I'm sorry, but I just can't get behind that idea.

Dear Science:

I would like the following to be accomplished as soon as possible:

1. Please hook up four of those robotic arms to my brain, and mount the arms on my back.
2. Please develop replacement parts for every piece of the human body, and then put them all together to make a completely artificial person.

Love,
Mike

Yeah, this seriously sounds like the beginning of any number of Doctor Who stories. "Genesis of the Daleks", "The Leisure Hive", and others, I'm sure.

I, for one, rather than welcoming our new Dalek overlords, shall take up arms on the side of the Thals.

Well, that's no excuse. That didn't stop Windows Vista from being considered and released.

Thanks. All kidding aside, for the record, I hate Apple as much as the next Slashdotter. Linux FTW, damn Apple's tyranny, and all that.

Seriously, anyone who's gonna pay $99 per year just to get the iDevTools deserves to have whatever they want posted to the App Store. And screw the whole "Unix for people who don't need a computer" thing.

Well, that's a stupid reason to learn programming. Do you also only think as far ahead as the next fiscal quarter? Do you only have plans to do work tomorrow, with no clue as to what your assignment in two days might be? Are you looking further ahead into the future of your living space than just next month's rent/mortgage payment? Or is programming the only thing about which you think in such small and short terms?

Sure, power over a set of hardware is a nice immediate benefit of learning computer programming. But computer programming is so much more than that. Anyone can throw a python script together. Anyone can leak memory like crazy in C. But to wield that control over hardware in a way that accomplishes a useful purpose requires a good deal of ingenuity and (occasionally) a touch of magic.

Teaching school-age children computer programming necessarily also entails teaching them to think differently. It teaches them to break a task down into its constituent steps. It teaches them to know exactly what they are doing and to know that they know exactly what they are doing. These are life skills that are useful to very nearly anybody, even if they don't use it to control their own hardware. The ones who want to learn it will learn to think as they must, and even the ones who memorize it for the exam will have to retain some of the skills that are necessary to write a program that does nothing more than start, do an arithmetic operation, and exit. The ones who do not learn this will simply fail the class.

This ideal is why programming should be taught in schools. There is so much more benefit than just bending a few digital logic gates to your will.

Must be a new policy against slashvertisements or something. Why can't we just replace the phrase "A legion of Silverlight developers" with the name "Netflix"?

I hear Aperture Science is pretty experienced with these things. I recommend contacting them with any questions you have about testing.

Hey, that's pretty insightful! Sound gets in, but can't get out. Submarine is almost invisible to sonar.

Is this supposed to be the same "Anonymous" that's supposed to have its home on 4chan's Random board? 'Cause none of these qualities bring those users to mind.

I suggest Sony look elsewhere. I'm pretty sure "very carefully planned, very professional, highly sophisticated" and "Anonymous" are mutually exclusive possibilities.

That's what she said!

Why would you rob a game of narrative depth?

Oh man, somebody mod that up!

I...I don't think any other comment in this thread will top the parent!

What complexities?

Ew. No. I refuse. Would never hit that, ever. Especially not nowadays, with her being dead and all.