The main advantage of the crossbow/musket over the longbow was that it didn't require a lifetime of practice to use. Not penetrating power. So N men with crossbows/muskets do not give you an advantage over N men with longbows, quite the opposite, but it impacts how many men you can field.

A relevant quote that often shows up (with some variation in wording and origin): Amateurs study tactics, professionals study logistics.

Since this is Slashdot, I didn't RTFA but I'm answering anyway. :)

Neural networks are a computing model just like Lambda Calculus, Turing Machines, the Von Neumann model, etc. They are all equivalent by the Church-Turing Thesis.

Neural networks, also known as parallel distributed computing or a bunch of other names, is a biologically inspired parallel computing model with a very vague definition. Now there are some authors who use narrow definitions, but under most just about any form of processing with multiple processing nodes can be viewed and analysed as a neural network. Even reading/writing RAM has been used in this manner, to build hardware "RAM discriminator" NNs.

My personal guess would be that the researchers saw "Hey! This looks like a neural network!" and my answer is "Yeah, everything does."

I don't think you've seen Voyager. (It put me off Star Trek for good.)

That's partly but not entirely correct. Goods shipped past the Horn of Africa must compete in the marketplace with goods produced elsewhere or shipped along alternate routes. While an increase in the shipping cost for that route would lead to an increase in prices in the relevant markets, the increase would not be sufficient to cover losses entirely due to this substitution effect. Shipping companies could collaborate to fund pirate-hunting.

Nevertheless, I think that hanging pirates is one of the fundamental responsibilities of every government and would prefer to be without mercenaries.

Selling the pirate vessel is not the only financial incentive. Piracy costs a lot of money.

Fine. Invented the calendar and stone buildings: http://www.bibliotecapleyades.net/sumer_anunnaki/esp_sumer_annunaki35.htm

I'd find some more, but I think it'll do you good to do so yourself.

Assumption fail. Volume is not necessarily a limiting constraint. Hard drives are dense.

According to this http://wiki.answers.com/Q/How_much_gravel_can_a_dump_truck_hold a dump truck can typically hold 13T. I've googled the weight of a 3.5" hard drive and I get values between 400g and over 1kg. So I weighed an old one, and got a bit over 400g. The 400g drives are those with fewer platters, but I'll go with it for simplicity.

13,000kg / 0.4kg gives you 32,500 hard drives. Continuing with your calculations, 3TB*32,500 = 97,500TB = 780,000Tb. (According to 'man units', hard drive manufacturers use SI units.) 780,000Tb/26h = 780,000Tb/93,600s = 8.333Tb/s or 8333Gb/s.

23,200*(12^3)/14 * 0.4kg ~= 1,145,416kg The plane can hold a maximum of 81,600 kg. And fuel economy is horrible.

Not that I disagree with your general point.

They me be in your part of the world. They're not in mine. We also didn't have any late bus.

If Google doesn't remove them from its searches, they demand money on the basis of ridiculous copyright claims.

If Google does remove them, they demand money on the basis of Google abusing its monopoly to punish them.

I know it doesn't make sense if you're sane, but that's how these sorts of people reason.

The Council of Elders has declared with enthuisiasm our intention to obliterate the creatures from the blue planet in person.

"For to long have these pathetic monsters hidden in the safety of their hellish atmosphere, while their mechanical agents attacked our world," announced K'breel, speaker for the Council. "We shall have revenge for the unprovoked attacks of the past twenty-two years. Most of all we shall have revenge for the Life Day transmission."

When a junior intelligence officer declined to comment, K'breel had him nailed to a yeast-tree by his gelsacs for being a smartass.

(I'm no good, but I do it for the sake of tradition!)