Gene Roddenberry was prescient. He foresaw the technology for universal translation when he incorporated the Universal Translator into his television series, "Star Trek", in the 1960s.

Nonetheless, he failed to identify IBM as the inventor of the precursor to the Universal Translator.

Still, he accurately predicted many techologies: communicator (i. e., cell phone), phasors (i. e., laser cannon, for which the Pentagon has already designated a prime contracror to build the device), and warp drive (hyperdrive, which the Pentagon is now attempting to build).

We should ask the obvious question, "Does Russia have enough helium-3 to sell to us?"

The Kremlin created a large arsenal of nuclear weapons and, even this year, mentioned that Russian scientists have perfected a new type of nuclear warhead.

As for why Washington was not prepared for this shortage of helium-3, we need not look further than the shooting at Fort Hood. A large number of government officials were aware that Major Nidal Malik Hasan had likely converted to radical Islam. He was monitored by the FBI, and his colleagues at the university had observed that he often turned class presentations into a tirade against the West.

Yet, no one questioned his allegiance to the United States of America. No one petitioned a military judge to order his arrest.

We Americans failed due to our stupidity, our laziness, and our misguided allegiance to political correctness. We saw all the symptoms of a problem and did nothing until a 100-percent preventable tragedy occurred.

The same will be true of smuggling a nuclear bomb into the USA. We knew, long ago, that we would deplete our reserves of helium-3, but we did nothing to remedy the problem. We will continue to do nothing until a horrible tragedy occurs. (Buddha, help us!)

Barack Hussein Obama, as leader of the United States, personally rejects the idea that a radical Muslim will detonate a thermonuclear warhead in America. He believes that radical Muslims are the victims of Western oppression, so he does not see the need to enhance protection (of our cities) against radical Islam. That he holds such a view is evidenced by the fact that he attended an anti-Western church promoting exactly such a view.

Wafa Sultan, a former Muslim who eyewitnessed the brutality radical Muslims, has repeatedly warned, "[...] because of its multicultural relativism, the Western establishment is still reluctant to openly challenge the dangerous Islamic political ideology." She, not Obama, wholeheartedly embraces Western culture and believes that the West is the victim of Islamic brutality. Read the full text of her speech in Denmark.

This theft of sensitive data by terminated employees is an act of survival. Is it morally right?

To answer that question, we should understand the theft in the total context of labor ethics. The current economic recession differs from the previous recession (during the dotcom bust) in 2 important ways. One difference is that it was caused by a failure of the banking system, which had placed financial bets on bad mortgages.

A second difference is that the "normal" lag between declining gross-domestic product (GDP) and rising unemployment was very short. In all previous recessions, the lag was at least 6 months. During this recession, the lag was much shorter. Once the typical employer saw declining orders for products or services, he immediately fired workers. This high-speed termination of workers was once the hallmark of the Silicon-Valley employer's mentality but has now spread to the rest of the nation.

The national unemployment rate exceeds 10 percent. In some states, the rate exceeds 12%.

By contrast, Japanese companies (for cultural reasons) and European companies (for both cultural reasons and legal reasons) make every effort to avoid firing workers during an economic recession. Although Americans once laughed at Europeans for favoring kinder, gentler labor policies that "hindered" economic growth, the Europeans now have the last laugh: the unemployment rate in America now exceeds the rate in several European countries.

The Americans favor a Darwinian system of employment: survival of the fittest. If you are "weak" and if you do not have the right political connections (e. g., being the beer-drinking buddy of the department head), then you will be fired. If you lose your home, your family, and commit suicide, then the Darwinian system gives only 1 reply: "Too bad, loser!"

In this context, we should not judge the morality of stealing sensitive data from your previous employer. If he fired you in response to the recession, then you should do whatever you need to do to survive. You should live by Darwinian rules. You do whatever you need to do and whenever you need to do "it".

SanguineV (1197225) wrote, "GPUs are massively parallel handling hundreds of cores and tens of thousands of threads. The drawbacks are they have limited instruction sets and don't support a lot of the arbitrary jumping, memory loading, etc. that CPUs do."

In other words, the GPU is a single-instruction-multiple-data (SIMD) device. It matches well simple, regular computations like that which occurs in digital signal processing, image processing, computer-generated graphics, etc.

The modern-day GPU is the difference between "Asteroids" (a video game from the 1980s) and Unreal Tournament 2004 (an intense 3D-graphics game of the 21st century).

Being nearly devoid of natural resources, Japan has traditional cuisine that tends to focus on appearance instead of flavor. The classic example is sushi. It is the sliced flesh of raw fish. Plates of sushi are adorned with other colorful edibles: sea weed, fish eggs, etc.

Making sushi is efficient in terms of energy and resources. Sushi does not require fuel to be expended for cooking.

Plates of sushi are colorful and pretty. The aim is to create a delightful appearance. The aim is appearance, not taste.

Hence, we can understand the news article that is the focus of this thread of discussion. Most customers who eat sushi cannot "taste" the fish in the sushi. "Taste" is not the point of sushi. "Appearance" is. So, a restaurant could deliberately or accidentally substitute non-tuna flesh for tuna flesh in tuna-based sushi. A customer would never perceive the difference. Fish just tastes like fish: it tastes fishy.

Contrast Chinese cuisine to Japanese cuisine. Preparing Chinese cuisine requires expending a lot of resources: e. g., fuel. Before the advent of Westernization (enabling Japan to import all that it needs) in Japan in the late 1800s, China had a huge advantage in an abundance of natural resources. China was a rich nation. It created cuisine that placed equal emphasis on appearance and flavor. Think of roasted pork (that was prepared by marinating the skin for hours) served on a plate adorned with pineapple slices. It is the food of the gods.

The reporter at the "New York Times" completely misses the big picture. If Bing is censoring only simplified Chinese queries, then anyone in mainland China can do a search in any other language and obtain the full uncensored results.

In other words, Microsoft has cleverly created a big hole (in its agreement with Beijing) that allows uncensored information to flood into China. The only catch is that the query must be in some language (e. g., English) that is not simplied Chinese.

By contrast, Google censors everything in China, regardless of the language used for the query.

Besides, Microsoft's scheme will encourage ordinary Chinese to learn a foreign language: English., Japanese, etc. Doing so is always positive as many Western languages means many channels by which foreign ideas can enter China, thus modernizing it.

The traditional approach toward dealing with Chinese hackers is to fortify all the computers in a company or institute. Fortification takes time and money.

A better approach may be to rig some computers so that they are easy to hack. We install some deliberately malicious software on those fake computers. Then, we disperse those fake computers among the real computers.

Here is the ideal scenario. A typical Chinese hacker will probe all the computers at the Department of Defense. The probe will easily succeed in penetrating one of the rigged computers. He downloads plenty of software. He will then try to run them. One of the ill-gotten applications then replicates itself and spreads throughout the Chinese Ministry of War.

The rogue application disables the safety mechanism in a Chinese nuclear warhead. On the anniversary of the Chinese invasion of Tibet, the warhead explodes. It melts (literally) the entire military base and kills thousands of Chinese citizens in the nearby town.

On the day of that fire ball, the Chinese hackers will cease their activities for several months.

Oh, so you hated thin clients 25 years ago, and now you could never use one of those, right?

Who would ever want to use a small device that has no hard drive, downloads applications from the cloud, and is web-centric?

Things change.

Why do we need to conduct an experiement to determine whether space travel can muscles to atrophy? Common sense tells us that muscles in space will certainly atrophy.

We see this atrophy in hospital patients who are confined to bed for years in a coma. These patients never exercise their muscles, and they simply atrophy. Being in space is worse than being in bed. Lack of gravity means that your muscles are not constantly being exercised. Your muscles will waste away.

The fix for this problem is to use only astronauts who have a natural genetic mutation that causes muscles to be large, durable, and strong. A few Europeans do have this mutation.

Perhaps, Khan -- the character in Star Trek -- was right. A race of genetic supermen is best suited for space travel.

Anything that is internet-connected and useful poses a threat to your privacy. Period.

I am willing to accept that trade-off, especially since 95% of the privacy stories on YRO are overblown.

Oh no, the power company can determine my peak power usage. They can determine that I leave in the morning and get home at night.

In exchange, the smart grid promises some big benefits. As usual, a trade-off.

What Madrid is doing is basically what is being done in super-free market, the United States of America. American phone companies are required by state regulators to provide low-cost land-line phone service to citizens whom state laws consider to be indigent. This government subsidy is necessary because the phone is necessary to live adequately in modern society. The phone connects you to emergency services via 911. The phone connects you to the manager (who works you like a slave). The phone connects you to your family. The phone is nearly as important as food, shelter, and clothing.

With the coming of age of the Internet, it will soon be as important as phone service. With the Internet, you can get legal information about registering your vehicle, and about smog-check stations, about filing a complaint with the relevant state agency. You can get information about universities. You can check whether your jury group is required to appear in court on a particular day.

10 years ago, the Internet was an exciting fad. Now, the Internet is an indispensable tool for living in modern society.

Of course, the best use of the Internet is to read articles on Slashdot.

The ability to live forever is not necessarily something that everyone wants.

Suppose that you put yourself into cryogenic suspenion until the day that medical science is so advanced that it can revive you and restore you to the functionality of a 20-year-old adult. Would you want such a life? All your friends are dead. All the reference points -- music, politics, bridge game on Saturday, local Buddhist temple on Sunday, etc. -- that gave you a sense of fitting into your society are long extinct or dead. Would you want this life?

I would not. I would choose death with the people of my generation over eternal life without meaning.

The fact of the matter is that drug criminalization never works. If people want to pop, snort, or inject drugs, then they will do so. If the FDA bans the caffeine-spiked beer, then it will just be available in the black market.

So, the FDA should allow anything to be consumed by anyone under 1 caveat: feeding, selling, or offering FDA-determined unhealthy substances (e. g., heroin, tobacco, alcohol, and the like) to anyone under the age of 21 should be treated as a felony -- with a mandatory minimum penalty of 10 years in prison. Once you reach the age of 21, you are an adult in the eyes of the law, and you are free to destroy your body in any way that you want. What you do with yourself is none of society's business. Since health care is not guaranteed in the USA, medical treatment for your sickness (due to your deliberate consumption of unhealthy substances) will not be paid by the other taxpayers.

The "Just say no." campaign never worked. The "You are free to inject until you die at your own expense." campaign will work.