Need not take that long. Remember that line "if you build it, they(he) would come"? Once a new technology is made available to the public, people tend to hack it and tweak it to purposes that were not thought possible till then. Remember the PC kits apple used to sell out of a garage? Or consider the IOS app market.

So imagine someone hooking up Watson to a load of medical books, and then the system can suggest causes and tests to be taken, based on symptoms. Or maybe forecast trends in the financial market... there are applications that already do this, but this one has the potential to do it faster with more sizable chunk of data. It will take just one "angry bird" style success to win the folks over and start the gold rush. It all depends on the kind of support IBM provides or the sort of developer community it manages to foster.

Correction ...Sun is closer to Germany and/or sun is a communist.

Clever arguments... a bit too clever.

I think folks in the energy/power sector are just worried about things turning out the way they did in Germany.

http://hardware.slashdot.org/story/13/08/20/2140215/germany-produces-record-breaking-51-terawatt-hours-of-solar-energy-in-one-month

Well... until and unless you actually want to argue that Germans are better at this stuff than Americans. But I doubt that so I will wait for some more clever explanation and excuses why the Germany story was a one-off and Sun is closer to the sun and/or sun is a communist.

Evolutionary paths.

Insects on average are smaller than most mammals. Mammals too come in all sizes.

Analysis of air trapped in amber fossil shows that oxygen ratio in that period was higher, which may have permitted evolutionary path of such giant creatures.
http://minerals.cr.usgs.gov/gips/na/amber.html

Squishy joints? Considering how cause and effect get frequently confused, it seems more likely that the joints may have became "squishy" in order to support the larger size permitted by the oxygen-rich high-metabolism environment, not necessarily actually the cause.

Do you know how many illegal Bangladeshi immigrants are in India and where?
 

Your indignant vitroil and personal attacks aside, cannot answer where, but majority of them are located in slums in Delhi and Mumbai and other various major cities, and quite a few all over India. How many? As per census difference extrapolation and media reports the number is anywhere between 2 million to 20 million...

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Illegal_immigration_in_India#Bangladeshi_immigrants

Do you think even if all of them were given citizenship and free beer, they will even make 0.05% dent to the number of voters in an Indian constituency?

If congress moves these across to certain key constituencies to rig the election there, hell yes. You could pretty much block the opposition key candidates from even clearing the election. Like I said muslims vote en masse, unlike hindus.

I am not commenting on the feasibility of this strategy. But this IS what congress is attempting. Here are the various media reports btw..

http://www.dailypioneer.com/todays-newspaper/illegal-bangladeshis--pan-out-in-india-to-cement-their-aadhar.html

http://articles.economictimes.indiatimes.com/2012-12-14/news/35820254_1_aadhar-cards-bangladeshi-intruders-bjp-leader

http://www.hindustantimes.com/India-news/Mumbai/15-illegal-Bangladeshi-migrants-held-one-with-Aadhaar-card/Article1-988057.aspx

http://indiatoday.intoday.in/story/aadhaar-cards-supreme-court-uidai-illegal-immigrants-anil-divan/1/311349.html

All of above are very respected and established news medias in India. Not sure if they are flaming racist xenophobic.

Now, you were saying?...

"Bid to control welfare fraud"... that is just the cover story, considering that the system is full of intentional loopholes and bugs. The real reason why the ruling congress party wants this, is due to its relying on the muslim vote bank. Muslims vote en masse in India, based on whichever party is promising more benefits to them, but as of yet muslim citizens of India are a minority in the country.
 

Congress is trying to change this by using this scheme as a backdoor method of providing legitimate identity papers(and thus citienship) to millions of illegal muslim immigrants from neighbouring bangladesh and thus inflating their vote bank. The nearest oppositional rival party BJP has a more pro-hindu stance.

What is the point of passing any bills or laws related to this? It is not like NSA is going to obey the laws in first place, which is the actual problem.

If your government refuses to respect the very constitution that is supposed to give it its power in the first place, and do unconstitutional acts, your government's behavior is not so different from that of Pakistan's previous president Musharraf's imprisonment of all his political rivals during election and then declaring himself to be the "democratically elected representative".

In the meanwhile, Americans continue debating between "republicans" v/s "democrats" and "Bush" v/s "Obama".

The real consequences are already happening. By Brazil making a "noise" about it now, it weakens US position regards other nations disregarding international laws. It runs the risk of say, other nations disregarding their Intellectual Property treaties with US. If US tried any actual actions to prevent this, they would just counter it by demanding punishment of concerned parties. Don't assume that US still has the clout it used to enjoy before. Think of China for example. USA just handed China a license to act in similar fashion against it, and it has by itself, undermined any ethical or moral position it could have had to prevent it.

if you asked ANY criminal, "did you commit this crime", do you honestly think they will say "yes"?

"a witness may have a reasonable fear of prosecution and yet be innocent of any wrongdoing. The privilege serves to protect the innocent who otherwise might be ensnared by ambiguous circumstances."

You can easily solve a social problem with technological features. Just the approach needs to change. Government only needs to push for the switch to autonomous cars instead.

It is supposed to explode first, I think.

http://www.fiveeightforums.com/threads/list-of-things-in-china-that-explode.90930/

The thing is, that if you had a gun, and I had one too, then if I was a criminal, instead of checking the local state laws, I would simply opt to shoot you dead, instead of running the risk of being shot dead. Hell, the easy availability of guns would make me do so just to play it safe, even if I did not see a gun in your hand. Who knows? You might pull one hidden away, and shoot me. Criminals elsewhere? They would loot you but have no pressing need of seeing you dead, unless you can identify them.

For the record, you do not get a huge number of folks getting clubbed/stabbed to death either, on a daily basis in Japan. Nice straw-man.

And pray thee, why would your average thug want to actually beat you to death? Rob you, sure. Knock you out maybe. Run up a murder charge, when your intent was just robbery?

It must be an American thing to value your possessions more than your life? Or perhaps the American thugs are more psychotic than thugs elsewhere.

Actually, if the other guy has a gun too, logically your best bet at survival is to shoot and kill him first. If you do NOT do that, AND you are trespassing, you stand a high chance of being killed... especially because US laws allow the home-owners to kill you.

If you are trespassing, and the other guy does NOT have a gun, then you have the option of NOT murdering him since you yourself are at no risk. He will lose his stuff, but you will probably not risk a death sentence, if you were masked and he couldn't identify you.

Socio-economics do not matter. If we both had a gun, and you were pointing at me, I WOULD shoot first, to save myself. And burglars are the ones who would shoot first, since you are legally allowed to kill them anyways.