The whole point of getting a self-driving car is so I can be doing other things other than driving a car. If I have to mimic driving then what's the point since I won't be able to do those other things.

Of course Microsoft has to shuffle everything around with each new release. How else do you expect them to make a fortune to re-certify everyone if they kept everything the same between versions?

But I thought all of our roads were going to be glass electricity generating ones!

The space for cables is a good idea but I wouldn't put pipes in there, at least in colder climates as they would freeze.

I think this would be pretty good for parking lots and sidewalks to start with since you don't seem to need to lay down a thick gravel subsurface.

Astronomers get to decide what is a planet because that's their job. Doctors get to decide and name things to do with the body. Biologists do the same with other plants and animals. People involved in an activity get together, choose an elected body (usually), and they make up the rules. Sometimes the rules are voted on. That's how things work.

While that may be true we still don't want to see Uranus with our naked eye at any time.

I know about golden rice. How much of it is in production? It's one of those projects that gets hauled out to say how great GM can be but according to the wikipedia page (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Golden_rice) it doesn't really seem to be in production. The latest info has a test plot in 2013 and some alternatives to in 2008 though there are some royalty-free programs for it. Not much of a success.

Wheat has been breed shorter conventionally and not through GM.

Making plants use less water, fertilizer, have higher yields, etc is being worked on. But it's all in the labs right now. The only big GM modification to make it into the fields is the resistance to herbicides.

As for the biggest success of GM it has been plants that are resistant to herbicides. Even that has been a failure because the weeds have adapted and farmers are putting more herbicide on their fields now than ever.

The only real success GM has done is made a couple of biotech companies really rich.

By using GM and introducing genes from other species the biotech companies have created plants that allowed more herbicides to be used than any food plants could withstand from conventional breeding. It was originally thought that no weeds would survive but it turns out that there were some and farmers have had to ever increase the amount of herbicide on their fields.

And don't group me in with the anti-vaxers or against wifi groups. I am generally for science but I don't blindly trust it either. I have all of my vaccines though I don't get my flu shot. They guess what it's going to be six months in advance and the virus mutates way too fast for it to be effective. For everything else though I get my shots.

I've studied my history. When you look back you see that mankind tends to get a new technology, rush into it without considering the consequences, and then find out. For example look at DDT. In the mid-1900's science said it was safe and wonderful. You can go and see videos of people spraying it without protective clothing on because it was so safe. Asbestos was another wonder product. In the early 1900s anything radioactive was a wonder cure too. Lead was a wonderful material too. Add it to paint, make pipes, put it in solder. Hey these CFCs are pretty good to put into spray cans.

We think we are such smart creatures but time and time again we make these short sighted decisions. I'm not saying to ban vaccines or Wi-fi. Those are things that we can easily test with science and have tested. But we have shown that we know so little about genomics that I don't think we should be deploying it into the wild where it can contaminate nature.

I have a problem with the science of GMO because I don't think that humanity is nearly as smart as we think we are. Only 15 years ago we mapped the human genome and there were many speeches about how it was going to lead to many breakthrough cures. Turns out that things are much more complicated than just simple single on/off switches. Then there was the so-called junk DNA that scientists kept going on about for so long. And then it wasn't too long ago that they realized that it actually did have a purpose. (On a side note it shouldn't be a big surprise since nature wouldn't normally be keeping around a whole bunch of stuff that wasn't useful.)

So far, for the most part all GMO has done for us is create new strains of food that is resistant to poisons that have ended up creating more resistant weeds. We keep hearing about all of the wonderful things that GM can do but it just doesn't get past the laboratory.

I wouldn't mind seeing it used to transfer genes within the same species and it would speed up the process you could recreate with selective breeding. But I'm against transplanting genes from one species to another because we just don't know enough about how the genes interact. It's not whether the food is safe to eat or not (which is what everyone seems to focus on) but what unforeseen impacts with the plants we are introducing.

Universal apps will for the most part be crap. It's hard enough to make a really great application for the iPhone and iPad (it's what I'm familiar developing for). Heck, even with all of the different screen sizes and retina and non-retina screens just the iPhone is trouble enough.

And now Microsoft wants developers to deploy a single app to phones, tablets, huge wall mounted tablets, desktops, laptops, game machines, and their HoloLens?!?! I hope that you are able to exclude the platforms you don't want to support because you know that people are going to trying running your app on them even if you had no intention of it.

Off the top of my head:
Microsoft
Home Depot (cause you know they'll be hacked)
Sony
RIAA
MPAA
Dell
HP
Yahoo
Mozilla (I think they'd sell my data to anyone now)
Facebook (as someone already mentioned)

Don't think you would need to wire them together to do better than Congress (or Parliament Hill in Canada).

I'm fine with the use of animals in medical research as long as the animals are properly cared for, the minimal number are used, the minimal procedure is used, ethical reviews have been undertaken, the appropriate animals are used, their suffering is minimize, and only when there is absolutely no alternative available. (There's probably a couple more but that's just off the top of my head.) I don't want animal research used for cosmetics, toxicity, or for things just because we can do them. This definitely falls into the last category. This isn't going to help save anyone's life and even if this research were to continue (which I am completely opposed to) it's not like we're going to be building computers in the future by hooking up a bunch of brains together.

They've stated that they weren't going to give out separate sales figures. Personally I don't care what the numbers are as I'm not interested in the watch at all. I've never seen a good reason to get a smart watch (a reason that works for me, other people may have good ones that work for them). Same goes for the latest phones. I don't like the larger phones as I want one that works well one-handed and until they make one that does I'm sticking with my 5s (or if it takes them too long I'll find another company to take my money).

Well, since Samsung and Apple are pretty much the only ones making any profits out of phones right now I can see why not many other companies wouldn't want to make them. Though Microsoft is probably making a bunch of money on royalties through Android.