'm not even American and I realize that the USPTO has a massive job that would be ridiculously difficult even with infinite funding, simply because of the limited number of hours in a day, the volume of patents they receive, and the range of topics covered that each have a gigantic body of work contained within that could supply prior art or previously patented ideas, not to mention that if someone's not familiar with a field, the novelty/obviousness of something can change.

How about that Republican guy who kept condemning homosexuality, but was caught with a male prostitute? And his wife was unaware of his proclivities. Well, I suppose I should be more specific, since there's been about a dozen.

That might not be statistically relevant either, but it's pretty damning nevertheless.

No, but I've found a lot of people who do nothing but voice the popular sentiment to get modded "Informative" or "Insightful," when it's quite plainly neither - especially when it's the third or fourth time it's been said.

Hmm, quite interesting. I still find the other AC's post hilarious on a hypocritical scale, but the added perspective is useful. Thank you for the considered, informative reply. While I freely admit I'm very tired of the prevailing attitude I constantly see around the 'net that Google can do no wrong, I certainly don't think them worse than most any other company, and better than a great deal of them. Constant demonstrated antipathy towards any company is rarely helpful.

Pot, meet kettle.

Is still not better, just what you're used to using now. Honestly, I flip between Google Search, Bing, and DuckDuckGo, depending on what I'm looking for, and how I'm feeling. Bing gives me most of what Google does, but with slightly different relevance algorithms, which is nice, since Google sometimes has a rather insane amount of irrelevant pages that have been GSEO (Google Search Engine Optimized), but they've not been BSEO'd. DuckDuckGo is a little quirky, but good.

So you're saying programmers are lazy fucks who don't consider the consequences of their actions, and can't be trusted to figure out anything for themselves. Or that's how it reads, any way. I'd like to disagree with that.

Your scope isn't nearly broad enough. Change programmers to "95% of people" and you've got it about right.

Technically, it's on the 3DS, so the answer to your question is "You'd snap the system shut to put it in sleep mode, thus suspending the scene until you return." However, I understand your point and agree.

I know some Americans think Canada's basically Communist, but dude, there's still a difference between us and China.

Nice troll. "Take one life to save one life." Remember, if this is a cancer cluster, and it is caused by something in the TSA environment, they're literally killing themselves so that you can feel a sense of security. And most would argue that you cannot prove the scanners are effective, thus you're trading their lives for imaginary safety. If you're willing to kill just to feel safe, wouldn't it be better if you just picked up a gun, went to $terroristsourcedujour and started shooting?