They don't? Since when?

A PS3 is effectively useless when it isn't up to date with latest greatest firmware. You are not allowed to sign in on the PS3 network without latest firmware, that means no online games, no software updates, no buying new games from the online store etc.

Sony fucked up, they have to clean up their mess.

Or, more accurately in this case, you buy it, we break it.

Probably the same reason they used to charge *YOU* ridiculously high prices for textbooks that they forced you to use, when other cheaper/better alternatives were available. That's what universities do.

I thought it said genetic mutation for less sheep. That could cause problems in alabama...

You've obviously never been to Alabama. Who needs sheep when you have cousins and sisters?

>The idea that technological advance is as inevitable as a law of nature is a fallacy. It usually relies on us getting lucky because somewhere an enabling technology or knowledge was discovered. [...] American Indians never discovered a wheel, by the way.

Actually, the Aztecs *did* invent the wheel. It's just that they only used it for toys. Why? No horses. Go read Guns, Germs, and Steel. Technological advances do rely on *somebody* *somewhere* getting lucky, as well as a social/economic/technological system that can exploit it. With as large as the world is now, that might not be much of a problem. There is a lot of room for new memetic mutations, and we have a very complex ecosystem where new advances can take root.

>Moore's Law is already at its limit. The next step is two-prong: parallelism and hybrid (analog-digital) chips.

Not quite. Moore's Law is about number of transistors per area, not clock speed. I realize I'm slightly out of touch with computer technology, but last I checked, Moore's Law is still holding, even though clock speeds have topped out. Hence the drive towards parallelism.

Don't sugar coat it. Tell us what you think.

Vivendi which owns a majority of stock in Activision-Blizzard is a French company.

Your cell phone service provider is not bound by any confidentiality laws. If they're willing to hand over your records for just a subpoena, or even for a simple request, it's within their rights. Your expectation of privacy doesn't apply to information that you provide a third party unless it's a doctor, lawyer, or spouse.

All I have to say can be summarized by (engineers fall in somewhere between biologist and chemist): http://xkcd.com/435/

Physicists should clearly be at the top. Mathematicians just do abstract physics, which lumps them in with the engineers under "people who make things that are useful for physicists." In other words, a step above chemists.

Afterward, religious kooks rule the...midwest, supplied with arms by east and west coasters to fight a proxy war.

Tonight we're going to look into the future, all the way to the year...2000.

The article kicks off describing how a group of shrill, ignorant parents took the word of an emotionally disturbed 12 year old and decided to push for someone to be fired based soley on that.

You obviously didn't read to the end of the article. The case was based on the testimony of the teaching assistant and every student in the class. Even the review panel believed he said those things. They just assumed he was joking to lighten the mood and that he didn't mean any harm.

Scratch that. It's actually WO/2005/015989. This one also has no granted patents.

As far as I can tell, no patents have been granted from WO2004/003697 which seems to be the most likely application in question.

I think it's actually WO/2003/096799. That's the only one I could find that talked about breeding. It looks like they filed patent applications in the US, the EU, Australia, and Canada. The European application was abandoned, and the others are still pending (you can see them on the "National Phase" tab).

You're right; it's not that easy. I misread the reference. But, aluminum hydroxide is not basic. It's insoluble in water, and it dissolves in strong acids instead of reacting with them. A hydroxide is not always the same as a base.

This is preposterous. Do you really think that hydroxide and water are the same thing??

Aluminum hydroxide is also known as hydrated alumina. If you dry it out (like by heating or using a solvent that dissolves the water), you get alumina. The point was that there isn't a significant difference between aluminum hydroxide and alumina, which was the parent post was implying.