Mod parent up. This always bothers me with these kinds of stories. While the immediate usefulness of this particular project may be questionable, the long-term benefit of this type of research is potentially huge, and the best way to find the flaws and improve the technology is to put it to the test in real situations.

DARPA and NASA (and other similar organizations) projects very often result in tons of technologies that provide huge benefits across the board. When you aim for the stars, even if you fall a little short, you still often hit a worthwhile target. Just think about robotics, the internet, advanced materials, all kinds of food safety improvements, etc. All of these things that we take for granted now were the direct result or biproducts of DARPA and NASA projects. The world would NOT be the same as it is without this type of research.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/NASA_spin-off_technologies
http://dsc.discovery.com/tv-shows/curiosity/topics/ten-nasa-inventions.htm

Finally. When that catches on, it'll be a nice improvement over the people on the road during my commute.

The last time I used Myth (within a few months I believe), the commercial detection worked flawlessly for the few shows I recorded. My Myth box unfortunately does not handle HD well and doesn't get much use anymore, but it seems to have improved since the box was under the TV a few years ago. If the Myth guys can get it that good, I think there's hope for Dish. (Though if the AC is correct and it's all done by people, it doesn't really matter what I say)

I'm sure someone will post that Myth sucks and never detects commercials properly, but it worked for me.

While the RIAA and US government are far from innocent, it is in fact YOUR government that is to blame if you have a problem with the laws in your country. Get busy fixing it instead of blaming others for your problems.

Probably true, and it looks great on the surface.

But lots of companies don't work anything like their mission statements would suggest. While I'm not a fan of KDE myself, it would be a shame if they are going in that direction.

That is how we see things. Regardless of whether we're right or not, an alien civilization could very well have come up with a theory that adequately explains chemical reactions that is completely different. To think otherwise is to succumb to your own bias.

Now, I agree that a space-faring civilization would most likely understand integers, but you can't possibly know that. The universe holds too many amazing things. We have only the tiniest understanding of it, and much of what we 'know' could very well be wrong.

Let's take a slight detour:
Imagine a species that evolved in space, rather than on a planet's surface. To meet our current definitions of life, they would need to be able to move around and interact with their environment, which means some sort of propulsion in space. If this species managed to make it to our planet, they could be very intelligent and still not necessarily have any need for integers or subatomic particles.

True, but they also evolved on the same planet with the same conditions. You can't assume that alien life would be anything like the life forms on this planet. Some people think they might be, but we don't KNOW.

Your link isn't working for me, but unemployment numbers only count people who are actively looking. If they gave up and got jobs at McDonalds or Walmart to keep from starving, they wouldn't be counted as unemployed.

How long will it last this time?

They've scaled it back in the past and it just comes back in another game. In six months or a year, if they've kept that crap out of their games, maybe I'll consider giving them money again. Maybe.

Maybe in principle, but in my experience using the hardware, the drivers that NVIDIA is providing are far superior to the AMD drivers available for all but the most basic uses. This seems to be the general consensus, at least where I tend to spend my time.

If you're more concerned about software freedom than I am, maybe you'd rather have AMD. My Linux boxes are much happier with NVIDIA, especially my HTPC. If I get enough cash to throw at it, I might try a low power Ivy Bridge or one of the new Atoms for a new HTPC, but the low-power standalone NVIDIA cards are just so easy...

Mod parent up.

My grandfather was an uneducated farmer. He's a smart guy, but his education included only basic math/reading and common sense. He put all six of his kids through college. Two are engineers, two are teachers, one owns a very successful paving company, and one runs a restaurant. They didn't get where they are because my grandfather knew everything and passed it down. They got there because he and his wife created an environment where they could (and had to) learn.

Anyone who knows about small-time farming knows that it can be very hard to make ends meet. If my grandfather could do it and make it look so easy, then there is no reason that all these office and factory drones can't.

A bit off topic, but if you really don't like the new Firefox interface, it only takes about a minute to change it back using their 'Customize' feature. And torrent downloads can be done with an add-on in about the same amount of time.

As far as torrents being for piracy... I have no doubt that the vast majority of torrent activity is copyright infringement of some kind (I hesitate to call it truly illegal), but it could be extremely useful if it were more widespread on the internet. It has a lot of potential to lighten the load on the infrastructure and increase download speeds at the same time.

It really is. I flew out of LAX in early May last year and the security line zig-zagged through ropes twice, up stairs in the middle of those, then went down the road for a quarter mile or more. Around a major holiday, I'm surprised people even make their flights.

All this means is that I will never again sign into my Google accounts in my browser. You can't give me screwed up results if you don't know who I am. If it gets too much worse, I'm probably just going to bail altogether. Thanks, Google.

As teslafreak said, people are rarely ticketed/arrested for it. In my view, the law is on the books to protect drivers from legal trouble from idiot pedestrians and to attempt to protect the pedestrians from themselves. That way, when I hit you with my car because you want to cross the street NOW, you can't mindlessly sue me because you're too stupid to not jump in front of a moving car. If you were in the crosswalk, you may have a more valid case, but that's a different matter.

No. I'm saying that, without a a society large enough and diverse enough to grow on its own, we would never have enough of the things to be at risk for what the GP is talking about.