I have come to regard this as basically religious, so this is somewhat like arguing about conservation of mass in transubstantiation, but I have a thick skin.

From what we know, carbon biologies last ~3 billion years or more, silicon biologies have so far 0 years behind them. Bayesians bet on carbon.

By the way, anyone who thinks that robotic / silicon life wouldn't be biological, and wouldn't evolve, doesn't understand evolution. Evolution is like entropy in that you can't get out of the game.

When was the last time anybody got a "felony rap" for a state law?

Umm, you are aware that MURDER is a State crime, not a Federal one, right?

As is kidnapping, assault, robbery, well, pretty much everything not related to taxes or committed on a Federal Reservation (military base, that sort of thing)....

They won't. States are allowed to pass whatever laws they like, as long as the laws don't interfere with Interstate Commerce or other applicable parts of the Constitution.

A law saying it was legal to raise and sell pot, but NOT in Interstate Commerce, would be clearly unconstitutional (the Feds can decide that, the States, not so much).

Similarly, the State next door whinging about your local laws would be unconstitutional (note Nevada's gambling laws going way back)....

The standard deal would be "6 against 6" or "8 against 8", the actor gets $6 million "against" 6% of the gross after distribution charges -- the $6 million is essentially an advance, so the producer only pays gross percentages when they're in excess of the original up-front fee. Net deals also happen and it also wouldn't be too strange for these guys to just not get an backend, but I would expect Rogen to get some because he's also the credited director.

(And I get that people have these really antagonistic ideas about Hollywood Accounting, but a lot of this is based on misconceptions of what exactly a writer is paid to do and most of what people know about "Hollywood Accouting" is a line that's promulgated by angry screenwriters and their lawyers. A rewrite guy can make $100k "punching-up" a screenplay, 4 weeks of work, so the fact that they don't get a share of the profits really doesn't trouble me.)

The numbers sound about right for Rogen and Franco -- the top of the line for someone like Tom Cruise is $15M/15%, and that's down from the historical peaks in the early aughts, when someone like Will Smith could demand $25M/25% and get it, because no Will Smith film to that time had made less that $200 million.

Especially after they pulled the movie.

Sony didn't have a choice, AMC, Regal and Carmike announced they were pulling the movie from US exhibition and it was beginning to look like the US release would only be a few dozen screens. A film like this has to release on over 2,500 screens in order to make its US targets. This way at least has the potential to maximize the VOD and DVD release.

I hate when people are described as "futurists" and then presented as some sort of authority or given a salary with the title.

So do I. Because I didn't think of it first....

Nothing but a long con.

Yeppers. WIsh I could get in on it....

Don't know about you, but I don't spend much of remaining lifespan even thinking about movies that are being made (or not).

I first heard about this movie (I'm assuming here we're talking about "The Interview", since that's the only movie I've heard about in regard to the Sony hack) in a news article about the hack. And I wondered what the big deal was - it's just a movie....

It's also returning a confidence level, and in the cases they've discovered, it's returning 100% confidence. That's clearly wrong.

What, you've never been SURE you were right, and then later found out you were wrong?

Nothing wrong with being wrong with confidence. Sounds like the majority of humanity the majority of the time.

Now, does this mean that the AI is useful? Well, it's useful for finding out why it's 100% certain, but wrong. In the field, not so much.

Of course, the question then becomes: "what did Obama have to do with any of those things?"

He got us out of Iraq on Bush's timetable, ditto Afghanistan. Never mind that we never got completely out of either country, and are now fighting in both again.

bin Laden, he got. Not that I've ever cared about him. He wasn't even as good a symbol as Hitler or Tojo, and "getting" either of them wouldn't have made a difference either.

The economic stuff? He had no more influence on that then Bush, Clinton, Bush, Reagan, Nixon, Johnson, Kennedy, Eisenhower, Truman, etc had on that sort of thing....

Give a President credit where it is due. But don't credit him with everything that happens on his watch. Most of what happens he's neither to blame for, nor due any credit for.

Ditto Congress.

Alas, all too many people assign blame and credit to the government based on nothing more than "it happened while XXX was in office"....

The hysteria of McCarthyism hasn't gone anywhere, it's just found a different topic to obsess over and a different target.

It also has to do with who stayed and who left.

Politicians set up the next person from their party for votes.

What would happen if the tension provided by the balloon's lift was removed, for whatever reason?

The balloon would crash. The tether would come down with the balloon, doing rather less damage than the balloon does.

If you're unlucky, you might have some of the tether draped over your house.

What I'm curious about is why anyone cares - the Army is always testing some new way to get away from needing the Air Force. That's all this is. Once they determine that it'll perform its design function reasonably well, they'll give the Air Force a razzberry, and move on to the next project....

This would not really work. In practice, it would likely mean a return of Alternic system, with multiple roots - i.e., a dark DNS for the dark net, probably temporary DNS extensions for file sharing, etc.

Somewhere, I suspect Eugene Kashpureff is smiling.