The most valuable part of machine assisted learning is the ability to move at your own pace. There are some OCW lectures I had to watch 3 or 4 times before I got it. Now matter how good a teacher is, no student is going to ask them to repeatsomething four times. The student will just nod and feign understanding, and the teacher will move on.

Associating large drives with pirates is just the sort of thinking that will lead to a blank media tax, or even requiring buyers to register.

I call BS. I devote a large part of my free to movies, tv, and internet media. Even so, I was able to go through the entire first year of Game of Thrones without watching it or getting spoilers. Most people will go out of their way to avoid giving away spoilers with a degree of fanaticism rarely seen anywhere else.

No, people torrent Game of Thrones because they can. Maybe this particular example is a little easier to justify because of the absurd notion of actually buying cable + HBO, but everything else is available to torrent as well. Even over-the-air shows, which are essentially free, are torrented because it only takes 1 person in a billion who is willing to capture it and edit out the advertising for the rest of us.

The only business model that can survive into the future is one that clearly connects money raised with future content (think kickstarter, but with mainstream professionals instead of super-niche pipe dreams). If Game of Thrones announced tomorrow they were not making another season until it was paid for, my $20 would be in their paypal account within the hour. They could charge as the market will bear, but only the stuff that people actually want could get made.

Microsoft was in the top 10 corporate contributors to the kernel in 2011. And I am not a shill, check my posts dawg.

God I hate the arrogance of the phrase "fly-over state". Here in Indiana we have a higher average connection speed than the both New Jersey and the US average according to the akamai graph generator on the site.

But you are still using your cash to support the DVD/Bluray model of DRM on plastic disks. I can't see how buying a DVD is any more morally appealing than buying DRM .mp4s off iTunes.

The obvious reply to this argument is that the companies know exactly how much customers are willing to happily pay, and it is less then they have been paying for the last 20 years of cable. So yes, there are plenty of potential business plans out there that appeal to consumers and still bring studios cash, but they are getting killed because they represent an overall decrease in profits.

Domain squatting and name exhaustion has gotten so bad, it is nearly impossible to create a website brand that doesn't use either some crazy portmanteau or a whole sentence strung together. I welcome the idea of adding hundreds of gTLDs, because over time it will make any one of them less important.

No more will I contemplate shelling out $7,000 because the domain I really want is being squatted. Instead, I will just add one of the hundreds of gTLDs, and make that my brand name.

Also, dibs on http://slashdot.dot/

obligatory

I would extend that to Google, Facebook, and really any tech company. The reality is that many of these companies are one-trick ponies, and despite their best efforts, they are unable to expand. Google really went all out to clone Facebook for G+, and a year later it's a ghost town. Similarly; I can remember when Dell and Sony were the epitome of consumer hardware, and now they've been almost completely eclipsed. There is just no room for second place, and no one stays on top for long.

But those examples are only replacing simple machines with more automated machines. What is really interesting, and what the summary hints at, is the possibility of replacing jobs that have traditionally been thought to require critical thinking.

Imagine a day when I can take my medical concerns to a computer with access to far more expertise than any doctor, or rely on a computer as a lawyer with far more knowledge than any human lawyer. Hell, you probably recoil from the idea of electing an AI president simply because you watched 2001: A Space Odyssey or Terminator and then made up your mind. You racist.

NASA tracks space debris the size of a golf ball, why didn't they see this? This is yet another example of how asteroid detection need a higher priority.

"Without piracy, there is no freedom" ~Descartes ~Michael Scott

That and cable news. I would love to get my parents to switch, it kills me to see them sending $100 to Comcast every month. But they are absolutely addicted to the talking heads. I have tried to introduce them to online news, but so far online news is mostly text based with short video clips. Until there is a mainstream site that streams 24 hour news presented by a human, they (and many others) will never give up their precious cable.

No No No, every argument about Solar/Wind energy is so far away from meaningful topics. You are going to get nowhere protesting their ugliness when compared to oil and coal. You will also get nowhere with numbers, as many people stop listening as soon as you quote a figure. This is a proper way to frame your argument:

1. In order to get off the hydrocarbons, we will need to increase our electrical consumption many times.
2. Solar and Wind power will never provide a base load. What if a volcano erupts and you have a decade of bad weather?
3. Solar and Wind suck raw materials at a rate that does not justify their wattage offering. Nobody in their right mind would call intensive mining "green".

This way, you don't get bogged down in arguments about whether Solar/Wind can replace our future need at year X, if they are deployed over area Y, and meet efficiency Z. The three arguments above illustrate to anyone why we should focus on modern nuclear first, and only afterwards be considering Solar/Wind in certain areas for peak demand.