It is listed at 10 pounds.

Wow. Shipping for that DVD must be VERY expensive. They are only an ounce or two here in the USA.

The problem is not who controls the strings, it is what happens when the strings are no longer needed.

A.I. will present little danger (except A.I. the movie, which is so bad it ought to be banned as a WMD) as long as a human can pull the plug. Two decades ago, the Internet was a novelty. Now, the economic consequences would be catastrophic if the Internet suddenly went dark. Similarly if/when A.I. actually arrives, it will be useful and helpful. It will become more and more critical such that a decade or two after it arrives, the act of unplugging it would have catastrophic consequences. So, if Skynet goes bad, then bad things will happen whether you unplug it or not.

To me, what it all comes down to is will. Can an artificial personality actually have a will? Can it become afraid of its own demise? Even if it is theoretically possible, can our researchers and programmers achieve it? Will it be able to reach outside its own programming and decide to eliminate humans? Maybe, maybe not.

On the other hand, once A.I. becomes common, can a rogue state task the A.I. with eliminating all humans on a certain continent? Almost certainly. What happens then is simply a battle of A.I. agents. Who can outsmart the other?

Just my opinion, and worth every penny that you paid for it.

Kingston 480G is $250 right now on the Egg. The 512G crucial is $225.

Sorry, but the Crucial drives have good reviews from the hardware sites, and are actually quite cheap for the capacity. 1/2 terrabyte of solid state for well under $250? Yes, please.

I often work on fancy PCB designs and can always use more resolution and a bigger screen, within limits. There's no point in having a screen so wide that my head is always moving like at a tennis match.

But more resolution makes editing quicker and easier.

Bah. You PC board wusses. Try doing physical design on a custom ASIC (note my sig).

More pixels definitely helps. I have been using a 30" 2560x1600 (Dell for about $1200), but more pixels for half the money seems like a great deal! The down side is less glass itself, so the pixels are smaller. My old eyes would probably have a hard time staring at text at that resolution. Yes, I know that I can change fonts, but I am a strong believer in more monitors in general. You can have the layout on the big glass, and terminal and/or EMACS windows on the side monitors. Now THAT is a productivity boost. The problem is that with your side monitors having a significantly different pixel density from the main monitor make having an ideal font size impossible. Either too big on the side monitors or too small on the big, central monitor.

So, assuming that this IS real, any suggestions on FOSS encryption for those without access to BitLocker?

On a side-note, how could TrueCrypt be actually broken? Even if the encryption is broken, that can be fixed in a later release. There is a LOT of stuff in TC (boot manager, GUI, etc.), and you cannot tell me that ALL of it is bad.

The best trolls are indistinguishable from serious comments.

No, not trolling. Sorry, but there IS a grain of truth in geek misogyny. This toon is a humorous example:

http://www.geeksaresexy.net/20...

Also, when was the last time that you saw a woman depicted in a video game that was less than a "C" cup? Sorry, but if you were to go back a few centuries and give a woman a sword and armor, I am pretty sure that the armor would cover more than about six square inches of her body. Sorry, but in video games, women are sex objects (Metroid is the one notable exception that I can think of). Even as protagonists, they will dress scantily, while standing next to a male character that is so covered in so much armor that you can only see his eyes.

Perhaps part of it is that women are, in general, under-represented in geek culture. Guys are attracted to girls, but there are damn few of them floating around in geek circles. So, they go from being "people" to becoming something closer to a "trophy."

Which is sad because the country has quite a bit of history

It really is a shame. That part of the world used to be known for arts, sciences, and education. I wish that it were still that way...

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Achaemenid_Empire

At hundreds of miles per hour, the car aerodynamics would probably be closer to an aircraft. Why not use some sort of air brake -- little flaps that stick out causing wind resistance? Once you get down to, say, 300 MPH, there are certainly commercial car brakes that can handle that -- NASCAR does it every day.

FYI: Atmel does have ARM processors too, along with all the usual goodies (ADC, DAC, timers, UARTs, etc.). Prices for their ARM stuff starts below $2.00 also.

However, the one thing that Atmel does *NOT* have is a DIP package, which, IMHO, is kind of a big deal. A dip package is probably one of the best things that you can do to be hobbyist-friendly. The other things that hobbyists like are a free tool chain and a low-cost programmer. Atmel does those OK.

Disclaimer: I work for Atmel.

It is also possible that people use guns to defend themselves.

Australia really cracked down on gun ownership back in the 1980's. Since then, murder went down a little, but violent crime in general went up by 40%. For each person NOT murdered, over six hundred additional people are a victim of violent crime...

Yet gun deaths went way down, so I am sure that a lot of people trumpeted success. Too bad that stabbing and beating deaths made up most of the difference.

Because guns don't kill people. People with guns kill people.

Interesting how you think that the link you shared somehow means something. In Russia, guns in civilian hands are VERY scarce, yet the murder rate as a whole is rather higher than it is in the US.

Well, I suppose it makes sense if every gun death is a tragedy, but if somebody is stabbed or beaten to death, it is no big deal.

Clue for you: a person stabbed to death is just as dead as somebody shot to death. But I suppose that does not fit in with your agenda, so you happily ignore that fact.

Ah yes. The famous "gun deaths" myth. Let me use a simple analogy (apparently I will have to keep it simple so that you can follow along).

Suppose that you have a relative that was run over by a red car. So, you go on a "red car" crusade and manage to make red an illegal color for cars. Soon, the number of deaths due to red cars plummets to zero, so you loudly trumpet success. You did, in fact, eliminate deaths due to red cars, but is anybody really any safer?

I feel that it is necessary to point out what is obvious to most people: somebody shot to death is just as dead as somebody stabbed or beaten to death with a club. In fact, if I had to choose, I would rather be shot dead instead of bludgeoned to death.

Russia has far fewer gun deaths due to the fact that civilian guns are very scarce, yet their murder rate is much higher than ours. Would you prefer that our crime statistics were more in line with Russia?

Now, if you want to talk overall violent crime rate and murder rate, that is fair game. Australia make gun ownership MUCH harder a few decades ago. The end result is that their murder rate, which was already rather low, went down a little. However, overall violent crime increased by 40%. I calculated that for each person NOT murdered that the tradeoff is that approximately 660 additional people were the victims of robery, assault, or sexual assault. Yes, 660. That is NOT a typo. I used data from the Australian government and adjusted for population. Gun deaths did indeed go down, but stabbings went up, making up most of the difference.

It is paranoia if nothing of the sort ever happened. That's the definition of paranoia.

Let's assume, for a second, that you WERE actually right about this. Just because is has NOT happened does not mean that we should not be vigilant...

When I was a kid, I used to have this naive trust of the government. I used to thing "the government would never take away the guns of honest citizens." I would also think "the government would never spy on every phone call and mail message." At the time we used regular mail instead of e-mail, but the concept is the same. I also used to think "we would never open a prison where we torture prisoners for information. We are the good guys." Ever heard of Guantanamo? How about the naive though that all citizens deserve a trial before being executed. Obama's statements about the use of drones crushed that sentiment too. I also believe that crap about needing a warrant before a search. That no longer applies if you are even near the border.

Honestly, if you were to tell me that the government was crushing puppies and kittens to make a youth elixir for the political elite, it would not surprise me. The actions of the government (both parties, mind you) over the last couple of decades have eroded all of my trust in the government.

Simply stated, if you want to keep a right, you have to be prepared to vocally defend it.

It is paranoia if nothing of the sort ever happened. That's the definition of paranoia.

1) Some US senators have actually stated that they would take away all guns if it was within their power.

2) Some cities and states have make it very difficult to own guns, and would make it even harder if the courts had not told them to stop.
How can you say that nothing of the sort had ever happened when there are a lot of people trying very hard to make it happen. Just because you don't want to see what some people are trying to do does not mean that it is not happening.

The limiting of magazines after Sandy Hook was suggested not to prevent ALL crimes with guns.

In fact, those laws would prevent almost NO crimes. Similar laws were actually IN EFFECT during the Columbine shooting, which still managed to somehow happen despite these ineffective laws. Most shootings only involve one or two bullets. Magazine limits would have applied to ALL Americans in a futile attempt to lessen damage done by crimes that happen, on average, only about once or twice per year.

Why is it when it comes the 2nd Amendment, you think your gun rights are entirely absolute?

It is NOT absolute. However, if speech were regulated like guns were, the word "fire" would be illegal to say because somebody might yell "fire" in a theater. I would also only be allowed to say 10 words at a time before stopping to take a breath, and to buy a book would require a background check.

I have to get a background check to buy a gun. I have to get a background check, get fingerprinted, and pay over $100 for the privilege on carrying a gun in my pocket. My state has "universal" background checks. We also happen to have a few military bases. So, if a soldier goes overseas, he has to get a background check for his live-in fiancee every month, or they are both criminals -- despite the fact that most dealers will NOT do these checks if no sale is involved. When we had over 200 homes wiped out by a wild fire here a year ago, you can imagine what the "universal background" check did to the people who lost their homes and had no place to store their guns.

Saying that the 2nd amendment is not absolute is completely crazy given how much regulation we ALREADY HAVE on gun ownership in this country. If we had as much regulation on speech as we did on guns, you would yearn for the freedom of speech that they have in China.

Thank you for proving my argument about the gun-proponents stoking fear. They've certainly got you in a tizzy.

Tizzy? No. Concerned? Yes? I explained why my concern is reasonable.

You need some lessons on how to evaluate risk.

No, I do that quite well myself. What evidence do you have that I do not know how to evaluate risk. How nice of you to decide that you are better at deciding MY risk than I am. How presumptuous of you. You do not know me, my neighborhood, or where I live, and yet I suppose that you think that you have more of a right to tell me how I should lead my life than I do. How dare you.

but thanks to Congress banning the CDC from researching gun violence So, is gun-ownership a disease? It is obvious.. being shot is bad for your health. Some people were rightly afraid that tax money was going to support partisan politics, and I agree. Guess what? It is not the ownership of guns that determines the murder rate. I have actually plotted gun ownership vs. murder rate for each state. The resulting graph looked pretty random. Now, there IS a strong correlation between income and murder rate. Why not have the CDC study tax breaks for small businesses, since improving the economy of an area would do MUCH more to stop crime than to ban guns.

I personally would not want to be out with anyone who feels the need to carry a gun, because I don't know what might trigger this person to draw the weapon, and who knows who might eventually get shot.

Yeah, he might do something stupid like stop a criminal from murdering you. If he did that, the average IQ of the world would probably be a little lower.

I live in Colorado, We have had some mass shootings around here. Guess what? All of the successful shootings were in gun-free zones. There was a shooting a New Life church that was stopped by a legal concealed-carry-permit holder. Without this person, many more innocent people would have died. Schools and movie theaters are all "gun-free" zones. I, for one, am quite happy to have responsible people carry guns. You, on the other hand, think that only criminals should carry guns.