From the last line of the article: "it’s a human thing to have a memory.”

Memory is not the real issue ... the real issue is language. Yes, dolphins, whales, birds, etc. can communicate, but not with an infinitely rich grammar. Many anthropologists (and, not surprisingly, linguists) believe that language is key to understanding the uniqueness of the human mind. To me, that's what makes brain cell implantation freaky.

Surely one cell is not too controversial. Two... maybe a little. But once you start down this path, think about where it could go:

Day 137: Rats seem to react to their names.
Day 409: Rats react to basic commands ("Go left" or "Go right")
Day 687: Rats are able to respond to simple yes/no questions ("Are you hungry?")
Day 992: Rat named Stickers cheeps one word: "Stop."

I'm not passing any judgement on this research ... just sayin' that we're entering some uncharted waters.

http://xkcd.com/859/

Post the missing ')' and hopefully I'll be able to sleep tonight.

No kidding. China (and Asia South-Pacific in general) has a rampant plagiarism problem. E.g.,:

http://www.forbes.com/fdc/welcome_mjx.shtml
http://articles.sfgate.com/2010-04-11/news/20844688_1_yuan-papers-professor

This practice has permeated many of the country's scientific journals, where it is commonplace to copy-and-paste large sections of others' work. International journals are typically able to shield this using "similarity detectors" and peer review, but the occasional hack-job still gets through occasionally.

The word you're looking for is intractable:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Computational_complexity_theory#Intractability

The term "infeasible" w.r.t. constraint satisfaction problems (like 3-SAT) does not refer to the difficultly of the problem, but rather its result. For instance, an easy SAT problem with no solution would be infeasible.

It was actually solved by Larry Guth and Nets Hawk Katz. Not sure how it is that authors magically disappear from press releases, especially principal authors...

... this doesn't apply to your free Prime membership.

It just sounds like they turned the laser off.

... is that images and photos look terrible on a Kindle. Amazon doesn't want you, as the reader, to dwell on that fact.

If that's the case (and you're a fan of the Onion on Facebook) then you were treated to a pleasant surprise this morning.

Their release schedule was announced back in July, so it's not like they're hiding their intentions:

http://tech.slashdot.org/story/10/07/23/2114230/Google-Schedules-Chrome-6-7-and-8-For-This-Year

And of course they're doing this. It doesn't cost them a nickel, and the average computer may indeed compare version numbers of competing products (even if they shouldn't).

"... So money seemed to be the prime motivator ..."

And here I thought they were just doing it out of the goodness of their hearts!

These guys? Did you look at the photo? I count one (very lucky) guy.

As Ben Folds recently discovered, some artists have seen Ping accounts set up -- in their name -- without their knowledge or consent.

http://twitter.com/BenFolds/status/22830984597
http://twitter.com/BenFolds/status/22840802922

Yes, and they were cleared of all charges.

http://www.theregister.co.uk/2010/08/19/school_webcam_spying_no_crime/