It's like a XV century man trying to simulate a PC by putting a candle behind colored glass and calling that a display screen. People often think AI is getting really smart and e.g. human translators are getting obsolete (a friend of mine was actually worried about her future as a linguist). But there is a fundamental barrier between that and the current state of automatic german->english translations (remember that article some time ago?), with error rates unacceptable for anything but personal usage.
Some researchers claim we can simulate intelligent parts of the human brain - I claim we can't simulate an average mouse (i.e. one that would survive long enough in real-life conditions), probably not even it's sight.
There's nothing interesting about this 'dreaming' - as long as the algorithm can't really manipulate abstract concepts. Automatic translations are a surprisingly good test for that. Protip: automatically dismiss any article like that if it doesn't mention actual progress in practical applications, or at least modestly admit that it's more of an artistic endeavour than anything else.

And, if you're in extreme denial, you can see evidence of a cycle yourself, if you've got the patience to take a look at the sun (filtered/projected) and note the spot number for ~20 years. There's data since 1750. Sunspots are correlated with auroras, so it's also within the reach of a human with no modern equipment to check the effects of sun activity.

Oh what a shocking story to make us worry about facebook privacy. Obviously she should have her own encrypted personal site for friends and never share it with colleagues. Wait, she either got a stupid employer or other reasons to get fired.

So
-many posts up there are getting "insightful" for predicting that we'll turn into Gattaca if there's a law that allows storing 26 numbers from everybody's DNA
-actually (partly since 1960?), law requires storing the full specimen for a period of time and in some states allows to keep it indefinitely
- (which those insightful prophets, while being extremely cautious, seem to ignore)
- it's not like we're turning into an abominable dystopia now
I'm sorry, sincerely I don't understand. Could someone explain this to me?

In my opinion more users would benefit from a message like
File operation failed - please check permissions and try closing other programs that use the file. [Retry] [Cancel]

1. If the user understands what file permissions are, he'll immediately know what to do, instead of reading what the 'preferences file' is.
2. If he doesn't and wouldn't read the long message, now at least he might get an idea.
3. If he doesn't and would read the long one, he'll have to call tech support now. I don't believe he wouldn't anyway.
4. The number is of no use for the user - send it automatically (there are exceptions of course). Placing it in the first sentence is just distracting the user.
5. Usually the routine that fails at some file operation has no way of knowing it's the 'application preference file'. You could throw/catch exceptions, but you'd have to predict all possible errors and write a message for all of them.

If you really have time for writing the "more information", you'd better write a function that checks what permissions are missing and what locks are held.

Have you ever written messages like that in a real application?

They're going to see the scary number, click "Ignore error", retry and tell you that there was some error... something about 'technical support'... If you ask them to retry and note the scary number, they won't understand the purpose. Even if they read it, they'll only remember that their "file system is damaged", thinking about buying a new computer. I'm serious, I had similar experiences. Your approach may be good for more advanced users (who had contact with 'security permissions' and 'file systems'), but I believe it's not worth the effort to maintain such messages.

Google makes money on ads. Typosquatting pages use ads (mostly Google ads). I can sense the evil.

Does it have to be repeated each time? 1. Making Opera popular makes Opera's mobile versions popular, profit. Making Chrome popular makes web apps popular, profit. Besides, anyone who coded web pages for IE feels a moral need to make it disappear, it's a pain I wouldn't wish on anyone. 2. It's the masses that are too stupid. It's not ok for Microsoft to profit from their OS's popularity (let's assume it's because it's good) to make their crappy browser popular. It's about monopoly, there's no simple small market analogy, but promoting competition (yes, through restricting someone's freedom) works. C. Because Notepad and Paint aren't a threat to competition. I know it seems they're all basic apps for doing basic stuff, so it's natural to include them with an OS, but browsing the web isn't basic at all from an economic point of view. That, and IE is making the web worse, Paint isn't making art or design worse.