The studios seem happy enough to offer streaming rental options via Amazon, digital cable, Vudu, and similar services. There are also free ad-supported options (Hulu, Crackle, Popcornflix). What these have in common is constant per-view (or per-rental-period) revenue. So they're not opposed to streaming per se; my guess is that Netflix wants to keep the same low flat rate subscription system they have now, and either studios aren't willing to work with that model, or they're demanding licensing fees that would force Netflix to raise its subscriptions rates unacceptably.

Look at the pay options: digital rentals are at least $2 USD each, often $5 or more for HD content. How would a movie studio ever agree to let Netflix stream the same content, when they're getting a cut of several dollars per rental per film via other providers? Even if Netflix offered a "premium" $10/mo streaming add-on option, once you watched 2-3 films the studios would be losing money compared to the other services.

As much as we all hate the MPAA and draconian copyright legislation, the future of easy & legal digital delivery of content is in the process of arriving. There are still caveats: DRM and excessive copyright terms are still problems, IMHO the price is too high (I'd buy at $1/rental, $5 is too much, but ultimately the market will decide).

Netflix is the 800-lb gorilla in the room of streaming, and they're trying to throw their weight around, but the studios have discovered other options to deliver their content on their terms, and won't play Netflix's game.

At least, that's how I see it - I don't have any inside info so it's all speculation.

To the best of my knowledge, this is only true of the embedded & mobile Netflix streaming software - the sole purpose of which is streaming, so it makes sense. These apps aren't the full Netflix queue management system, they're just about streaming, so when you're searching for something to stream, why bother you with search results that don't do you any good? If you search on the Netflix website while viewing the "Watch Instantly" page, non-streaming titles do appear in the results (as you'd expect).

Your talk of "Virtual DVDs" and limited rentals is just overcomplicating the question, "Why don't the studios allow Netflix to stream everything?". And the answer is the same to every question of the form "Why doesn't Hollywood...": money. The studios think licensing Netflix to stream recent AAA releases (at the rate Netflix wants to pay) will undercut their physical disc sales and reduce profits. In Hollywood, money is everything, and right or wrong, studios won't make a business deal if they think it will lose money. It may very well be the case that the studios don't understand the streaming business and underestimate its revenue potential, but there it is.

Remember, Netflix streaming was originally limited to a certain number of hours per month, and this cap was lifted (although I assume that had more to do with Netflix infrastructure bandwidth capabilities than licensing). You should check out Amazon Prime - for a similar price to Netflix streaming, they offer some items for free, but also allow you to pay to rent or buy digital copies of more recent or popular films not available for streaming on Netflix. This is the model preferred by the studios - where they make money off of each individual digital rental. It's a "safer" revenue stream - guaranteed per-view income - than a riskier "all-you-can-eat" package deal, although obviously favorable terms could theoretically be negotiated for that.

So your question should actually be, "why doesn't Netflix negotiate with the studios to offer a premium add-on to their streaming service, so that users can stream recent releases and a wider selection of AAA titles?" which IMHO is a better and more interesting question, and the answer probably lies in Netflix's confidential market research and business plans.

I deny that Computer Science is "the most important 21st Century skill" on the basis that it's not a skill, it's a field of study. The most important skill of the 21st Century is the same one as all the previous centuries: the ability to use your well-formed intellect to make rational decisions. This is what education is for. Learning a trade is generally necessary to earn a living, and maybe college is a good place to do this, but your options and potential will be more limited if you're not educated.

I studied Math and Computer Science in college (my degree is math). Ultimately, the mathematics courses were a better formation for the type of thinking I needed in my career as a software developer (not a dig on the quality of the CS courses I took - they were quite good).

Okay, stupid me, this is why you RTFA first: it specifically discusses this and explains how to submit prior art evidence to the USPTO. /doh

I assume 10 others are asking the same question as I type this, but wouldn't a video demonstrating the tech published weeks before the patent was filed constitute prior art, rendering the patent non-novel and invalid?

It's not just the version number, everyone knows you have to take the version number times download size divided by the square root of length between releases (in days).

They've largely replaced the X-Ray backscatter machines with millimeter wave scanners, and they are very much still in use in the US. You can see where and how they're in use at TSA Status.

I'm glad they've gotten rid of the potentially harmful ones (although I gather the risk is very low); but my primary complaints have always been the gross violation of privacy, ineffectiveness, and government fraud and waste related to the program.

I'm in the process of ripping all my CDs and pressing them onto 78 RPM records, so after the next Carrington event destroys the power grid, I can still listen to "Call Me Maybe" on my spring-motor Victrola.

Because it never hurts to be prepared!

I've been a commuter cyclist in Chicago and always observed the traffic laws out of a sense of self-preservation. Even still, I was almost killed by inattentive drivers several times. My own wife has suffered for years from pain resulting from complications related to losing a tooth after a driver forced her into a curb while riding.

That being said, Chicago cyclists by and large already have total disregard for all traffic laws, so I don't see enacting laws like this here having any effect whatsoever, except perhaps giving police officers fewer opportunities to issue tickets to cyclists, as if that were a thing that ever happened. Now I'm all for common sense improvements to traffic flow, living like I do in a congested city where cycling is popular, but here are some of the other common sense practices of local cyclists that I observe regularly:

1) running red lights and stop signs at full speed without slowing at all
2) riding the wrong way down one-way streets through moving traffic
3) riding at night without any lights of any kind
4) doing 3) while riding the wrong way in traffic
5) doing 4) during inclement weather (once, I couldn't see the guy until he was 10 feet away)
6) running a red light while making a right turn into a lane of moving traffic without even looking (I see this a lot), often causing the cars that would have hit them to swerve in the path of other vehicles.
7) riding on crowded sidewalks and through crowded crosswalks at high speed
8) trying to pass moving buses on the right as they're approaching a bus stop. This happens all the time.
9) passing a line of cars stopped at a red light on the right, only to pull up in front of the line (not to the side), in the crosswalk, forcing the cars to wait behind the bicyclists once the light has turned green until a break appears in the next lane (or oncoming lane if there's only one lane).

I've also been rear-ended while stopped at a stop sign by an inattentive bicyclist, and seen a cyclist enter an intersection from the sidewalk against the light right into the path of a car (the cyclist survived, but I don't think his bike did). This isn't meant as a tirade against bicycling - I love it myself, and I think it's great that Chicago is devoting resources to make it easier and safer - but it's frustrating when the city takes away traffic lanes from cars on a congested road and converts them to bicycle lanes, complete with pylons and special signaling to accommodate bicycles, only to be completely disregarded by the cyclists (see Dearborn St. downtown). There's no give-and-take here. Riders and drivers can work well together when each is considerate of the other, but it seems like it's mostly a one-way street around here, so to speak.

If there's to be a push for cycling as a major means of transportation on busy roads (which it already is), I think it's worth considering licensing tests for bicyclists (as well as traffic law enforcement).

Although the word sister can also mean "of the same type or origin", and is often used in English to describe similar things, especially if they come from the same place. You often hear of "sister ships" or "sister cities", and although these words have gender in other languages, they don't in English (though it derives from gendered languages). I think it's in this sense that the article refers to the "sun's sister".

I was just paraphrasing the study.

I was going to dash off a quick rebuttal, but decided to check Wiki first. See Memory consolidation and Decay Theory. Some research indicates that a disruption during retrieval can alter a memory, but it's somewhat controversial. Either way, studies indicate that recollection reinforces memory. Also interesting is Retrieval-induced forgetting (accessing a memory, while reinforcing it, may cause you to forget related information).

I have learned some new things. Damn you, Wikipedia, I have work to do today!

Fair enough, but if consciousness is by nature an emergent phenomenon of underlying system X, creating a similar consciousness would require duplicating that type of underlying system. We only have one data point for what systems yield consciousness, so there's nothing else to imitate as of yet. From the perspective of computability theory, modern computers are no more powerful than a Turing machine. The physical medium of the "paper tape" is irrelevant to the mathematical model.

When trying to "build a brain" you would of course use different materials or methods to model synapses, neurons, etc.; but you'd still be building the same type of system, capable of dynamic symbolic representation and association, whether in software or hardware. It's possible you could make a more efficient system with optimized aspects (think about Hashlife), but mathematically it's the same type of system.

At least until we know exactly how consciousness comes about, and then we can look at whether other types of systems might yield the same result.

Right - it's not the act of recollection that causes the memory to decay.

Memories are not a sequence of visual images like a film reel; they're associations between "symbols" representing the things you experienced at the time the memory was formed. The more often you think about the memory, the stronger those associations become, and the more permanent this memory - however, the initial impression is not guaranteed to be a perfect record, so details that are incorrectly recorded initially will become reinforced over time as the memory is recalled. Whether a detail is correctly recorded initially depends on how much attention you were paying to that detail and other factors (such as how "intense" the experience was).

So memories do decay, but it's from weak associations, not from more frequent recollection. How does this pertain to consciousness? If human consciousness is a phenomenon of a massively complex system of symbolic representation in the brain, then it's only developed gradually over years of absorbing input and forming connections, and developing an AI with true consciousness basically requires simulating a brain down to a low physical level and having it "grow up" over time. This is both discouraging from the perspective of the technology required, and encouraging in that if we have the technology for neural simulation then the result of artificial consciousness may be reliably achieved.

Your link discusses a partial review of overvotes in January 2001. We've been discussing a more nearly comprehensive review done much later. Try to keep up.