It's the size of a horse, not as agile as a horse, not as intelligent as a horse, and about a million times more noisy then a horse.

Donkey's can be frightened pretty easy yes, Horses if they're not trained, but War-Horses can handle extreme battle conditions pretty well.

Food vs. Batteries is a pretty even trade off. The robot is screwed if an EMP goes off, Horses are going to starve if there isn't any grass. A horse can beat 20miles in a day. /cue "interesting factoid thinking about that made me look up: (The world record is some 160km in about 6 and a half hours)"

The only really good reason I can think of is packing. You could probably stick this on the back of a Humvee, which isn't really possible with a horse.

...was the thought that first came to my mind when I saw it.

So... It takes billions of dollars to essentially make what amounts an upgraded Apollo Command Module or Soyuz Reentry Module?

What's wrong with just using a Soyuz then?

Well, that's largely because most of today's gesture recognition is absolutely terrible at recognizing fingers precisely from a long way off.

Waving arms is generally tiresome and not all that effective.
But say, twitching a finger to flip through photos would be a lot easier then using a keyboard.
A better version of kinect that can turn on the TV and load that DVD at the slightest wave of your hand? Awesome! now you don't have to look for that clunky remote anymore.

However, this particular device with the screen in between the person and their hands, just awkward and plain ungainly.

Ok I just lost all respect for his taste in UI. I think he must have completely forgotten how bad OS9 really was, or maybe he's never used OS9 at all. OSX is light-years better.

That would pretty amazing IMO. He can match the same happy-with-a-side-of-sarcasm Tennent did so well. I'd love to see that.

The problem is that it adds permanent consequences (weather impact, long term solar reduction) without actually countering CO2 levels.

It's like a partial band-aid for temperature only. Only this band-aid comes with really nasty side effects.

Those 1% aren't "taking risks". They have golden parachutes, government bailouts, and small-fry employees they can fire. They get away scot free, while burning everyone else around them into the ground.

It would be nice if there was actual "risk" involved, but currently there isn't.

Why would MS really want to buy Yahoo at this stage?

I thought last time around it was to try and sink it so MSN wouldn't have competition. But now with facebook and google and whatnot being much bigger players, that doesn't seem like a very workable plan.

Or make some hybrid bastard child of MSN and Yahoo and turn into into the worst social networking site they possibly can and trumpet it as the "new facebook"?

I just don't see it being ~all~ that attractive to MS. Yahoo runs a slightly (well, maybe upgrade that to "a fair bit" because MSN is pretty abysmal) better version of much the same stuff as MSN, but it's not like it's a groundbreaking change.

Pfffffft. Lack of vision.

A true evil villain would mount big guns on mules anyway. Now to design a railgun that can fit in the saddle...

Friction is a HUGE problem for mass drivers. It's pretty much completely impractical to accelerate something to Escape Velocity in the lower atmosphere because the air resistance will fry anything at that speed. Also, unless you build an absurdly (I mean REALLY absurdly) long track, no person is going to be able to survive the G forces. Now it'd be great for say the Moon, or other places with low to no atmosphere.

Well, the Russians had/have that problem too. They're just less squeamish about it.

How exactly is that new? English has never really had a sane fixed syntax.

shit-storm = free publicity. They made that mission on purpose to create controversy and thus sales.

That has to be about the most absurd comparison I've seen in a while.

So a safe, responsible, aware driver driving their car around town to enjoy the evening breeze is the same thing as someone doing target practice in the middle of town???

No.

If they're being irresponsible and reckless driving then I can understand. But safe driving is not an "extremely dangerous activity".

There will always be something with danger to innocent bystanders. An automated system will still have casualties.

So suddenly anyone who likes the activity of driving is a maniac?