The pop up comes up and the completely ignorant doesn't click on "Install" because he doesn't have an awareness of the threat, so he clicks on "No thanks." Too bad that ALSO INFECTS HIS MACHINE.

The ones I've seen install on any client click. Only hard powering (hold the power button for 10 seconds) will prevent infection at this point, so the completely ignorant are NOT going to be safe.

APL? You really programmed in APL? I thought I was the only one. Oh man, did I love my Linear Algebra II class, and writing a matrix manipulation program which would be several pages in C is a single line in APL! Too cool.

So, your website gets hacked and a page is uploaded which delivers malware to visitors. It wasn't your fault, you've kept it patched and backup the logs, but the hackers had a 0-day in their toolkit.

So now YOU lose your domain and go to jail? Nice system you got there.

Robots? ROBOTS!?!?

They have a radio-controlled platform with manually controlled servos. How is THAT a robot? It does absolutely NOTHING autonomously (except rust).

Everyone should read RyanFenton's post. This is a beautiful and deep analysis and, while it may be true or false, is a reasonable way to reconcile the current state of art.

Nicely done sir. I will ponder your words for weeks to come. A post like this can lift my entire assessment of humanity.

It requires 3 electrons to turn the components of aluminum ore into one aluminum atom. That's a lot of electricity. That's why big Alcoa plants are not often conveniently placed, but are always near cheap power. There is simply no way to end up with usable aluminum without pouring on the power.

So think of aluminum ingots as frozen electricity. If electricity becomes more expensive to produce in the future, aluminum goes up, and of course if power is cheaper, it goes down. So which do you bet on: dwindling oil causing a rise or technological breakthrough making power cheap?

Is it ironic that I clicked on your tee shirt store link and with my NoScript running, could not view, shop for, nor purchase anything? In fact, it is impossible to leave the barren first page. Keep up the good work.

I live in a rural area where the cop (not cops) can't do more than react to messes. However, I find myself relying on the kindness of others all the time--and it works! Not one physically superior person has done to me what they will. Not only don't I own a gun, I don't feel the need to do so. Then again, I also don't feel the need to prevent others from owning guns.

I guess I'm lucky. The deep woods I live in are not crawling with psychopaths out to get me. Pretty much just me, and lots and lots of trees (that are probably all physically superior to me). Maybe you should move to my town.

So everyone can do any inhumane thing that occurs to them for any reason and it will be perfectly all right, as long as they don't do the worst thing that has ever been done.

"Sure I killed your grandma by dunking her in acid, but it's fine because I heard of a guy who dunks 'em even slower! I mean, THAT'S the guy you should be mad at."

No modern orchestra is going to let the 9th stretch into a second hour. Too bad, because I'd love to hear the 9th at a 75 minute clip. Most versions I've heard sound as if the conductor has to go to the bathroom.

And don't even get me started on the 5th's 1st movement. I'm sure somewhere it is played majestically (say 10 minutes instead of the modern 8). Every recording I've heard since 1980 sounds like the musicians are on a roller coaster and just want off....

Not true. If there is some characteristic of the music that you can hear, then it is a modification of the pressure wave that reaches your ear. If it's a matter of changing the waveform, then computers absolutely CAN do it.

I admit that it would take a lot of research to discover what we perceive as "emotion" in the music, but if it's there then it can be emulated. However, let's admit right out of the gate that if you played Piece A to an audiophile and told him it was humans, then Piece A again and told him it was machines, guess which one he'll hear the "emotion" in!

Hear, hear! I agree with your reasoning. And let's face it, the towering cynicism represented by a new boy band or vampire romance novel is frightening (and I consider myself somewhat cynical).

Yes! But hold onto your seats folks, because no copyrighted work which generated even a single dollar in the previous 12 months WILL EVER GO OUT OF COPYRIGHT AGAIN.

Remember what Kurt Vonnegut said should be engraved on humanity's tombstone:

"We could have saved the Earth, but we were too damn cheap."

Yes! Very well said.

What is amazing to me is we've all seen products get retroactively destroyed and yet people are still willing to exchange paper books for electronic ones. Doesn't anyone else see the obvious future where books can be 'burned' remotely and without leaving a single copy in existence?

Historically, books have not been prized because they have good contrast on the pages or they feel good in the hand (arguments I've heard for paper). They have been prized because they COULD NOT BE CONTROLLED. And now we're lining up to eliminate that prized feature.