Get me my fucking hover-bike. Now.

In time, there might be viable alternatives to the big ISPs, but for now, there's a huge disparity between the price/speed of the US vs other modern countries. Things only need to get bad enough for people to notice, then we'll either regulate it or somebody will find a more competitive option.

Keep in mind that we're in this together. A large economic collapse due to robotics and AI advances will compel the american populace to find ways of supporting itself, be it through complete economic regulation (ie communism) or through philanthropic capitalism. After all, what's the point of building robots for profit if that profit can't be realized?

One thing is for certain though: things will get worse before they get better. Our hands need to be forced.

Most of the STEM students that I've met chose their major based on their interests and/or already possessed skills. It seems to me that there are viable career opportunities in all STEM fields. Why worry about your choice of education when you'll develop skills regardless?

Finding any job is a full time job regardless of your major. And you neither entitled nor guaranteed to get a job you'll like.

The reality of today is that, if you communicate any secrets, you must consider the possibility of your communications being tapped/intercepted. It is even possible that hardware is compromised before you even buy it.

With backdoors, BIOS hacking and packet sniffing being part of the daily talk on slashdot, you have to be prepared to communicate end-to-end with multiple levels of pre-planned encryption. That said, I don't think I've ever said anything that needs that much security, but a nation-state might have.

Forward compatibility is very important to me too.

Can you or somebody else recommend me a motherboard that fits the bill?

I'm putting together specs for a budget gaming rig that I can upgrade when I get more money. The only piece that I have set in stone is an nvidia GTX 960 graphics card, but I'm planning on getting either an i3 or pentium G series processor, then upgrading later on. I've been looking at Z97s that are LGA1150, but I know so little about motherboards that I can only base my criteria off of what other people have recommended. I guess I'd want it to be SLI ready so I can double up on the graphics card eventually w/ a dual monitor setup. Extra ram slots would be nice so I can just keep adding cheap ram.

Also, how important is it to get a good power supply? I guess efficiency might add up on the electricity bill. Can you recommend one of those?

Will i5 prices go down this month?

I'm building a gaming/mini-simulation computer, and I have a mix of poor student syndrome along with excessive computer drooling disease (much more debilitating). Basically all I want is a fast GPU (nvid gtx 960), but I can't help but want a fast processor too, so I've been comparing the i5's, i3's and pentium G3450's.

Should I wait to buy an i5? or should I stick with the cheap processor? or maybe you know of a motherboard/cpu combo deal that will cut the cost of an i5 just enough?

*napkins mouth*

I have a crackberry look-alike that gets the job done -- it was $60 at radioshack.

I'd say a flip phone, probably the razr, is the best option. I often butt-dial people with my crackberry (or it tries to dial 911 if it's locked).

I don't mind reading blog posts on the medium, but this is really not news. You might as well have included this wikipedia article with the others you linked: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/S...

Agreed.

In that same vein, people fear nuclear weapons for the same reason. They're hard to build, but once you've got all the components working together, you've got a weapon that could destroy an entire city in a matter of seconds. We better figure out a way to protect ourselves from ourselves. Because somebody will build a weapon eventually--AI or otherwise--no matter how hard we try to prevent it.

I wonder if it could be because of all the radioactive waste that we dropped? Just a shot in the dark, but this map lines up very nicely with the blob: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/O...

It apparently lies between 120W and 150W, and 40N and 55N. That's almost exactly where we've dropped all our radioactive waste. The wikipedia article says that we haven't seen much environmental impact, but it's hard to say, considering how heavy radioactive nuclei are. Why would we see it on the surface?

Our galaxy is on the order of 100,000 lightyears in diameter. So 5,000 lightyears is about 1/20 the distance of our galaxy. That's a pretty large distance to lag behind our matter, considering that it also interacts with itself.

as long as I have equal opportunity to get laid.

Hey, where's my paternal leave!

I think the slashdot rating system is broken. Every time I get the opportunity to moderate, I do so, and it gets modded up as a much nicer compliment than I intended.

Then this is a serious conflict of interest. Is there anything that can be done against this type of scumbagery as a non-constituent of WV?