It's called a Kindle...

As George Carlin said, don't worry about "saving the world." The world will shake us off like so many bad bugs. We're working to save our own sorry asses.

To me a better poll asks, "How long before a nuclear or biochemical device detonates causing loss of life?" THAT'S the beginning of the end for us.

So much robotics research is to make machines do what people already do. How self-centered. Most of the time this is not useful to solve real problems. But it does get funded, because those with the pursestrings can understand what humans do, but not the best solution for a robot to do a specific task.

In this case, a simple serial port between the machines would have them communicating and finding common ground much more efficiently than all the mics, speakers, and other mechanics needed to emulate speech.

Blame your own incompetence on a well known public entity. A trick as old as the hills.

They seem as whacked out as any of the religious freaks out there...

"The power consumption if these devices is relatively high, and likely too much for a device like a phone" Dead giveaway that this is a marketing story, not a real proven technological renovation.

Good point - it's broader than that. My meaning is to put the technology secondary to the go-to-market strategy, which includes making products people like to use, the ability to control large segments of a particular, bounded market space, and then to extract premium pricing because you offer products that people will pay extra for. The VC name for this is "market power."

Inevitably this results in arguments with engineers, who simply cannot see the merit in the relative prettiness and intuitiveness of a UI, all those damn user experience studies, and why you need an advertising campaign when people will beat a path to your door. Just make a good CLI and be done with it.

The most successful companies win these arguments, because the market and customers pay the way, not the engineers. As far as I can tell Jobs never lost such an argument.

Woz bitched to you over email about the lack of a specific feature? Brush with greatness!!!!!!

Woz is a technical guy and is no longer needed there. Jobs only ever cared about the user experience and that's why Apple dominates.

The plants are still exploding and threatening to melt down.

That's the very next thing I want to watch!

Seriously, this sounds pretty ridiculous...

...it was us that scorched the sky...

If you're stupid enough to admit you turned in your last company for software piracy during an interview, you might want to consider these interviewing tips:

1. Leave out the part about banging your secretary in the closet at the Christmas party. (This is a true story, an executive of a company I used to work for did this and was fired the next work day).
2. Don't mention how you hacked in and read others' emails.
3. Don't mention your recent discovery of youporn.
4. Don't mention that you are a scratch golfer. (Another true story - an underperforming sales rep took his bosses golfing and shot even - they realized he was spending too much time on golf).

Man, that streaming Bill Mahar video will really suck...

...the access would be for the people to communicate and keep it real, that we're the white hats. But of course the access would only be granted to advance a military objective, such as continuing and fanning an uprising perceived beneficial to our interests.

Why stop there? Why not seed blogs, twitter and facebook and initiate a misinformation campaign?