It's a pretty far reaching story and makes you think how trivial actions can have far flung consequences. Between the rise of the religious right in leading the US, the intrigue with the USAF vs NASA, and the degradation of the ability of the crewmembers to work with each other, the story takes some depressing turns. It's quite telling though, and I would highly recommend it. Some consider the last bit of the book controversial, and not fitting with the rest of the story. I found it to be different but it worked. You be the judge.

Come on guys, this is Slashdot, no one has yet made the comparison of this idea to one of the worst movies of all time, that being Manos: The Hands of Fate given the name of the CTO at AOL that is announcing this "breakthrough" in computing?

And here's an idea to help with the cooling on this outside enclosure - don't paint it BLACK!

Perhaps the use of writing and the ability to read (both could be argued as being classified as technologies) are being misused by these rioters as well. We should limit the ability for individuals to have access to these dangerous technologies so that we may protect the masses. Hmm. Dark ages anyone?

Thing about the gun nuts is - to an extent they are right in that the technology isn't solely at fault - it takes a person to kill another person. With that said, guns are explicitly made to kill, and so limiting availability of certain types of guns is OK in my book because of this.

Likewise regarding your statements about a time delay and police monitoring - I ask this - should we allow governments to filter what we see? Yeah sure to a certain extent this happens now in various ways but what happens if an oppressive regime has total control over communication? What then?

Agreed! My wife bought me the soundtrack the day we went to go see the movie, so we listened to it on the drive to the theater. Great soundtrack, and a great surprise! :)

genotype = genetic definition for a given trait at the molecular level. example - you will grow long fingers. phenotype = the actualization of this trait on the physical body of that organism. example - you have long fingers because you were able to consume enough food to grow the fingers you were presdisposed to have. This isn't just stuff "stored in the mind" but the influence of the environment on the development of the organism. If I grew up in a country where there was not proper nutrition available, then my genes might not be able to express certain physical traits that were defined in the genes. That's what the person was talking about.