This is just iTunes, but for books. The book industry was just a little slower to go digital. They will go, kicking and screaming, but they will go. And the result will be a win for consumers, and even a win for authors (maybe except for the few who are household names).

At the time, he was always running around in a ninja outfit. But this idea would have been just enough to get him to change costumes. Hint: If you're older than 12, you might want to consider wearing this getup strictly in your own house!

Or Yahoo, Microsoft, Twitter...pretty much EVERY email provider scans messages for the purpose of advertising.

I'm not sure whether 1) this judge is stupid, or 2) there are a whole lot of tech companies in a lot of trouble!

...than as a sorting algorithm!

Face it, smart kids were mercilessly teased in school since a long time before 1994. But being socially awkward, these kids stick to what they ARE good at, like tinkering with computers. This provides an escape for them, since they don't have a clue how to be accepted by others.

Girls tend to mature socially earlier than boys. They DO understand how to relate to others socially, and they don't want any part of the kind of treatment they see their smart male friends enduring. So...they do the smart thing...they stay away.

Is this all a terrible injustice? Probably. But we shouldn't be blaming the men. They are the ones who stuck with their quest despite the pressure. If there is anyone to blame, blame Hollywood, which (at the time) produced movie after movie reinforcing the "nerd" stereotype.

Air gaps aren't what they used to be. These days, even desktop computers have WiFi and Bluetooth. I guess you'd need to work in a Faraday cage as well...nice.

Nor do many people who profess to use it.

In 25 years, I have yet to see a type of project that couldn't benefit from an agile approach...done correctly, of course. At its core, Agile is about breaking down a big project into manageable pieces. This process can be done logically, and it can be done nonsensically.

Below are the results I got. Really? So I'm the only person who speaks English, running Chrome on Windows 7, in the Central time zone? If that's enough to identify me, then I'm feeling pretty exposed.

Google, on the other hand, can probably tell me my life history, with all the data they have on me.

Yes! (You can be tracked!)
34.59 % of observed browsers are Chrome, as yours.
22.54 % of observed browsers are Chrome 39.0, as yours.
58.71 % of observed browsers run Windows, as yours.
40.04 % of observed browsers run Windows 7, as yours.
26.96 % of observed browsers have set "en"as their primary language, as yours.
1.09 % of observed browsers have UTC-6 as their timezone, as yours.
You have the only browser out of 11099 with this fingerprint.

The nature of the Internet will make it impossible for this approach to succeed. Sony may shut down one site, but the files will simply appear somewhere else.

It would have been nice for the article to elaborate.

The United States is (or has been) the world leader in many areas of technology, such as computers, Internet, space exploration, and medicine. This happened in part because the government stayed out of the way, at least in the early phases of development. When it starts to clamp down too quickly, that innovation can be stifled, and move to other countries. We are seeing this happen particularly in medicine. Apparently, we aren't all that interested in being the leaders in drone development...at least, other than for purposes of war.

I like video games, I have a drawer full of them, for various devices. I've played a lot of them. But none of them beats sitting down with friends with a good old-fashioned card or board game. My kids, on the other hand, are obsessed with video games. I guess this says something about where I fit into the slashdot population!

the government is out there looking out for us.

I-10 in Texas, west of San Antonio, also has a speed limit of 85, and there is no toll. That part of Texas is extremely remote, few distractions, so the speed limit seems quite appropriate.

What exactly is intelligence?

At one level, it is the ability to process input, digest it, and generate useful output. In that sense, we have created intelligent machines long ago.

Bug at another level, the level of "awareness" or "consciousness" we aren't even close.

On one point I agree with the author: machines aren't about to take over the world. People might do awful things with the machines they create, but it is still people who tell the machines what to do.